The Faith-Based Militia: When is Terrorism `Christian'?

[Joanne98]

Many challenges face those who think about, analyze and report on the Religious Right (let alone those who want to take appropriate political action.) One problem is acquiring some foundational knowledge. Another is finding generally agreed upon terms and definitions of those terms. These matters are running themes at Talk to Action -- where we have taken the view from the beginning, that labeling, demonization and epithets are poor and often counterproductive substitutes for terms that allow for actual discussion and help us all to better understand the Religious Right in its many, and ever evolving, factions, leaders, ideologies and so on.
Chip Berlet and I currently have essays up at Religion Dispatches that delve into aspects of questions of terminology raised by the arrest and indictment of the Hutaree Militia. Our essays are titled, respectively, `Christian Warriors': Who Are The Hutaree Militia And Where Did They Come From?, and The Faith-Based Militia: When is Terrorism `Christian'? Excerpts on the flip:

Clarkson:

The arrest of the Michigan-based Hutaree Militia has drawn worldwide attention and in so doing, surfaced one of the knottiest issues we face as a culture to which religious freedom and free speech are so central: How do we think about and describe religiously motivated violence?
The Hutaree's plans to murder a police officer and use IEDs to attack the funeral procession in order to catalyze an uprising against the federal government was shocking and made headlines around the world. Their action plan, while preposterous on its face, is not terribly surprising, and is in many respects a logical outgrowth of the eschatology of a wide swath of the Christian Right. But what has been most striking to me is the media's high profile use of the term "Christian militia." This suggests to me that a tectonic shift may be underway in our underlying culture and politics as we continue to struggle with how to acknowledge the realities of actual and threatened religiously-motivated violence in the U.S.

Until now, of course, the elephant in the room has been our double standard, at least since 9/11. We've had little difficulty acknowledging religious motivations when Muslims are involved, but it's been rare to find the word "Christian" modifying terms like "militia" and "terrorism" in mainstream discourse.

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2010/4/8/152216/2263/Front_Page/The_Faith_Based_Militia_When_is_Terrorism_Christian_

[polichick]

1. Glad people are writing about it - time to stop being hypocritical...

Terrorism is terrorism - no matter which religious whackjobs are carrying it out.

[msongs]

2. billions raped tortured murdered in the past 2000 yrs, that's " when" nt

[RKP5637]

3. To me, if a fraction of christians are calling themselves militia, warriors and the like,

and they create acts of terrorism, then calling it Christian Terrorism is perfectly acceptable. This country has to get past giving a free pass to anyone, group that invokes the use of god, Jesus, etc., thumps the bible and uses that to justify just about whatever they do. If they are terrorists, then they are terrorists.

IMO many mainstream Americans need to wake up before they find this mess on their doorstep because they don't fit the narrow minded categories of what RW christians call acceptable. I hope this country doesn't fall into the mindset of 1930's Germany that gave a free pass to warped ideological thinking. My German friends called them the Good Germans. Stuck their heads in the sand... I also wish what I call "Normal Christians" in this country would be more vocal against the warped ideological ideas of the RW christians.

[sui generis]

4. "we" are a christian nation?

It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling whenever somebody tells me I'm part of their "we", or else that I hate Amurrika.

Ironically it's people like this that gun control laws have in mind . . . .