All the owners of the Christian bookstore called Cedar Springs Christian Store in Knoxville, Tennessee wanted to do was place an ad in the classified section of the News Sentinel, telling people that they're closing out and are having a huge sale.
The advertisement reads: "Store closing sale – Cedar Springs Christian Store – Clinton Highway location – All merchandise, fixtures, slat walls must go. Sale through August 13, phone 865.947.XXX."
The ad was placed on July 26 and was supposed to be printed on July 28. But when the day finally came, Lois McGinnis was surprised to find that their ad was nowhere in sight.
She called the newspaper and spoke with the classified ad employee. "She said our ad did not run because it contained an offensive word," McGinnis tells Fox News. "I asked what that offensive word was and she said the offensive word was 'Christian.'"
McGinnis was upset because the News Sentinel did not even have the courtesy to notify her in advance that the ad had been rejected, and they did not even receive a call saying their money would be refunded.
"We had no way of knowing they considered the word 'Christian' offensive until we tried to place this ad," says McGinnis. "As Christians, this was a slap in the face to us."
Later, McGinnis decided to post a question on the store's Facebook page: "Do you find the word 'Christian' offensive?"
The question received hundreds of comments, and it got the attention of the News Sentinel. The newspaper apologised "for any misunderstanding about the News Sentinel stance on Christianity."
"We had a system failure, which resulted in a classified ad for Cedar Springs getting hung up in our front end system," the newspaper explains. "We corrected the technology issue in our system and the ad is now running for an extended period at no extra charge."
Meanwhile, the newspaper's publisher Patrick Birmingham clarifies that they do not have any bias against Christianity or any other religion.
