And now for your daily dose of the clash of civilizations.
Mollie mentioned yesterday that a tiny Florida church’s plans to burn Qurans on 9/11 is news whether we like it or not. I agree. But I’m a bit more skeptical — some would say cynical — about the motives of Dove World Outreach Center and its pastor, Terry Jones, and so I don’t think it deserves quite the attention its received.
Frank James of NPR noted yesterday on The Two-Way blog that last year another pastor of a tiny church no one had heard of received a lot of free PR — and Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan would remind you, the only bad PR is no PR — for planning to torch on Halloween a pile of books they considered evil. James, analogizing to the Quran burning celebration of America (go figure), mentioned that last year’s Halloween book bonfire never happened. Marc Grizzard and his 14-member church instead opting for shredding those evil books, which included any non-KJV-version of the Bible:
The few media who showed up had to take their word for it since it all happened inside the little church. Grizzard proclaimed the event a great success. And it was. A church with a membership of 14 got world-wide publicity.
Terry Jones basically picked up where the Near Ground Zero Mosque left off and has become the newest media flavor of the week. And better hurry because the shelf life was this one really is about a week. Even more surprising is the attention Jones’ intentions have received from our nation’s leaders in Washington. The two meet in this nicely done story Wednesday by Tara Bahrampour and Michelle Boorstein at The Washington Post.
I could mention something about strange bedfellows — when was the last time Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck agreed with President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton? — but I won’t. Frankly, I would expect almost all Americans, regardless of politics or religion or any other measure, oppose the Quran burning.
Especially Christians.
That’s right — and it’s not something I’ve seen mentioned often enough in these stories. With Westboro Baptist Church, I think reporters get it. But not here. At least Bahrampour and Boorstein did:
In a news conference Tuesday on the plan to burn Korans, Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick, the archbishop emeritus of Washington, said, “Religious leaders cannot stand by in silence when things like this are happening.” Burning the Koran, he warned, could be “taken by some as the real story of America, and it is not.”
Actions and hate speech against Muslims “bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ,” said the Rev. Richard Cizik, president of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good and a former lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals.
Said the Rev. Gerald Durley, pastor at Providence Missionary Baptist Church in Atlanta: “From a Christian perspective, this is not what we stand for. This is a fringe group of individuals.”
You know the rule: Three is a trend. And especially with a cross-section of American Christians like that. If only they’d found an Episcopalian, though I think we know what they would have said.
Unfortunately, the WaPo’s article, which covers a lot of ground and already fills a lot of newshole, stops there. It doesn’t explain why burning the Quran isn’t Christian behavior and why Jones and Dove World Outreach are on the fringe of American Christendom.
PHOTO: Funny photo protesting a Harry Potter book burning.
 | Posted at 12:18 am |  Print
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Comments (17) |
September 9, 2010, at 12:34 am
It’s obviously unchristian because it shows a base disregard for others. Paul says that among the Jews he was a Jew, and among the Greeks a Greek… This doesn’t mean you sacrifice your core beliefs, but it means you meet other cultures halfway and go along with their rituals so you can focus on the deeper meanings rather than outrage and superficial differences. Burning a Quran is the sheer opposite of such a spirit. It’s reaching out to another tradition and purposefully inflaming ire. It’s wrong.
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September 9, 2010, at 1:35 am
Terry Jones has been receiving attention since at least July 24th and several religious leaders in Gainesville have been speaking out against the event since at least July 24th.
Note the Episcopal below.
http://www.examiner.com/methodist-in-national/to-the-florida-church-planning-a-burn-a-koran-day
Announced on August 24th or earlier:
On Friday, September 10 from 6:00pm – 9:00pm Trinity United Methodist Church and the Gainesville Interfaith Forum will be hosting a Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope.
http://www.trinitygnv.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=604&Itemid=246
Part of the announcement:
““There is a time to be silent and a time to speak,” so says the writer of Ecclesiastes (3:7). Normally, when a very small fringe group acts or plans to act in disturbing or hateful ways, I am inclined to “ignore it and it will go away,” and wish that the news media would do the same. That was my thought when the Westboro Baptist group who gained infamy by picketing military funerals picketed our church, along with St. Augustine Catholic Church and the Hillel synagogue downtown a few months ago for no apparent reason. At that time they were joined by The Dove World Outreach Center. Again, we adhered to the wisdom that it was a time to be silent and not add fuel to their fire. And such was our position when The Dove World Outreach Center announced plans that they would host an International Day of Burning the Qur’an on September 11.
