About the Author: Laurie Patton
Laurie L. Patton is Charles Howard Candler Professor of Religions at Emory University, and is currently completing a book about religious protests of scholarly books in the late twentieth century.
Dove World Outreach pastor Terry Jones’ threatened Qur’an-burning has received a disproportionate amount of media attention, including hand wringing about whether there should be media attention given to small time pastors who use such tactics precisely to gain such media attention. And yet the lightning speed at which the threat, the negotiations, and the withdrawal of the threat occurred suggests another level of complexity to the iconography of the book which may be new.
