Eric Reitan turns the Terry Jones debacle into a lesson on religious sacrifice:

[A]t least one theologianS. Mark Heimhas taken up Girardian themes to argue that the crucifixion is best understood as a potent repudiation of sacrificial scapegoating... If Heim is right about this, then Jones and Phelps and their respective congregations are symbolically enacting the very thing that the passion stories central to Christianity were intended to repudiate. Where they are called to see the crucified Christ in those who are being symbolically burned at the stake, they instead see a righteous sacrifice to God. Where they are called to identify with the victim of sacrificial scapegoating, they become the practitioners.