But, because this sinister action has been picked up by the international news media, the time for silence has passed, and the time for Christians to speak has come. There should be no doubt around the globe that the Christian Church does not condone or support such an action. To remain silent would mean complicity to a terrible wrong. As the Senior Minister and Church Council of Trinity United Methodist Church, we feel compelled to raise our voices to proclaim that the action the Dove World Outreach Center is proposing is absolutely wrong and counter to the Life and Teaching of the Jesus whom we love, follow and call Savior and Lord. The Jesus that the vast majority of Christians know is a person of extraordinary love and compassion. He extended grace to persons of other faiths and treated them with respect and understanding.”
Participants:
Rev. Larry Reimer, the United Church of Gainesville
Dr. Saaed ur Rehman Khan - Hoda Islamic Center
Ismail Ibn Ali, Islam on Campus;
Dr. Wajid Khuddus, Islamic Center of Gainesville
Ahmad El-Mahdawy, Hoda Center
Father Roland Julien, St Patrick’s Catholic Church
Pastor Greg Magruder, Parkview Baptist Church
Rabbi David Kaiman, B’Nai Israel Synagogue
Dennis Shuman and Renee Hoffinger, P’Nai Or Synagogue
Rabbi Michael Joseph, Temple Shir Shalom
Rev. Meredith Garmon, Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Gainesville
Rev. Milford Griner, Pleasant Plain & Hall Chapel United Methodist Church
Rev. Jim Merritt, Trinity Metropolitan Community Church
Rev. Carl Romey, First United Methodist Church
Dr. Zoharah Simmons UF department of religion
Rev. Louanne Loch, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church
Rev. Eve McMaster, Mennonite Church
Gene Beardsley, clerk, Gainesville Friends Meeting (Quaker)
Rev. Martha McInnes, United Church of Christ
Rev. David Dean, Disciples Presbyterian Student Center
Rev. Tom Murphy, Episcopal Chapel of the Incarnation
Rev. Michael Collins, University Lutheran Church
Rev. Alisun Donovan, Presbyterian Church USA
Rev. Jack Donovan, Presbyterian Church USA
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September 9, 2010, at 8:17 am
To answer the question in the headline, book-burning isn’t completely against Christianity (Acts 19:19). But to be really analogous the DWOC people would need to be converts from Islam…
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September 9, 2010, at 9:38 am
A bigger fish than Cardinal McCarrick has weighed in on this matter. Hard to believe it hasn’t been added into the reporting mix.
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September 9, 2010, at 9:44 am
It’s “obviously unChristian” to burn books? That would have been news to scores of popes and patriarchs and Reformation fathers. Read “Christianity: The First 3,000 Years” by Diarmaid MacCulloch for an alternative view on this topic.
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September 9, 2010, at 9:46 am
Many of them argued that it was theologically sound to burn books — and people, too.
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September 9, 2010, at 10:09 am
Against my own inclinations, I have to concede that Mr. Lockwood has a point, though I would be quick to add that Christians “learned” the art of book-burning from non-Christian predecessors. Valerius Maximus speaks positively of a decision to burn a chest full of “Greek” books (i.e., philosophy), because they discouraged the traditional worship of the Roman gods. There is a story that the emperor Augustus rounded up and destroyed unauthorized copies of the Sybelline Books because they contained “spurious oracles” that were being used for political purposes. And perhaps most importantly, when reading early Christian writers, one has to remember that when they use the word “traditor” (the root of our word “traitor”), they are referring to a clergyman who, in the days of anti-Christian persecution, turned over copies of the Christian scriptures for burning.
Both the burning of the “Greek” books and the “spurious” oracles were viewed positively by the writers describing them, while the early Christian writers were not objecting to the burning of books in general, but to the burning of their books in particular. Long before this story had broken I had been thinking, in my academic work, about the question — when and how did book burning become a bad thing? When we disapprove of book burning, what exactly are we condemning? Not journalistic questions, perhaps, but certainly ones that seems to underlie the story.
