When you stop and think about it, the entire thing is nothing short of preposterous. The pastor of a 50-person church in a small city in Florida sets the world on edge with his threat of burning Korans, and the whole thing gets so out of hand that Defense Secretary Robert Gates gives the man a call.
Think about that for a minute. The man running the military for the world’s most powerful country has to take time out of his day to make a phone call to an extremist pastor who has been called “delusional” by a Protestant church official in charge of monitoring cults in Germany, where Jones also once had a church. Gates isn’t the only powerful figure who has had to take time to address this small-time religious leader who has hit big-time media celebrity status. General Petraeus, the man running a war in Afghanistan, had to take time to warn of the consequences. And of course, President Obama has weighed in on the matter, too…..
Read it all. If you have time the comments are very interesting also.
It’s not preposterous. The very reverse. If this were 1979, no one would notice. But NOW, he is a magnifying glass before the sun: He brings diffuse rays into a concentration that can start a fire. No one should be surprised because he has caught the world’s attention. Even little guys, nobodies, can shake the seats of the great and powerful when they have something to say that focuses all the fears, anger, frustration, bitterness, resentment, anxieties into a few minutes of time and space. These are Luther moments. Larry
I would hope that sometime in the future, journalism schools use this incident as a case study of irresponsible journalism.
Insignificant events can take on monumental proportions when your head is full of practically nothing.
A globalization of absurdity. At least the question was asked.
Jeff Thimsen, I agree. This was irresponsible journalism. The news media people are saying that they can’t keep something like this quiet any more because of the internet. But they have kept any number of stories quiet in recent months and years, based upon whether they thought the items were important or helpful. The actions of a tiny group in one place should not get this kind of exposure.
The second thing this highlights is, of course, the violence among more than just a tiny fringe of Muslims worldwide. It surely is not a majority, but it’s not one guy with 50 followers. It’s many many millions, all around the world.
I rather enjoyed following the story and discussion that it generated. I wonder how the meeting went between the pastor and the imam. There seemed to be some serious issues about mis-communication between the two sides. It was also interesting to see that many others picked up the cause after the Florida group waffled. The whole issue made me dig into all the islamic burnings and desececrations of Bibles, crosses, church buildings, and even convents that have happened around the world. Muslims seem to have no problem burning the Bible, church buildings, etc. They also seem pretty eager to murder anyone that doesn’t follow islam. I think it is remarkable how restrained Christians are in the face of islamic provocations…we only burn their books a few at a time, while they go on murder sprees and riot in the streets. There is no moral equivalency.
Let’s try this again. This is NOT irresponsible journalism. The very reverse. This man in this time and place has concentrated a powerful blast of radiation from an issue of burning relevance. The papers reported precisely what they should have reported. Remember what the Church thought of Luther. He was, they thought at first, a harmless idiot; he’d get over it. Then they found him dangerous because he called attention to a grave evil that had beset the Christian world for generations. And he was a Jew-baiter and favored the brutal suppression of the peasants’ revolt. Not a nice guy at all when it came to his biases. And look at the effect he had because he brought a a world of abuse to a bright focus and set off a fire. Larry
I would conclude this: IF we know where Osama Bin Laden is holing up – and I suspect we do – – this explains pretty much why we don’t go get him. Taking Osama Bin Laden into custody, or killing him, would “place our troops in jeopardy, and be a possible threat to our national security.” Heck, Secretary Gates might even have to put in a phone call to the Afghani Taliban to ask them to reconsider any acts they may be considering.
>>Why does a small-time Florida pastor get the attention of world leaders?
Because he falls into the media template that all Christian leaders are right-wing fanatic nut jobs.
Martin Luther spoke truth, Larry. This man threatened to do something he clearly never had any intention of doing solely to get attention for himself and his puny little congregation. He is an attention hungry charlatan and should be shunned by polite society and not given the pulpit of national media attention. This whole thing is proof that it is far easier to gain fame by bad behavior than by good. You can labor for a lifetime to spread the Kingdom and our civilization will only sneer or a best simply shrug. But take some silly provocative action like this and you end up on Good Morning America. Curse an airplane full of people and jump down an exit ramp and you’re a cult hero. Walk into a workplace with a semi-automatic and your a household name. Which is why I’m increasingly convinced that the cult of celebrity only serves to reinforce bad behavior, even among celebrities. It is hard to win an Oscar. It is very easy to go on a drunken rampage and end up on the cover of every magazine in the country.
But 10, the RC Church did not think he was telling the truth – well, the church outside what would become Germany. Is he attention hungry? Probably. Is he a charlatan? This I DON”T know. Do you? Do have some evidence to prove that he is a charlatan? What makes you think he never had any intention to burn Korans?I got the impression that he was absolutely sincere. Is he a right wing “fundamentalist” nut job? Well….maybe.
But he also could be convinced that Islam poses a direct threat to Christianity – now where would he get THAT notion, I wonder. From the actual threats maybe? – or to the US. Do you think the threats made many times by jihadists may have some influence? So he sought to burn a Koran. Would he have done better to stone a Moslem to death? What would you have him do? TALK? and talk some more? And then go on Oprah and talk? He wanted to ACT. Exactly what Luther wished to do. Now, I do NOT wish to push the analogy too far. I called this a Luther moment, not Luther Redux.
And on the whole, I absolutely agree what you said about the fetish of celebrity. (But I must add that i don’t think it hard to win an Oscar. You only have to listen to the celebrities who do win to realize that one would respect them more if only the standards were higher.)
Larry
Simple, he said it himself.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/quran_burning
He never planned to burn it, his plan was to “to expose that there is an element of Islam that is very dangerous and very radical.” As if everything from 9/11 to the Danish cartoon riots didn’t already prove that. As if that has not been an obvious fact of history since the 7th century. It is not a hidden truth that he is exposing. It is an obvious truth that he is exploiting. What do you call someone who says he is going to do something then admits that he would never do it – “not today, not ever”. A liar and a fraud. We needed no Florida pastor to take us to Wittenberg on this one, we have the 95 Theses all around us, from the Beirut barracks to the USS Cole, from London to Lockerbie to Madrid to Bali to Karachi to Detroit. So why? To gain attention, by means less than honest. I don’t know what the answer to Muslim extremism is. There may be no answer this side of creation. Coddling them doesn’t seem to work, but needless provocation only seems to exacerbate the problem.
Well, I am wrong. I saw no such quote as you cite here, but he now appears to be a scoundrel. I wonder, though, if this admission is not the result of simple cowardice, a response to the violent reaction his initial declaration produced. Larry