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Posts authored by Gretchen

Storm

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The animated version of Tim Minchin’s nine minute beat poem “Storm” is finally out!

I first heard of Minchin when he was a guest on the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast a few years ago. He talked about this poem on the show, so I tracked it down on Youtube and immediately wanted to hear more of his stuff. Unfortunately very little of that was available on Youtube at the time, so I ordered both of his CDs from some British distributor and listened to them on repeat as we packed up my boyfriend’s house in preparation to move to a new one (BF liked it almost as much as I did, so didn’t mind this).

Now Minchin’s snarky and vehemently irreverent music is all over the place. I would not recommend listening to it if profanity or blasphemy bother you in the slightest. I would especially not recommend watching this bawdy video collaboration made in protest of the pope. But if those things don’t so much as make you raise an eyebrow, check his stuff out– especially this one, which can make me cry in the right mood. I think the animation of the “Storm” video is well done, though I can’t help being partial to the earlier version of it that Minchin recorded. The inflection just sounds better to me, though that could be because it’s what I’m used to hearing. One of the comments on the Youtube channel reads “I don’t get it.  Is he trying to rap?” Ah, kids.

ETA: An interview about the project with the film’s creators and with Minchin can be found here.

Suppositions

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Human nature, by Junior Lopes

Here are a few…let’s call them suppositions I’ve reached in the process of doing a very cultural degree program followed by a very cognitive one:

1. Perspective always matters. None of us are truly objective, because we speak from a perspective by necessity. But by seeking out and being informed by the perspectives of others, we can come closer to objectivity. The truly objective is that which is true or existent independent of our perspectives, however, and cannot be determined by simply adding up subjective views. If nine out of ten people think Beck is the best musical artist ever, that’s useful information. It does not mean that Beck is objectively the best musical artist ever. You can’t vote on the sex of a rabbit, etc.

2. Perspectives often differ as a result of distributions of power. The more powerful often speak more loudly and are easier to hear. Power may come from many sources–sheer numbers, monetary wealth, physical strength, influence, and so on. While the perspectives of the less powerful are important because they can include insights that are simply overlooked by the powerful, they are not right simply by virtue of being relatively powerless. If you added up all of the kinds of non-privilege in the world and found them all existing in one person, that person would not be the wisest human being ever. But he/she would probably have a hell of a story to tell, and it’s one we should hear.

3. There is such a thing as human nature, but we are not biological robots. We are both natured and nurtured. Biological determinism and strict social constructivism are both telling partial stories which are thereby incorrect stories. A person who thinks a trait of the human mind is more biologically determined than you do is not necessarily a biological determinist, and a person who thinks the trait is more shaped by society is not necessarily a strict social constructivist. People who focus on culture tend to fixate on difference while people who focus on cognition tend to focus on commonalities. This does not make them enemies, but collaborators (that is, if they’re willing to be). “Biological” and “neurological” do not mean “permanent,” and “cultural” does not mean “easily/quickly mutable.”

4. Nor do those classifications mean the abdication of responsibility or legitimization of normativity.  Our minds are built by both biological evolution and the culture around us, and saying that a certain trait is adaptive no more confirms that it is good than does saying something is a message sent by society.  Neither evolution nor society have “wants.” They are both complex forces that shape people without purpose. We as individuals take what we’re given and decide what to do with it. We don’t hand responsibility over to either force, but share it with them. Free will– the kind of free will worth wanting– is created in the exchange.

These are all very general “planks” of my thinking about how minds work, but I thought it important to jot them down because holding these suppositions says a lot about what I do or don’t find surprising, likely, or moral. For example, you’re not likely to arouse outrage in me at the idea that rape is an evolutionarily adaptive trait. It might be completely untrue, but the very idea won’t offend me because I know that doesn’t remotely mean that rape is good, prudent, or hard to avoid committing. I’m already very familiar with the idea that war, sexual deception and jealousy, religion, and more biases than could possibly be conceived may well be adaptive, and those possibilities are interesting in terms of their explanatory value but hardly threatening. And to return to Stephen Pinker-think, nothing we discover about the human mind is going to legitimize rape.  If someone claims otherwise, they’re doing science wrong. Or not doing it at all.

