Jesus didn't preach tolerance

Outrage is pouring in from all sides — as
it should. Terry Jones is the kind of ”pastor” who gives clergy a bad
name; the kind of ”Christian” who affirms the worst suspicions of
skeptics and cynics. His plan to burn copies of the Qur’an on Saturday (September 11) is a stunt both feeble and horrifying.

If we didn’t live in an age of instant access to quasi-news,
fake-news, and no-news, no one outside the greater Gainesville area
would know about the ironically named Dove World Outreach Center.

The response from both right and left, religious and secular, has
been — in a nutshell — one of condemnation for Jones’s shocking lack of
tolerance. It’s been interesting to observe the conflation of American
and Christian “values,” and the naming of such values to
marshall opposition to Jones’s primitive xenophobia: respect,
open-mindedness, freedom of conscience.