UPDATE: Jones just went on the Tee Vee Machine. He is still “praying” about his decision to burn the Koran, and stands by his choice. In America, we’re all about choice.
On his radio show, Thom Hartmann just confronted Terry Jones, the radical pastor of the inappropriately named Dove Word Outreach Center, and then Thom brought up a jaw-dropping article in Der Spiegel.
Terry Jones is a man with a shady past who was kicked out of Germany.
This is a guy with a congregation of 80 people who has aroused international anger and hostility toward the United States.
This is an Islamophobe who believes he has been appointed by God, “meaning opposition was a crime against the Lord.” And then he asks his followers for money to support his sociopathic behavior.
This is a cretin who encouraged violence toward children.
This is an extremist who needs to be so discredited as the nutcase he is, that he is shunned by the media, not to mention the whole world.
What is less well known is that the pastor led a charismatic evangelical church, the Christian Community of Cologne, in the western German city up until 2009. Last year, however, the members of the congregation kicked founder Jones out, because of his radicalism. One of the church’s current leaders, Stephan Baar, also told the German news agency DPA that there had been suspicions of financial irregularities in the church surrounding Jones.
A “climate of fear and control” had previously prevailed in the congregation, says one former member of the church who does not want to be named. Instead of free expression, “blind obedience” was demanded, he says. [...]
Former church members are still undergoing therapy as a result of “spiritual abuse,” Schäfer said. According to Schäfer, Jones urged church members to beat their children with a rod and also taught “a distinctive demonology” and conducted brainwashing.
“Terry Jones appears to have a delusional personality,” speculates Schäfer. When he came to Germany in the 1980s, Jones apparently considered Cologne “a city of Hell that was founded by Nero’s mother,” while he thought Germany was “a key country for the supposed Christian revival of Europe,” Schäfer says.
Andrew Schäfer is a Protestant Church official who monitored sects in the region. He has confirmed the above accounts.
Schäfer, for his part, sees Jones as a fanatic who is courting global media attention because he couldn’t cope with the “immense loss of power and significance.“
So Jones is willing to risk the lives of Americans in general, of our troops specifically, over his own fragile feelings of impotence. He needs attention, the poor wittle thing.
Let’s hope that “real” Christians (and others, of course) make their counter protests loud and clear, by engaging, by communicating, by making it clear that Jones does not represent Christians, or the United States, that freedom or religion means something, and that an entire group cannot be made responsible for the horrific actions of a few, that irrational zealotry will not be tolerated, that inciting violence does not prevent– or avenge– violence.
Maybe something productive can come out of this… maybe.
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