Standing with the sluts

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No, that’s not a character’s name from a take-off of Dances With Wolves. It’s a post from the blog of a Californian history and gender studies professor called Hugo Schwyzer, who writes about a great event with an unfortunate catalyst:

This past Sunday, the world’s first “Slut Walk” took place on the chilly streets of Toronto, Canada. The official site is here. The march was organized in response to the infuriating remarks of a police constable, who told a safety workshop at a Canadian university that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized.” (The officer has apologized, but it’s evident that his trogolodytic view of sex and responsibility remains widely held.)  I’ve written many times in support of women’s right to wear what they want in public without fear of harassment or harm. This includes both revealing and concealing clothing; I’ve written in favor of the right to go topless in public and in opposition to bans on headscarves and burqas.  There are so many things that trouble me about the obsession with regulating women’s bodies. But as a man, I am particularly exasperated at the assumption that lies beneath the insistence on modesty: the myth that men cannot control themselves. As feminists often point out, the real “man-haters” are those who promote modest dress for women out of the belief that men lack self-control. There is nothing more contemptuous than the suggestion that those of us with penises and Y chromosomes are prisoners of our biology, liable to rape or commit infidelity at the first sign of cleavage. The myth of male weakness sells us woefully, heartbreakingly short. 

Emphasis in the original. Read the whole thing; it’s worth it.

I really like what Schwyzer does here. He flatly rejects the proposition that it’s the responsibility of women to dress in ways that will not encourage men to harass or attack them, rather than the responsibility of men to control their own behavior. He supports the general right of women to wear whatever they want, for whatever reason they want, which I would call individualist feminism though I know that’s not the only term for it. In this formulation, the particular reasons for why women would want to do something are always secondary or even irrelevant to the importance of their ability to decide for themselves. If they want to go naked, fine. If they want to cover themselves from head to toe, fine. It’s up to them. And thirdly, he points out that this form of misogyny amounts to misandry as well, which is often the case. Men and women have different hormonal balances and to some extent we are at their mercy, but that doesn’t mean that men are physically incapable of restraining themselves in the presence of an attractive woman, and it does the male sex no favors to suggest otherwise. Men like Schwyzer are right to object to that insulting characterization when it is used by others who are trying to dodge culpability by claiming weakness. If that were really the case, the fairest thing to do would be to not allow men out in public because they’re incapable of behaving– not blame women for making themselves the occasion of sin.

What would food be like without artificial colors?

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Cream soda, cherry, apple? Maybe.

The New York Times thinks it knows:

Naked Cheetos would not seem to have much commercial future. Nor might some brands of pickles. The pickling process turns them an unappetizing gray. Dye is responsible for their robust green. Gummi worms without artificial coloring would look, like, well, muddily translucent worms. Jell-O would emerge out of the refrigerator a watery tan.  No doubt the world would be a considerably duller place without artificial food coloring. But might it also be a safer place? The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, asked the government last week to ban artificial coloring because the dyes that are used in some foods might worsen hyperactivity in some children.  “These dyes have no purpose whatsoever other than to sell junk food,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University.

Well, not just junk food…also fruit, soda, cheese, taco shells, bread, cereals, and who knows what else. Probably any and all processed food, actually, which are the vast majority of foods you’ll see at the grocery store, depending on what grocery store you frequent.

“Color is such a crucial part of the eating experience that banning dyes would take much of the pleasure out of life,” said Kantha Shelke, a food chemist and spokeswoman for the Institute of Food Technologists. “Would we really want to ban everything when only a small percentage of us are sensitive?” Indeed, color often defines flavor in taste tests. When tasteless yellow coloring is added to vanilla pudding, consumers say it tastes like banana or lemon pudding. And when mango or lemon flavoring is added to white pudding, most consumers say that it tastes like vanilla pudding. Color creates a psychological expectation for a certain flavor that is often impossible to dislodge, Dr. Shelke said. “Color can actually override the other parts of the eating experience,” she said in an interview. Even so, some food companies have expanded their processed-product offerings to include foods without artificial colorings. You can now buy Kool-Aid Invisible, for instance, and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Organic White Cheddar. Some grocery chains, including Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s, refuse to sell foods with artificial coloring.

I wouldn’t support a wholesale ban on artificial coloring precisely because of this psychological factor, and because the health risk isn’t actually that great at all, but…it would certainly be interesting to see all food products in the country go without artificial coloring for a month. Just so we can all see what we’re eating.  And then when the colors come back, we can decide whether we still want to eat it.

