Thursday, September 16, 2010! Happy early Constitution Day, softcore porn for Christine O’Donnell, and Ohio’s corrupt incompetence.

Just when we think we’ve heard all of the disgusting information about Terry Jones…

If you are a pastor, please encourage your congregation to be tolerant and respectful of Muslims. If you are a church member, please encourage your pastor to speak boldly about these things. A lot of Christians are confused and are looking to their trusted leaders for guidance. If the reasonable clergy stays silent, the only message people will hear from Christians will be the ones promoting hate and bigotry.

In recent posts, I have been examining various real estate transactions and IRS filings involving Dove Charismatic Ministries, Inc. and Terry Jones, pastor of the affiliated Dove World Outreach Center. As the organizer of various hate campaigns promoting Islamophobia or homophobia, Jones has actively focused significant attention on himself and his church. In this post, I will provide the details from an extensive search of public records relating to several of the business entities involving Jones and Dove World, assembling all of the information into a timeline such as those for which Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel is known.

The overall impression from the amassed data is that, at the very least, Jones and Dove World have been extremely sloppy in mixing the use of the Dove World site for the non-profit church activities and the for profit businesses. Jones has claimed that these businesses donate a portion of their proceeds back into the church to keep it operational. If keeping the church operational were the purpose of the private businesses, however, why aren’t those operations carried out under the non-profit structure of the church? If all of the properties had been purchased in the church’s name and all of the other business were also carried out by the church, with the cash flow clearly documented in up-to-date Form 990′s filed by Dove Charismatic Ministries, Inc., there would be no reason for suspicion. By mixing the church and private businesses, Jones has created an environment in which it appears that he and the other officers of the businesses can enrich themselves partly through the tax status and volunteer labor status conferred by the church.

A large mortgage taken out in 2006 on the Dove World Outreach property — the church at which Pastor Terry Jones threatened to burn a Koran — was mis-represented in the IRS Form 990 filed for that year. The executed mortgage agreement filed with the Alachua County Clerk of Court indicates the mortgage was for $285,000; a mortgage with the same agreement date with the same bank was reported on the Form 990 as being only for $113,885. This sizable disparity follows my investigation last week into a large number of real estate transactions centering on Terry Jones and Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida.

If we felt some solidarity with other victims of al Qaeda, we wouldn’t hate Muslims so much. However others don’t annually cry out about the pain in public memorials so concerned Americans need to dig to get them to talk about it for us to understand.

There is a power in the unity that we all shared when we all grieved and were hurt by September 11th. But, the problem is that unity inevitably has grown into a unity of fear when what Americans really need is a unity of reconciliation. There is a need for Americans to find the courage to not forget but forgive. And, unfortunately, there is still an amount of reflection needed because this nation is still somewhere between anger and depression when it comes to handling the grief experienced.

It’s time for those who are trying to use the “Mosque Controversy” as a foil or counterargument to the public concern with Preacher Jones’ recklessness to realize the folly of their position and get on the right side of the issue once and for all.

A religious soap opera is unfolding before the world’s eyes. Dr. Terry Jones, the noxious pastor from Gainesville, Florida who had planned the festive International Burn-A-Koran Day for September 11th has called off the book burning event, according to news sources like USA Today. Imam Muhammed Musri apparently offered Dr. Jones a deal if he would back down.

An article in Thursday’s Gainesville Sun states that Terry Jones (who just cancelled his planned burning of the Quran) owns a number of properties in the Gainesville area, but the article did not have financing information on the properties. I have searched the public records in Alachua County and found mortgage records that are a close match to the information the Sun produced on purchase records. In addition, I found mortgage records on the Dove World Outreach church property itself that show a large mortgage being taken out on the church property just 27 days before the first residential property was mortgaged in Jones’ name. These records create the impression that Jones used the mortgage of church property to fuel the purchase of a large amount of residential property in his own name.