(RNS) There’s always been a tiny minority of Christians who have been big on bonfires, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that a small church in Gainesville, Fla., plans to mark the 9/11 anniversary by burning copies of the Quran because they think it’s “evil.”

I remember when Beatles albums were burned in church parking lots across the South in the 1960s after John Lennon quipped that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. Oddly, the idea of the inferno started as a satirical joke on a radio station in Birmingham, Ala., and was fanned into flames by fearful fundamentalists making up in fervor what they lacked in humor.

More recently, dozens of churches burned “Harry Potter” books, among them Christ Community Church in Alamogordo, N.M., where Pastor Jack Brock called the books “a masterpiece of satanic deception.” Without a hint of irony, church members sang “Amazing Grace” as they threw the Potter books into the fire. One pastor admitted that he hadn’t read the book, but said the cover alone promotes wizardry.

So much for not judging a book by its cover, I guess.

Book burnings go way back in history, of course, and it isn’t only Christians who burn them.

One of the great repositories of learning, the Royal Library in Alexandria, Egypt, with its 40,000 mostly irreplaceable volumes, was destroyed — either accidentally by Julius Caesar, or intentionally by Omar, the Second Caliph of Islam (historians disagree).

The Bible has been the target of burning on numerous occasions, most famously when church bureaucrats burned all but two copies of William Tyndale’s 1525 English translation of the New Testament.

Burning cultural artifacts is not new, but it is troubling, which brings me back to the idea of burning the Quran.

President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, have already spoken out against the burning for military reasons, saying it will offend Muslims and could put U.S. lives at risk. I’d like to speak out for reasons of basic human decency, which happen also to be rooted in the Christian faith.

Properly understood, Christianity is based on love and reason, not intimidation and fear. Jesus and the Apostle Paul taught that when confronted with ideas contrary to our own, we should earn the right to be heard through our exemplary behavior. Then, the Apostle Peter adds, we should be prepared to reasonably explain our honorable, hopeful behavior.

Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, was born in the Middle East, a region known for its warm hospitality. The scriptures of all three traditions teach kindness and hospitality towards strangers. The fact that some misguided Islamic terrorists fail at their own religion does not justify a tit-for-tat failure on our part.

Fundamentalists are committed to a literal adherence to their holy books, and this small group in Florida believes they are following a biblical precedent for their book burning. They cite Acts 19, which they say condones it. It doesn’t.

Read it for yourself: “A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly.” In this story, former practitioners of sorcery were burning their own books as a voluntary acknowledgment of their change of mind and heart. It was not a symbolic or hostile act aimed at anybody else.

This fringe group of Christians in Florida is ready to burn the Quran because some Islamic radicals have distorted their Islamic text, and they are basing their act on a complete misreading of their own Christian text.

For Americans, the case against burning sacred texts is even clearer. While the Bill of Rights preserves the right to free speech — including fringe fundamentalists in Florida — it also protects the rights of groups to hold their own beliefs and publish materials advancing them. Because religion had historically enflamed passions, the founders went out of their way to advocate freedom of, and from, religion.

Before we were religious beings, we were human beings and there is a piece of advice on human decency embodied by all religions in every age. Jesus put it this way: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I don’t want Muslims burning my Bible, and they wouldn’t want me to burn their Quran — so I won’t.

(Dick Staub is author of the just-released “About You: Fully Human and Fully Alive” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)