Update

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Terry Jones issues a statement on ChristianNewsWire concerning the riots, claiming that “we should hold Islam accountable.” He comments under the name “Dr. Terry Jones.” Doctor of what? I have no idea. The Wikipedia entry on the Dover World Outreach Center says that “Jones received no academic degree in theology but was given an honorary degree from the unaccredited California Graduate School of Theology in 1983, which now seeks to disassociate itself from him.”

Lindsey Graham gives an interview with the National Review Online basically saying that he’s not actually that fond of this whole “freedom of speech” thing, and he regrets that it doesn’t allow us to hold people accountable for what they say.

Gretchen starts to wonder if Jones and Graham get their notions of accountability from the same place, and if so how to keep hers away from it.

ETA: Also, Glenn Greenwald socks Graham and Reid but good, noting that

there is an extreme irony in Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham, of all people, suddenly worrying about actions that trigger anger and violence in the Muslim world. These two Senators, after all, have supported virtually every one of America’s actions which have triggered vastly more anti-American anger, vengeance and violence in the Muslim world than anything Pastor Jones could dream of spawning — from the attack on Iraq to the decade-long occupation of Afghanistan to blind support for Israel to the ongoing camp at Guantanamo. To support his demand for Congressional action against Pastor Jones, Graham has the audacity to cite Gen. Petraeus, who condemned the Koran burning on the ground that it would endanger American troops: “General Petreaus understand better than anybody else in America what happens when something like this is done in our country and he was right to condemn it.” But here’s something else Gen. Petraeus said about what triggers violence against Americans and helps the Enemy:

Closing the military prison at Guantanamo Bay would purge the U.S. of a symbol used by enemies to divide the nation, the head of the U.S. Central Command said Friday. Army Gen. David Petraeus said the U.S. military is “beat around the head and shoulders” with images of detainees held in Guantanamo.

On a previous occasion, Gen. Petraeus said: “Gitmo has caused us problems, there’s no question about it. I oversee a region in which the existence of Gitmo has indeed been used by the enemy against us.” By publicly demanding that Guantanamo detainees not be tried in the U.S., Reid played a major role in preventing closure of that camp, while Graham has been a leading advocate of the indefenite detention regime that made the camp so controversial and which itself spawns substantial anti-American violence in Afghanistan. Reid and Graham both voted for the attack on Iraq. Reid and Graham continue to be outspoken supporters of the war in Afghanistan. Both Senators are blind supporters of Israel, including its most heinous acts. If they’re looking for targets to punish whose ideas have triggered violence and anti-American rage in the Muslim world, they should look in the mirror.

Will you quit making it about freedom of speech?

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No, I won’t. Not when people in positions of power to do so, such as Senators Harry Reid and Lindsey Graham, suggest that perhaps they ought to take some sort of action against people like Terry Jones and his congregation for their blasphemy:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says congressional lawmakers are discussing taking some action in response to the Koran burnings of a Tennessee pastor that led to killings at the U.N. facility in Afghanistan and sparked protests across the Middle East, Politico reports.  “Ten to 20 people have been killed,” Reid said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “We’ll take a look at this of course. As to whether we need hearings or not, I don’t know.”  Sen. Lindsey Graham said Congress might need to explore the need to limit some forms of freedom of speech, in light of Tennessee pastor Terry Jones’ Quran burning, and how such actions result in enabling U.S. enemies.  “I wish we could find a way to hold people accountable. Free speech is a great idea, but we’re in a war,” Graham told CBS’ Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” Sunday.

Andrew Sullivan notes:

And there you have a classic example of how warfare abroad can curtail liberties at home. Koran burning is obviously a disgusting act of disrespect and incivility. But that very kind of act is what the First Amendment is designed to protect. And we should also remember that this war has no end, and that therefore the liberties taken away by wartime are permanently taken away.

Afghans attack U.N. building, murder workers and each other after Qur’an burning

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Cross-posted from State of Formation.

Remember Terry Jones? Not the guy from Monty Python, but the Florida pastor who threatened to burn copies of the Qur’an last August in response to the building of the Cordoba House Islamic cultural center a few blocks away from where the World Trade Center used to stand? And the president actually got on television to ask him not to do it? And Jones responded that he wouldn’t, not ever?

