Leaders of large evangelical organizations denounce small church publicity stunt

Christianity Today reports on the unified outrage of "evangelical leaders" over a plan by the Dove Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida to commemorate 9/11 by burning copies of the Qu'ran. The plan has raised the ire of some of evangelicalism's heaviest hitters, including Leith Anderson, president of the National Association of Evangelicals and Richard Land, director of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The National Association for Evangelicals released a statement Thursday urging the church, which averages 50 attendees each Sunday, to call off the event.

"It sounds like the proposed Qu'ran burning is rooted in revenge," said NAE president Leith Anderson. "The most powerful statement by the organizers of the planned September 11th bonfire would be to call it off in the name and love of Jesus Christ."

"I think it is appalling, disgusting, and brainless," said Richard Land, director of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. "I think that those of us who find what they are doing abhorrent should say so, and say so publicly and often."

The Southern Baptist Convention, despite some recent decline, is still the largest Protestant body in America. The National Association of Evangelicals represents over 40 denominations and thousands of local churches. But note that the church which is causing so much consternation among leaders of these august bodies "averages 50 attendees each Sunday." It doesn't sound like the Dove Outreach Center is doing much in the area of, well, outreach. But it does appear its pastor is quite adept at calling attention to himself and his flock, much like the wandering weirdos of the Phelps Family Chapel, a.k.a. Westboro Baptist Church, which might draw 50 attendees on that rare Sunday when Fred's long lost cousins are in town for the family reunion.

But let's be serious here. Why should the leading lights of the supposed upper echelon of the evangelical community concern themselves with the cheap publicity stunts of small fringe congregations? Who would have known about this "apalling, disgusting, and brainless" exercise in uncharitable behavior if the big guns hadn't taken aim at it?