Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Terry Mattingly\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"tmatt\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/\",\"name\":\"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\"},\"description\":\"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/\",\"name\":\"Terry Mattingly\",\"description\":\"On Religion\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1\",\"name\":\"tmatt\",\"description\":\"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Universal Syndicate.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/author\/tmatt\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones","description":"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones","og_description":"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are","og_url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/","og_site_name":"Terry Mattingly","article_published_time":"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00","author":"tmatt","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"tmatt","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/","name":"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00","dateModified":"2010-09-20T09:50:10+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1"},"description":"The deaths of the 10 International Assistance Mission medical workers inspired headlines that were both shocking and numbingly familiar, since these are","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/","name":"Terry Mattingly","description":"On Religion","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/#\/schema\/person\/76ce2260a572ff41a28fb285de9350f1","name":"tmatt","description":"Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. He writes a weekly column for the Universal Syndicate.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/author\/tmatt\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

{"id":1985,"date":"2010-09-20T05:50:10","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T09:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tmatt.net\/?p=1985"},"modified":"2010-09-20T05:50:10","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T09:50:10","slug":"rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/tmatt\/2010\/09\/rights-and-wrongs-of-pastor-terry-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Rights and wrongs of Pastor Terry Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

A Taliban blandly leader told the press: \u201cThey were Christian missionaries and we killed them all.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the gunmen had only waited a few weeks, they could have claimed that their victims were linked to a powerful global conspiracy to burn Korans.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the kind of statement that the head of the Southern Baptist Convention\u2019s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission was worried about when he \u2014 with countless other evangelicals \u2014 urged the Rev. Terry Jones to cancel his \u201cInternational Burn a Koran Day\u201d event on Sept. 11. The leader of the tiny Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., did precisely that, but not before forcing religious and political leaders to wrestle with agonizing First Amendment issues.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe behavior of this church is not Christian. I cannot imagine Christ burning any religious texts,\u201d argued the Rev. Richard Land, in an online Washington Post<\/em> forum<\/a>. \u201cThis behavior is unfortunately one of the prices we pay for living in a free society with freedom of speech and freedom of expression, even when it is odious and reprehensible.\u201d<\/p>\n

A protest of this kind would \u201cbesmirch the reputation of our Savior, and that makes it blasphemy,\u201d he said. The whole idea was \u201cappalling, disgusting and brainless.\u201d<\/p>\n

The bonfire would have made life more dangerous for missionaries, human-rights activists, diplomats and American soldiers. Those flames also would have made life much more dangerous for Christian converts and members of other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim lands.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, these clergy and politicos had to wrestle with the fact that Jones had every right to buy copies of the Koran and, after planning a fire small enough to wink at local laws, strike a match.<\/p>\n

After all, this would, have been another act of painful symbolic speech.<\/p>\n

Did the American Nazis have a constitutional right to march in Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb that was home to numerous Holocaust survivors? Yes, and demonstrators in the Reagan White House era burned the American flag. Muslims overseas have burned copies of the novel, \u201cThe Satanic Verses,\u201d by Salman Rushdie, and Bibles, too.<\/p>\n

How many times have followers of the Rev. Fred Phelps of Topeka, Kan., waved their lurid signs \u2014 \u201cGod Hates the U.S.A.\u201d is one of the mildest \u2014 at funerals for soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan? On Sept. 11, the Westboro Baptist Church crew burned a Koran and an American flag at the same time. For once, most journalists elected to look the other way. <\/p>\n

In the case of Jones and his church in Gainesville, the Council on American-Islamic Relations decided that the timing of his Koran travesty was simply too hot to ignore. Even though the group regularly ignores the videos that it receives of people burning, shooting or ripping apart Islam\u2019s holy book, CAIR decided to issue a July 19 press release announcing its own protest of \u201cInternational Burn a Koran Day.\u201d The group handed out free copies of the Koran.<\/p>\n

The word was officially out and the media storm kept growing as angry reactions \u2014 from Arab streets to the White House \u2014 rolled into the world\u2019s newsrooms.<\/p>\n

Lost in the din were the quiet, measured words of many religious leaders who tried to walk a knife\u2019s edge of logic in their public statements.<\/p>\n

For starters, they had to note the painful fact that the Dove World Outreach Center was an independent Pentecostal<\/a> congregation and its members were responsible to no higher religious authority than their own pastor. Thus, there was no one who could stop this event, other than public officials who, in order to do so, would have had to trample the rights of Jones and his flock.<\/p>\n

The bottom line: Blasphemy is not illegal in the United States of America.<\/p>\n

As the clock ticked down, Land stressed that the \u201conly thing more dangerous than what this pastor is doing would be to allow the government to interfere. This would set a terrible precedent and would diminish all our First Amendment rights. The best way to combat this is to exercise our free speech right to condemn what he is doing in the simplest way and most direct terms.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"