Controversial pastor Terry Jones has burned copies of the Koran and a depiction of the prophet Mohammed to protest the imprisonment in Iran of ‘Christian’ clergyman Youcef Nadarkhani — a follower of a cult of Christianity.

The tiny church headed by Jones is considered a hate group.

When Don Northrup founded Dove World Outreach Center in 1985, his widow says he never envisioned it becoming what it is today.

Then, it was a growing evangelical church with a congregation of almost 200 members. Now, a handful of people attend services in which ministers carry handguns and rail against Islam.

But is Terry Jones’ tiny group of followers a ‘cult’?

Un-Christian behavior on the part of an attention-seeking ‘pastor’ and his 30-person fringe church in Gainsville, Florida, has led Muslim extremists in Afghanistan to savagely murder innocent people.

Terry Jones, the 58-year-old pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center, presided over what he called an “International Judge the Koran Day” on March 20, in which he supervised the burning of Islam’s holy book in front of some 50 people.

Florida Pastor Terry Jones, whose threat to burn Islam’s holy book on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks last year provoked widespread condemnation, has been banned from visiting Britain, Reuters reports.

The controversial Florida pastor who threatened to burn Korans on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks is expected to be billed at least $200,000 by the city of Gainesville for costs associated with the stunt.

Pastor Terry Jones, who got international attention with his on-again, off-again plan to burn 200 copies of Islam’s holiest book, said the costs would essentially bankrupt his 50-member church, the Dove World Outreach Center.

Jones, 58, vowed to fight the security bill in court and said he plans to move his church to Tampa because of what he called a lack of support in Gainesville.

The maverick preacher eventually called off his protest after increasing pressure from Washington and beyond.

The ‘pastor’ — a misnomer in this case — should spend more time with his Bible (where among other things he could have learned something about counting the cost before starting a project) and less time acting foolishly.

In the Washington Post Jim Wallis relates the story behind Pastor Terry Jones’s change of heart.

The estranged daughter of Terry Jones, the U.S. pastor who has threatened to burn copies of the Koran, believes he has gone mad and needs help, she said in a German media interview conducted on Friday, Reuters reports.

She described how a Christian community her father spent years building in Cologne, Germany was at first Bible-orientated but later changed. After leaving the community aged 17, Emma Jones said she returned in 2005 to find it had become sect-like.

“I saw that my father preached and did things that I didn’t find biblical at all. He demanded total allegiance to himself and his second wife,” she said. His first wife, her mother, died in 1996.

“That was real religious delusion I saw,” she added. “Typical evidence of a sect.”

Emma Jones said the community kicked out her father in 2008, when he returned to the United States.