Gainesville, USA - A short while ago, I drove to the Dove World Outreach Center, a non-descript church tucked away off a main road in Gainesville, Fla. It’s become famous for one reason: Pastor Terry Jones, and his threats to burn a Koran.
When the locked doors opened, my fellow visitors and I were led past a sanctuary, filled more with furniture than church pews, up the stairs to a sparsely furnished office: Desk, sofa, two chairs and a movie poster of Mel Gibson in Braveheart.
We met Pastor Jones, a tall man, 60 years old, bearded and sitting at his desk with army-type boots, blue jeans, a black T-shirt and a gun hanging from his belt. Wayne Sapp, his assistant, was alongside wearing blue jeans, a black Harley Davidson T-shirt emblazoned with, “I Don’t Do Fear,” and a very obvious gun clipped to his belt. He stood, legs apart and arms folded, as if on guard, for the duration of our 90-minute conversation.
Jones told us that after spending 30 years in Cologne, Germany, he returned to the United States to find his beloved America awash in moral corruption, weakened by a failing Church, diminished by a gutless government and overrun by Islamic clerics and their threat of Sharia law. He says he felt, “God spoke to me” — about defacing Islam, desecrating its Koran and doing whatever else he could to “wake up America.”
Our visit was last Friday, the day before he planned to burn another Koran, a follow-up to what he had done in March, 2011. He’d publicized that event online — resulting in the burning of churches and the killing of his fellow Christians.
Jones concedes that his new organization, “Stand Up America Now,” is not about Christian love or evangelism, but rather “acts of resistance or revolution” — because love and evangelism are weak, “unable to make a dent.” He says that he had no idea there would be such a stir caused by the burning of Islam’s holy book. But he took that very stir as a sign: “God wanted me to get involved.”
Jones is disarming and articulate, and a surprisingly good listener, gentle in his response to tough questions. He openly acknowledged that his actions were bizarre. Yet he admits no guilt that what he did caused harm to Christians (those he readily admits are his brothers and sisters).
Jones’ confusion over love for America — as he thinks it was and should be — and the Gospel was obvious. While clearly declaring himself a follower of Christ, he no longer believes loving others is a fair and workable strategy.
“We would not have beaten Hitler if we had just prayed,” he said.
It is time, in Jones’ view, to move past praying and acts of kindness, beyond trying to win people to faith in Christ. With a militia-like mindset, he views the “weakness” of churches and government as being part of a conspiracy to degrade his country. Gun-toting pastors seem a logical extension of his strategy to bypass those unwilling to “stand for America.”
“Would you be willing to come to Malaysia and look into the faces of my family and tell them why you burned the Koran, if your action caused my death?” asked one of my companions, Daniel Ho, a Methodist pastor from Muslim-controlled Malaysia. Jones had no answer.
Pressed to line up his actions with biblical values and the call of Jesus, Jones referred to Abraham and Moses, examples of “biblical characters that have done crazy things.”
At other times, “God told me to do it,” was his central mantra.
We reminded him that he was standing behind the defences of free speech laws in the United States, knowing that what he is doing may very well get others killed. We told him that if he really wanted to show courage, then he should go to Muslim nations and do his burning there, where his actions will put himself at risk.
He laughed and said, “They’d kill me.”
Dr. Geoff Tunnicliffe, secretary-general of the World Evangelical Alliance, closed the meeting with the story of William Wilberforce, who chose to give his life to end slavery. At our meeting, Jones was asked to be that kind of hero.
It was a challenge he couldn’t take up. On Saturday he webcast his burning ritual.