Could it be sheer coincidence that the murderous attack on the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC on Wednesday by James W. von Brunn, an anti-Semitic Christian terrorist, occurred scarcely a week after an attack on a Wichita health clinic that performed abortions? Perhaps. Though it is also possible that these incidents, and a host of other threats in recent months, are the violent fringe of a new wave of religiously-motivated violence that might rival America’s Christian terrorism of the 1990s.
If, as it seems, Scott Roeder was indeed the culprit behind the ghastly killing of Dr. George Tiller last week in a Wichita church, the attack raises the possibility of the beginning of a new wave of Christian terrorism in the Obama era. Ruby Ridge and other incidents in the 1990s culminated with the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, an event so horrendous that it seems to have sobered the radicalism of many Christian militia members. Then came the eight-year reign of President George W. Bush who voiced his support for anti-abortion activists and gave the impression that they had a friend in the White House. The violence abated.
All this may now be changing. A new president is vilified in the right-wing press not only as pro-abortion but as a demonic figure. The image is one of desperation: that the moral authority of the country has been taken captive by an evil enemy. This has the effect of giving moral license to an image of cosmic war, goading the violent urges of some of the most extreme of the Christian activists, whose world view is a melange of millenarianism and anti-abortion adventurism.
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According to Bray, Americans live in a situation “comparable to Nazi Germany,” a state of hidden warfare, as the comforts of modern society have lulled the populace into apathy. Bray was convinced that a dramatic event, such as economic collapse or social chaos would reveal the demonic role of the government, and people would have “the strength and the zeal to take up arms” in a revolutionary struggle. What he envisioned as the outcome of that struggle was the establishment of a new moral order in America, one based on biblical law and a spiritual, rather than a secular, social compact.
Until this new moral order is established, Bray said, he and others like him who are aware of what is going on and have the moral courage to resist it are compelled to take action. According to Bray, Christianity gave him the right to defend innocent “unborn children,” even by use of force, whether it involves “destroying the facilities that they are regularly killed in, or taking the life of one who is murdering them.” By the latter, Bray meant killing doctors and other clinical staff involved in performing abortions.
link:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/religiousright/1550/onward_christian_terrorists%3B_fighting_evil_in_the_obama_era
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