He finally got around to burning a Qur’an about a week ago. Well, another pastor actually did it but Jones “supervised,” during a mock trial of the text in which it was apparently found guilty. And nobody much cared…until some angry mullahs in Afghanistan encouraged a crowd of 20,000 Muslims to “avenge” the burning. Which they did on Friday, by attacking a United Nations compound in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, killing at least twelve people, none of whom were American. Seven of them were United Nations workers from European countries, and five were Afghani. The crowd had attacked the United Nations building because they had been unable to find any Americans on which to vent their anger.

Mr. Jones, the Florida pastor, caused an international uproar by threatening to burn the Koran last year on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. Among others, the overall commander of forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus, had warned at that time that such an action could provoke violence in Afghanistan and could endanger American troops. Mr. Jones subsequently promised not to burn a Koran, but he nonetheless presided over a mock trial and then the burning of the Koran at his small church in Gainesville, Fla., on March 20, with only 30 worshipers attending.

The act drew little response worldwide, but provoked angry condemnation in this region, where it was reported in the local media and where anti-American sentiment already runs high. Last week, President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan condemned the burning in an address before Parliament, and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Thursday called on the United States to bring those responsible for the Koran burning to justice.

A prominent Afghan cleric, Mullah Qyamudin Kashaf, the acting head of the influential Ulema Council of Afghanistan and a Karzai appointee, also called for American authorities to arrest and try Mr. Jones in the Koran burning.

The Ulema Council recently met to discuss the Koran burning, Mullah Kashaf said in a telephone interview. “We expressed our deep concerns about this act, and we were expecting the violence that we are witnessing now,” he said. “Unless they try him and give him the highest possible punishment, we will witness violence and protests not only in Afghanistan but in the entire world.

Mr. Jones was unrepentant. “We must hold these countries and people accountable for what they have done as well as for any excuses they may use to promote their terrorist activities,” he said in a statement. “Islam is not a religion of peace. It is time that we call these people to accountability.”

Do I need to list off all of the absurd elements in this situation? Maybe I do:

  1. Both sides were blaming enormous groups for the actions of individuals. In Jones’ case it was the entirety of Islam for the acts of some terrorists; in the mob’s case it was the entirety of America for the acts of a small congregation of loony Americans. And in the mob’s case they not only decided to punish the group as a whole, but couldn’t even be bothered to make sure that the people they attacked were even members of it or that the property they destroyed was owned by members of it.
  2. Had the three mullahs in Mazari-i-Sharif not encouraged people to take to the streets and commit murder, they almost certainly would not have done so. Just as with the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammad, none of this destruction would have happened had it not been for mullahs stirring up the anger of Muslims.
  3. And yet, Mullah Kashaf holds Jones responsible. He, along with President Karzai, want the United States to bring Jones to justice for doing something that is perfectly legal here. Jones burnt a book in another country; the mullahs actively incited violence in the angry mob standing before them. Obviously, Jones is the guilty party.

Let’s be clear on one thing– in no sense do I have to condone Jones’ ideology, his hatred of Muslims, or his decision to burn a copy of their sacred text in order to hold the Afghani mullahs and rioters 100% responsible for what they did.

They reacted violently in response to desecration of a symbol, a reaction to which Americans are not immune (as can be seen in the effort every couple of years to ban burning of the flag) but which for the most part we have rightly condemned as a fundamentally unacceptable response. Burning a sacred text is not shouting “Fire” falsely in a crowded theater; it is not incitement to violence; it is not a violation of anyone’s property rights provided the copy you burn is your own. It is Constitutionally protected free speech in America, something that Afghanistan might want to try.

There just might be fewer violent outbursts if their own government decided that the destruction of sacred symbols is not desirable but also doesn’t justify attacking anyone or anything.

Afghanistan, I’m sorry you are a country in which is considered okay to react to blasphemy in this way.  But that’s not Jones’s fault– it is, ironically, part of what he was complaining about. He went wrong by blaming Islam as a whole, but it is the fault of specific Muslims that this happened. Just as with the Danish cartoons, reacting by wishing death on an entire country and taking to the streets to kill people and burn down buildings kind of puts the lie to that “religion of peace” thing.

I’ve written before about the heckler’s veto— the attempt to convince someone not to do something by threatening that you will throw a fit about it. In the interests of preventing violence, otherwise decent people react to these threats by encouraging the speaker to not say whatever he or she was going to say. It’s a means of transferring blame for violent behavior away from the actual violent person, and nobody should condone it. I was happy to see that Obama’s comment on the U.N. attacks did not mention Terry Jones or his church at all:

In Washington, President Obama issued a statement strongly condemning the violence against United Nations workers. “Their work is essential to building a stronger Afghanistan for the benefit of all its citizens,” he said. “We stress the importance of calm and urge all parties to reject violence.” The statement made no reference to the Florida church or the Koran burning.

