ATLANTA (ABP) — While it remained unclear the afternoon of Sept. 10 whether a tiny fringe church in Gainesville, Fla., would go ahead the next day with plans to host an incendiary protest against the Islamic holy book, Baptists across the world registered their own protests against the mindset that would commit such an action in the name of Christ.
From Gainesville to Atlanta to Texas to England, Baptist individuals and institutions either protested the Dove World Outreach Center’s threatened Sept. 11 Quran-burning ceremony or offered alternative witnesses.
Baylor University in Waco, Texas, hosted three on-campus events Sept. 9 to promote understanding of Islam on campus and hospitality for Muslim students and members of the community.
Burt Burleson
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“There were a number of students groups sort of independently of one another who decided we’ve got to do something,” said Burt Burleson, the university’s chaplain.
The events started with a 5:30 a.m. breakfast shared by Muslims, who are fasting from sunrise to sunset during the holy month of Ramadan, and Christian students. “We saw it as an act of kindness and hospitality towards those in our midst who don’t share our faith, so kind of a ministry to the strangers among us — which is a sacred calling to us in Scripture,” Burleson said.
At midday, Burleson said, a group of students and staff read from the Psalms — a book held sacred by all three Abrahamic world religions — and prayed. And in the evening, students and faculty participated in a dialogue about Muslim-Christian relations on campus and around the world.
“It primarily was, I think, aimed at helping Christians at Baylor to understand Islam — and perhaps remove some of the misunderstandings that tend to be common — in addition to allowing Baylor students who are Christians some insight to what it is like to be Muslim at Baylor,” Burleson said.
BWA, CBF, BMS, ERLC condemn burning
Richard Land
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The Baptist World Alliance, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and the missions arm of the Baptist Union of Great Britain all issued statements Sept. 10 condemning any Quran-burning plans.
“The planned burning of the Islamic holy book … is counter to the teaching of Jesus Christ, the model of faith and practice for Baptist Christians,” said CBF’s statement, approved by the Atlanta-based group’s 26-member Advisory Council. “It is an act intended to do harm to and cast aspersions on Muslims worldwide. The Fellowship has sought in its ministries and partnerships to reach out to Muslims in genuine dialogue, and the action threatened by this church is spiteful and counter-productive to the Fellowship’s shared vision of being the presence of Christ in the world.”
BWA president John Upton, who is also executive director of the Baptist General Association of Virginia, said the Quran-burning plan “is not in the character or spirit of Jesus Christ and misrepresents the true nature of the Christian faith.” He said BWA officials prayed that the Florida church and its pastor, Terry Jones, “will repent of this threat and ask the forgiveness of the Islamic community and discontinue his caustic rhetoric.”
BMS World Mission, British Baptists’ missions-and-development agency, condemned the plan and expressed concern for the safety of Christians around the world were it to go forward as originally planned.
“BMS World Mission is committed to showing the love of Christ to people in the Muslim world and we are concerned that if this event were to go ahead it could have serious repercussions for our workers in Islamic countries and for local believers who are trying to live out their faith in that part of the world,” their statement said.
Nick Foster
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Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, denounced the plan as well, in a Sept. 7 chat session on the Washington Post’s website.
“To be blunt, there is no justification for burning or desecrating anyone's sacred and religious texts, period,” Land said.
Churches across the country — such as Parkview Baptist Church in Gainesville and Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky. — have denounced the planned burning or scheduled their own alternative events to promote interfaith understanding.
'Burn my Bible'
Individual Baptists have also devised personal ways to respond.
Nick Foster, a Baptist minister who lives in Columbia, Mo., started a Facebook page called “Christians Read the Qu’ran” Sept. 8. He initially only invited a few friends to join it, but by mid-afternoon Sept. 10, more than 200 people had committed to familiarize themselves with the Islamic holy book.
“I'm afraid that most of us, myself included, work out of ignorance when it comes to Islam and to the Qu'ran in particular,” Foster said. “Individually, we don't know many, if any, Muslims, and we know next to nothing about what the Qu'ran says…. I see the Facebook event as a modest step toward educating ourselves and, at the same time, reaching out to the Muslim community with openness. I hope also to help advance a civil conversation among Christians about how we relate to our Muslim neighbors.”
Zachary Bailes
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Zachary Bailes, a Baptist student at Wake Forest Divinity School, decided to register a very personal protest with the Dove World Outreach Center. He said he mailed Terry Jones his Bible with a letter asking asking him to burn it as well.
“My brother gave me this Bible when I was 15 years old,” he wrote in his letter to Jones. “I cherish it not only because a brother gave it to me, but that it symbolizes the vow I made to God. The vow I made was to create a better world, tikkun olam as my Jewish brethren might call it.
“I have forever stored within me a hope for a better world found through the love of Christ. So, I offer you this Bible to burn with the Quran. I stand united with my brothers and sisters of another Abrahamic Faith. Surely, God’s love is big enough to suffer a burning Bible if God can suffer a burning Quran.”
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Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.
Previous ABP stories:
Kentucky Baptists plan alternative to Quran-burning ceremony (9/8/2010)
Baptists, other local religious leaders protest planned Quran burning (9/8/2010)