Local Church's Hateful Message Continues

This is a follow-up to an earlier story about Gainesville's Dove World Outreach Center. So far, three children of Dove members have been sent home from public school after sporting "Islam is of the devil" shirts, apparently custom-designed for the church by an Internet company (local companies refused to print shirts with this message). The church and its property, still with very visible signs on it condemning Islam, is also still up for sale. All of this raises a couple of questions.

First of all, it may be argued that the "Islam is of the devil" garbage being spewed out by this church is nothing more than a cynical ploy designed by its leader to publicize the fact that it is for sale, and to further give incentive for another party to buy it off in order to stop this embarrassment to the community. Second, any criticism of the provocative and hateful character of this message simply goes back into the church's feedback loop as "persecution" from "the world". They have openly styled themselves as an apostolic/prophetic church and rely on their own interpretation of the Bible for examples to follow. So as Jeremiah from the Old Testament and Paul from the New were ostracized, threatened, imprisoned, beat up, and run out of town for their religious activities, these folks at Dove see themselves the same way. The only problem with this viewpoint is that they are operating safely in an overwhelmingly Christian culture with enforced constitutional rights to freely practice their religion without persecution. The criticism is being directed at their intolerance.

There are Christians in other countries, especially in Africa and southern Asia, where they are truly persecuted by the majority non-Christian culture. And in these lands are extreme factions of the prevalent religions who, like Dove, take it upon themselves to incite others belonging to the majority religions there to scapegoat those within the small minority-religion families and communities for their societies' problems. How would Terry Jones, the pastor of Dove World Outreach Center and the instigator of this hateful provocation about Islam, like it if his church were in one of those countries and his congregation's children, going to school there, encountered other children wearing shirts with the slogan "Christianity is of the devil"?

But there is no convincing these people that what they are doing is wrong. Except for Jones, who may have his own motives for his actions, they are stuck in a feedback loop that has ready-made answers supplying derogatory motives to any reactions anyone may have to their provocative actions. And ready-made rationalizations for whatever their leader instructs them to do. Criticizing them just feeds back into this loop. On the other hand, having seen how dangerous cults have developed in the past, it is still necessary to spotlight and expose this disturbing behavior in the press. So here is my thanks to my local paper The Gainesville Sun for publishing stories about this sad affair. And here is my article about it as well.