It would have been better, of course, for the president to flatly reject any and all suggestions that Jones should be punished by his government for anything, and to affirm that desecration of religious symbols should be legal everywhere and reacted to with displeased words at most. But I probably would’ve fainted dead away if he’d said that.

Addendum: The rioting continues today, with a current estimated toll of 20 dead and more than 80 injured.  The top U.N. envoy in Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, said “I don’t think we should be blaming any Afghan. We should blame the person who produced the news– the one who burned the Quran.” Being strongly opposed to the initial invasion as well as our current occupation of Afghanistan, I’m certainly not overlooking the possibility that this rioting is simply a sign of the camel’s back having been broken and general anti-American sentiment having come to a head. That very well might be the case. Nevertheless, it’s still horrifying that the Qur’an burning has been taken as endorsed by the entirety of the U.S. and that it is viewed as legitimizing this kind of reaction. Not only does Terry Jones’s church not speak for anyone but themselves, but they certainly aren’t occupying Afghanistan.

 

Quote of the day

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From a day long past:

“It was at the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement…What I owe, even intellectually, to her, is in its detail, almost infinite…I have often received praise, which in my own right I only partially deserve, for the greater practicality which is supposed to be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers who have been equally addicted to large generalizations. The writings in which this quality has been observed, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion of two.” -Philosopher John Stuart Mill on his “most valuable friend,” wife Harriet Parker

Hat tip to The Art of Manliness

A refusal to muddy the water

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PZ Myers has a more visceral response to the rioting in Afghanistan, entitled “Shades of gray.” I won’t quote it, because it really should be read in full. What I appreciate most is that he identifies motivations such as honor and vengeance that obscure the fact that humans are murdering other humans in cold blood. It’s what disturbs me about seeing a New York Times headline that reads “Afghans Avenge Florida Koran Burning.” No, they’re not. To avenge is to retaliate for harm done to oneself or to loved ones by striking back against those who caused it. Myers would not consider even that acceptable, but it is not what is happening here.

The devil in Mr. Jones

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I’m not sure it’s actually worthwhile to delve too deeply into the mind of Terry Jones. He’s far from the only Islamophobe in America, and his reasoning behind the Qur’an burning wouldn’t matter too much even if it were abundantly clear– which it isn’t. A valid argument can be made that paying any more attention to him than is absolutely necessary is part of the problem, since people can’t get outraged about that of which they’re unaware in the first place. Still, since my blog is about as far from mainstream media attention as you can get, I’ll note a few things about him.

The New York Times, which certainly is mainstream media, did a profile on Jones yesterday describing him as nearly broke, unrepentant, and disliked by his community in Gainesville to the extent that he’s contemplating moving:

“It was intended to stir the pot; if you don’t shake the boat, everyone will stay in their complacency,” Mr. Jones said in an interview at his office in the Dove World Outreach Center. “Emotionally, it’s not all that easy. People have tried to make us responsible for the people who are killed. It’s unfair and somewhat damaging.” . . . “Did our action provoke them?” the pastor asked. “Of course. Is it a provocation that can be justified? Is it a provocation that should lead to death? When lawyers provoke me, when banks provoke me, when reporters provoke me, I can’t kill them. That would not fly.” Mr. Jones, 59, with his white walrus moustache, craggy face and basso profundo voice, seems like a man from a different time. Sitting at his desk in his mostly unadorned office, he keeps a Bible in a worn brown leather cover by his side and a “Braveheart” poster within sight. Both, he said, provide spiritual sustenance for the mission at hand: Spreading the word that Islam and the Koran are instruments of “violence, death and terrorism.” In recent weeks, Mr. Jones said, he had received 300 death threats, mostly via e-mail and telephone, and had been told by the F.B.I. that there was a $2.4 million contract on his life.

