The story was making the rounds of the Internet. Probably still is. One of the latest versions carried the subject line “MUSLIMS ATTACK CHURCH OF CHRIST IN LUBBOCK.” That’s the kind of story that will get people’s attention. Images of robed Middle Easterners bursting into a church building in the heart of the Bible Belt. Religious persecution. A hint of what is sure to come with all that is going on in the U.S. today.

There were three minor problems with the account of this incident:

1. The attack didn’t happen in Lubbock.
2. It wasn’t a church of Christ that was attacked.
3. The attackers weren’t Muslim.

What actually happened was three convicts decided to disrupt a church service in a prison. It wasn’t a religious act, nor a political one. It was the act of a few prison malcontents; hardly an unusual happening. It scared some of the Christians and they jumped to conclusions about those that interfered with the assembly.

There is an e-mail going around written by Wayne Horton with an accurate account of what happened. It reads, in part:

I got this email last week. The prison about which they speak is the Price Daniel Unit in Snyder. I was there in the late 90s as their Chaplain. I am the one who recruited the men who go there form Greenlawn. They are good men. But they made a mistake.  The guys who did that were NOT MUSLIM. They were three guys from medium custody and they just came to cause trouble.  It frightened the Green Lawn guys  because they’d never seen that behavior before.
The Greenlawn elder who wrote the email has apologized to the prison officials and the Muslim prison community. I repeat these guys were not Muslims.
There is so much fear among Christians of the Muslims, this is not going to help. Please contact everyone you’ve sent this to and tell them the truth. Call Greenlawn and speak to Jack Cummings. He will tell you it was NOT muslims.
A Volunteer is the safest person on a prison compound. This was just a bad-acting medium custody trouble-maker. Every other inmate in that Chapel would have protected Jack and the other volunteers.
Now, in case anybody wants to accuse me of trying to protect Muslims, I’m not.  I believe – same as you – that it is by the name of Jesus ONLY that men are saved and no muslim has trusted Jesus so no Muslim is saved.
We just don’t need any more animosity between us.  We need to be able to talk and study honestly with them.

My guess is that it won’t be passed around nearly as much as the inaccurate story. People rarely put the same effort into spreading the truth as they do in spreading mistruth.

So here’s my suggestion. If you received this story or if you receive it in the next few days, contact the person who sent it and ask them if they’ve read the corrected version. If not, share it with them and ask them to send it to whomever sent them the misleading one. And ask them to send the correction to everyone they sent the false story to.

I don’t have any illusions of actually stopping this story. It will probably show up in sermons and blogs for years to come. But maybe, just maybe, we can remind people to be responsible with what they forward. If you discover its not true, I think you have a moral obligation to send out a retraction/correction. As Christians, we need to stand for truth.