A Michigan content creator showed off the latest reading material people have left at a really cute Little Free Library she oversees in her neighborhood. That sounds lovely at first, until she starts pulling out numerous religious pamphlets on the end of the world.
“At this point, I don’t know if the missionaries are trolling me or if one of you is,” Amber (TikTok/overstimulatedbookclub) wrote in her TikTok video. In Amber’s TikTok video, she opens up the Little Free Library to see both shelves stuffed with books.
However, according to her, “This is now the THIRD time my library has been stuffed full of religious end-of-times pamphlets.” Amber then pulls twenty of said pamphlets, many of which are practically little books of their own.
Some of the titles to these pamphlets include: Why God Permits Evil, Life After Death, The Divine Plan of the Ages, Archaeology Verifies the Bible as God’s Word, Will Israel Survive the End Times?, Israel: A Nation of Miracles, and more.
“I’m being targeted by the missionaries,” Amber says in her TikTok video. However, she makes it clear she isn’t bothered by a Bible making it into the library. “It’s about this crap,” she says, referring to the doomsday pamphlets being “frankly kind of insane.”
Although she only jokingly calls out the possibility of religious missionaries doing this, she writes that it might be someone “trolling” her, due to the size of her TikTok channel. However, she shares that she’ll be checking other Free Little Libraries in the neighborhood to “see if they got hit today too.”
Viewers Offer Hilarious Ways to Shelter Amber’s Library from Religious Missionaries
Given the nature of the Little Free Libraries, people on Amber’s TikTok video were pretty upset. These little free libraries are generally intended to encourage reading and bring communities together, so it’s understandable that some residents weren’t pleased to see one filled with religious pamphlets instead. In response, a viewer left a mocking comment, saying, “But it’s not being shoved down our throats right?”
One viewer pointed out the sinister nature of the pamphlets, noting that they “aren’t even regular reading materials,” but rather “weird propaganda crap.”
Others shared how they handle religious text they see in Little Free Libraries. One viewer garnered thousands of Likes when they suggested putting a sign on the library that stated Amber would “donate $1 to an atheist or LGBTQ+ charity” for every religious book. Another commenter said they “throw them away,” unless it’s a James Dobson book, in which case she burns them.
This isn’t the first example of a Little Free Library being co-opted by religious missionaries trying to spread their message to children, who are generally the ones benefitting from these libraries the most. Some people have even gone as far as to interfere with these community book exchanges by allegedly locking them, preventing others from accessing the books inside.