The article does not note something discussed last year when Jones initially threatened to celebrate National Burn a Koran Day, which is that he moved to Florida originally from Cologne, Germany, where he had founded the Christian Community of Cologne in 1982.  This Pentecostal church still exists, but Jones was kicked out for reasons which apparently had a lot to do with his personality and leadership. Der Spiegel reported:

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. Terry Jones used his powers of persuasion to expand the congregation. By the end, Schäfer estimates, it numbered between 800 and 1,000 people. They had to work in the so-called “Lisa Jones Houses,” charitable institutions named after his first wife who has since died, under very poor conditions. Jones became increasingly radical as the years went by, former associates say. At one point he wanted to help a homosexual member to “pray away his sins.” Later he began to increasingly target Islam in his sermons. A congregation member reported that some members were afraid to attend services because they expected to be attacked by Muslims. “Terry Jones has a talent for finding topical social issues and seizing on them for his own cause,” says Schäfer. By the end of 2007, the community had had enough. Members confronted him and tried to change the direction of the church. But Terry Jones refused to make changes, they say. In the end, Jones, his wife and their fellow preachers were expelled from the church and he moved back to the US. “The community imploded,” says Schäfer. It only has some 80 active members today.

The article in the Guardian contains this confusing passage:

After Jones’s dismissal, a new dispute broke out over allegations that he owed the community a five-figure sum of money, Thomas Müller, a community member, told regional newspaper Der Westen. Jones eventually repaid the money, Müller said. The paper said Jones arrived in Cologne at the behest of the US businessman Donald Northrup, the founder of the Dove World Outreach Centre that Jones now leads, in order to establish a branch of the Community of Gainesville.     

So…a US businessman sent Jones to Cologne, from which he was later evicted due to being radical and abusive, so that he could establish a new church in Gainesville Florida? What?  According to Wikipedia,

The Dove World Outreach Center was founded in 1985 by Donald O. Northrup, his wife Delores, and co-pastor Richard H. Wright. The church was initially a branch of the now defunct Maranatha Campus Ministries. Northrup remained with Dove World from its inception until he died in 1996. Dennis Watson then took over as pastor, with Northrop’s wife, Dolores, continuing as Woman’s Pastor until 2004. Between 2001 and 2008, Jones and his wife served as the part-time pastors of the Florida church, and as heads of a church in Cologne, Germany; by 2004 they were senior part-time pastors of Dove World, shuttling back and forth to Germany. Jones assumed full-time duties at Dove World in 2008 after his German church was closed. Delores Northrup subsequently left Dove World, telling a reporter who contacted her regarding Jones’ 2010 proposed Koran burning, “I was not happy with the program. I think this is completely wrong”.In 2004, when Jones took over as senior pastor of Dove World, it had approximately 100 members; by September 2010 it was said to have 50 members, with about 30 members reportedly attending services. As of September 2010, Wayne Sapp was serving as assistant pastor, with Jones’ son serving as youth minister. Associate pastors are ordained within the church by other pastors, with no classes or specific qualifications required. 

An article in the Gainesville Sun substantiates much of this, except that it claims the Dove Outreach Center was founded in 1986, and describes Northrup’s wife’s name as “Elsie.” According to the Sun,

[Terry Jones’s daughter] Emma Jones grew up hearing that, after arriving in Germany in 1981, her father traveled to Cologne and received a message from God to found a church.  For the next two-plus decades, the Jones family – Terry, Lisa, Emma, Jenny and Luke – lived and worked for Terry Jones’ church in Cologne, keeping close contact with its Gainesville origins.  

It goes on to report that the Cologne church disbanded when Jones decamped in 2008, leaving his daughter Emma in Cologne with “nothing. I had no apartment, no car, no income.” About the same time Terry Jones and his wife Sylvia left Cologne, a fledgling church in New Orleans also closed.

What to make of all of this?  Well, my armchair psychologist’s opinion would be that Terry Jones is a bit unhinged. He also seems to have more in common with Fred Phelps than just their shared status as provocateurs. Jones’s views of Islam are as much representative of America as are Phelps’s views of homosexuality and the military.  Both recruited their families to the cause claiming that they were directly serving God. Both are reported to be abusive to children.  Both have been accused of stirring up outrage for the specific purpose of making money. Both receive the attention of the world simply because they have become adept at knowing precisely where to poke it.  I would be interested to know exactly what prompted Northrup to become Jones’s benefactor originally, what the initial goal was, but regardless it seems safe to say that Jones from has diverged from it by this point.  For all we know, had things gone a bit differently Jones could have become another Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson. As it is, he’s just an apparently delusional preacher looking for attention. Look away, America. Look away.