“My grandparents were founding members of Dove. They sold their wedding rings to buy the property,” said Shane Butcher, 28.
After Jones took over the church in 2001, things started to change. Butcher recalls spending 60 hours a week scouring thrift stores for furniture to resell on eBay. His parents became so embittered by what Jones was doing to the church that they left in 2005.
(Phil Sandlin/AP) - Former parishioners say the Rev. Terry Jones, shown here in September, forced church members to cut off contact with family members who left the church.
“It was full of the Holy Spirit,” said his mother, Patty Butcher, “and it became a laughingstock.”
But even after his parents left, Shane Butcher remained at the church, severing ties with his family. “I felt like that’s where God wanted me to be,” he said.
His family wondered whether they had lost him forever. “It was painful to see my son under someone’s control like that,” said his mother, a former church secretary.
It took Shane two years to work up the strength to confront Jones’s wife, Sylvia. “All we do is make you money,” he told her before walking out of the church.
Within days, his friends and housemates did to Butcher what he had done to his parents: They cut him off.
The insular world that Jones has created for his followers in Gainesville is reminiscent of his previous enterprise, the Christian Community of Cologne in Germany.
During three decades as a missionary there, he recruited nearly 1,000 churchgoers, according to Pro, a Christian magazine in Germany that interviewed several former members for an article published in September. In Cologne, the article said, Jones was no longer spreading the Gospel so much as “creating his own empire.”
Many Gainesville congregants began leaving Dove after Jones launched his much-publicized crusade against Islam. He held a mock trial of the Koran on March 20 for “crimes against humanity.” Video footage of the holy book being soaked in kerosene and set ablaze in a portable fire pit has sparked three days of protests in Afghanistan, leaving at least 20 dead and dozens injured.
Church services Sunday — the first since the Afghan protests — drew only 14 people.
Some churchgoers wore a Dove academy uniform embroidered with the church’s name. They belted lyrics, alternating between the biblical and the patriotic, with preteen boys on drums and guitar. Outside, one member was on security detail.
When he took the pulpit, Jones likened himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and then to Joshua leading his followers across the Jordan River.
Burning the Koran was necessary, he said, even if it led to a dozen deaths, because it was a part of defending the Gospel. It wasn’t easy, and it’s something the church should be proud of, he said.
“When they were crossing the Jordan, they put their lives on the line,” he said.
“There’s only one way to stop me,” Jones told his followers, “and that’s to kill me.”
Staff writers Annie Gowen and Michelle Boorstein and research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.
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