At first, inviting Operation Save America to Jackson for an anti-abortion protest sounded like a good thing to the folks at the Making Jesus Real Church. After all, Operation Save America is a Christian group, right? And they're on an important mission to save souls and save babies, right? And since both they and the Making Jesus Real Church both oppose abortion, the two groups should have a lot in common, right?
Wrong.
At first, the "Gentle Revolution" went pretty much as expected. Operation Save America camped out across the street from Mississippi's only remaining abortion clinic. They waved around their six-foot by eight-foot posters of aborted fetuses. They screamed frantic prayers into electronic bullhorns. (Though, on at least one day, they got up a bit late, and didn't arrive until after the clinic had seen its last patient.) They planned to burn Supreme Court rulings on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol. (They didn't, though, because they failed to get the proper permits).
And then, the good Christian folks at Operation Save America just went right off the deep end. Having decided their staged funeral for a preserved fetus wasn't grabbing enough headlines, they ripped up and burned a Quran. For an encore, they destroyed a gay pride flag.
To their credit, when the people at Making Jesus Real Church got wind of the festivities going on in their church parking lot, they tossed Operation Save America out on its ear. "They told me they were going to burn Supreme Court rulings about abortion," the church's pastor, Sino Agueze said. "If they told me they would burn the Quran, I would have told them not to burn it." (Source)
Along with many others in the Jackson metro area, Agueze and other members of the Making Jesus Real Church seemed shocked by Operation Save America's actions. But what, exactly, did they expect?
Like many fundamentalists, members of Operation Save America suffer from a dangerous form of spiritual schizophrenia. On one hand, they claim to celebrate America's liberty; on the other, they fight against the freedom of religion that liberty entails. On one hand, they talk a lot about their desperate love for the unborn; on the other, they seem to have a great deal of hatred and bile to direct toward adults.
Fundamentalism justifies hateful actions in the name of love. It ignores our freedom in Christ, seeking instead to bind its beliefs on others. It positions physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse as ministry. It stirs up frenzied emotionalism and dismisses rational thought. In short: it's the fast path from Christian to Crazy.
I'm glad to hear that the people at the Making Jesus Real Church were taken aback by Operation Save America's actions. Perhaps they and other Christian fundamentalists, having glimpsed the logical extension of their own particularly poisonous brand of faith, will remember this lesson.
Perhaps they will finally understand that striking out at the faith and lives of others does not, in any way, help make Jesus real.
