Costco’s had some explaining to do after the pastor of a non-denominational church in California happened upon a particular display of Bibles at his local Costco store. He says he was shopping for a gift for his wife when he found a bunch of Bibles with price tags reading “fiction.”

He of course snapped a photo and tweeted it out to his congregation, telling KTLA-5 News that tried to find somebody to ask about the books, but couldn’t.

His tweet included the caption: “Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of fiction…hmmmm.”

“I checked to see if the other Bibles were like that, and they were,” he explains.

As for his tweet and his congregation, he tells KCBS-TVthere’s been a range of reactions.

“A lot of people were upset. Some people were fine with it. To me, I don’t know why you’d label something as fiction,” he said.

The pastor says Costco reached out to him and said that the problem was an error by distributors. The company has since issued an apology, saying:

“Costco’s distributor mislabeled a small percentage of the Bibles, however we take responsibility and should have caught the mistake. We are correcting this with them for future distribution,” Costco said in a statement. “In addition, we are immediately relabeling all mislabeled Bibles. We greatly apologize for this error.”

Whether you believe it’s the word of God or just another work of fiction, the pastor says it can be a learning experience, telling KCBS-TV he thinks any discussion of the topic is good.

“It’s caused a lot of controversy, it’s caused a lot of conversation, which I think conversation is good,” says.

We’ve embedded the newscast that doesn’t have autoplay below.

Pastor Finds Bibles Labeled as ‘Fiction’ at Local Costco [KTLA-5 News]
Simi Valley Pastor Finds Bibles Labeled As ‘Fiction’ At Local Costco [KCBS-TV]

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