I was about to title this "when is a typo more than a typo", when I suddenly realized that it really wasn't a typo, it was a Mondegreen. (You remember Mondegreens, don't you?) Here's the situation.
Newsweek recently published a correction to their February 6th article, in which they had (mis)-quoted Jerry Falwell as promoting "assault ministry". Actually, Falwell was referring to Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth", and was promoting a salt ministry. I understand that the reporter might have honestly not heard or understood what he really said, but why didn't he ask? Why not check before printing something so inflammatory?
I suspect that the answer lies in expectations. Our culture expects evangelists to be offensive and confrontational, so "assault ministry" sounded plausible to them. It's hard to know what to say about this. Certainly we see prophets in the Bible who weren't overly concerned with what people thought of them, so I wouldn't want to make some sort of rule that a Christian should never offend anyone. Yet too often we see examples of Christians who are being unnecessarily confrontational, as if their purpose in life is to argue and criticize, rather than to bring light into a dark world.
It often boils down to the problem of how to speak the truth in love. I find that it is easy to do one (truth) or the other (love), but is almost impossible to speak both -- truth and love at the same time.
The mis-hearing of Jerry Falwell probably doesn't have as much to do with him personally, as it does with the general impressions people have concerning Christians (at least prominent ones). I suspect that if we tried harder to make sure our words of truth were tempered by a heart of love, the world around us might not assume that "assault ministry" is a normal Christian principle!