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September 9, 2010, at 10:18 am
Just the mention of book-burning immediately conjures images of Nazi party rallies and huge bonfires (at least in the Western mindset). Whether justified or not, it’s inexorably linked with the idea of an unjust and oppressive authority trying to smother the free exchange of ideas. I don’t think this is at all lost on the journalists who have done their best to make this tempest in a teacup into a global controversy.
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September 9, 2010, at 11:47 am
I sgree with Ann (# 2) and praise the Gainsville Clergy for coming together to present a relatively united front against what appears to be a fringe extremeist group as dangerous to world pease as the 9-11 bombings.
Unfortunely, being a pentecostsal church which has as a tenent the movement of the Holy Spirit is something which cannot be demonstrated or proven in an empirical way. The message of the Spirit, and I do believe that the Spirit is present in the whole process of discernment, cannot be exact since it is transmitted through human beings who have their own political agendas or emotional problems.
I remember once a denomination executive mentioneing that ina particular church the holy spirit hovered and didn’t land.
in John we read that the spirit which God will send will bring to the recepients the teachings of Jesus. My reading of the new testament in no way suggests that Jesus would have approved of burning the sacred writings but would have learned from them and perhaps used to them to open the eyes of the disciples.
I pray that Jones and his church live by their own faithfulness and stop this action which can bring about nothing but conflict and death and not peace for whicht he prince of peace died not just for us but for others as well.
Sam Young
Oxford, mass
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September 9, 2010, at 1:29 pm
Brad, your post makes me wonder if you are taking seriously the potential repercussions of this act of bigoted nonsense. It could affect Americans all around the globe and potentially even here in America. Sorry, this is about a journalist, not about journalism.
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September 9, 2010, at 3:35 pm
Indeed I am taking this seriously. In fact the second hyperlink in this post was to a God Blog post I wrote titled “Burning the Quran: insane, not illicit,” though on second thought I wanted to headline that “ill-conceived, not illegal.” Regardless, in that post I mention the whole Quran-in-the-toilet incident and caution that this is really foolhardy.
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September 11, 2010, at 12:29 am
The problem with much of the coverage and discussion is that comparisons of this book burning to the burning of anything in the reformation miss the unique view of the Qu’ran held by Islam.
I did see one attempt to descibe this, however since the best way is to describe it as beyond the insult possible in burning a Bible there is a level of intensity missed.
On the other hand the comparison to the Nazis does not work. The Nazi book burnings were the actions of the government. The 50 member Dove Outreach Center is about as far from being a major body that is at all connected with the government as is possible.
At least from the standpoint of how it works in American law and culture, the analogy to flag burning is probably best.
Nazi book burnings were meant to remove the writtings of Jews from large chunks of the population. This Qu’ran burning will have no effect on access to the Qu’ran.
Of course, to really be the Qu’ran it must be in Arabic, I doubt any of these people read Arabic, so it is to them no more a vehicle of giving knowlege than a flag.
If there are burning an English interpretation of the Qu’ran, it is not the Qu’ran, and so Muslims should not really care.
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September 12, 2010, at 2:38 pm
Bob Barr insinuates (http://blogs.ajc.com/bob-barr-blog/2010/09/08/quran-burning-preacher-defines-idiot/) that the Dove center is not a “bona fide church”.
Politicians taking it upon themselves to decide what is or is not a “real” church scares me more than some words from a nitwit preacher.
Will, member of a “strange church” that “doesn’t believe in normal things”, according to Missouri Democraps.
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September 13, 2010, at 12:53 am
The guy may be crazy, but he hit a gem of an idea for publicity. What plan could one hatch that could get the President of the United States to comment on your 50 member church because of its doctrine?
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September 13, 2010, at 11:25 am
Well, you could claim that 9-11 is simply the “chickens coming home to roost.”
Nah, that would never work…
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September 13, 2010, at 1:55 pm
Frank, one could make the same claim about Pearl Harbor. We had been engaged in an oil boycott of Japan in response to its imperialism in East Asia.
The point is that an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is an act of war. A country so attacked is at war whether it intended to be or not.
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September 19, 2010, at 12:13 am
Agree, book burning and publicity stunts are not Christian.
Just a side note re: “…a tiny Florida church”
The majority of churches in the US are less than 100. [59%]
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