Hi, I'm a Christian who's not offended by violence committed in the name of Christ but I am offended at Obama for talking about it.
— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) February 6, 2015
At 9:02 a.m. on April 19, 1995, a 7,000-pound truck bomb, constructed of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and nitromethane racing fuel and packed into 13 plastic barrels, ripped through the heart of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The explosion wrecked much of downtown Oklahoma City and killed 168 people, including 19 children in a day-care center. Another 500 were injured. Although many Americans initially suspected an attack by Middle Eastern radicals, it quickly became clear that the mass murder had actually been carried out by domestic, right-wing terrorists. The slaughter engineered by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, men steeped in the conspiracy theories and white-hot fury of the American radical right, marked the opening shot in a new kind of domestic political extremism — a revolutionary ideology whose practitioners do not hesitate to carry out attacks directed at entirely innocent victims, people selected essentially at random to make a political point. After Oklahoma, it was no longer sufficient for many American right-wing terrorists to strike at a target of political significance — instead, they reached for higher and higher body counts, reasoning that they had to eclipse McVeigh’s attack to win attention.
It’s become common practice for the mainstream media to refer to acts of terror committed by Muslims as terrorism, which seems an accurate description, but they refer to the same acts committed by Whites as “political violence.” It’s a deliberate, and not very subtle attempt, to insulate Whites from the hatred and scrutiny that Muslims endure when one of their own engage in terrorism. The Southern Poverty Law Center has compiled a list of Christian terrorist activity since McVeigh’s April 19, 1995 bombing…and it’s a long and not particularly distinguished list. A reasonable person perusing the list would undoubtedly come away from it with the knowledge that White Chrisitian terrorism is a clear and present danger in a way that Muslim can’t begin to approach.
Lost in the shuffle is the truth that more American lives have been lost domestically to acts of terrorism perpetrated by White Men. Listen to Fox News Channel and other Right-wing news outlets, and what you get is often a virtual mea culpa on behalf of those responsible for an attack. Then the President tells the truth in an attempt to get people to consider that Christians have their own terrorist history, and the Right throws a hissy fit.
HOW DARE THE PRESIDENT OFFEND CHRISTIANS BY ASKING US TO FACE THE TRUTH!!
Speaking before the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday, President Obama denounced those “who hijack religion for their own murderous ends,” citing, for instance, the Islamic State militant group, “a brutal, vicious death cult that, in the name of religion, carries out unspeakable acts of barbarism.” Given the group’s gruesome executions of its hostages and its utterly horrific execution of children, including the mentally disabled, one could hardly dispute the president’s characterization of its fundamentalist adherents.
Nevertheless, the president’s speech rankled conservative critics. Obama, you see, committed the grievous error of pointing out that brutality and violence have hardly been the province of any one religion.
“[L]est we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama noted. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ,” he added, referring to segregationists’ fondness for Biblical injunctions against interracial mingling.
The truth is that this isn’t a “Muslim” or “Christian” problem. It’s a religion problem, and the reality is that untold millions have been killed in the name of religion over the course of human history. Those on the Far Right who call themselves “Christians” (and who are as much about the teachings of Jesus Christ as I am the Green Bay Packers) are incensed that the President would impugn their faith by admitting the truth. I’m not sure how speaking that truth impugns anyone or anything, but the Far Right can make anything about them. If you’re Todd Starnes or Erick Erickson, you’re arrogant enough to refuse to believe the Crusades were anything other than an overzealous attempt at spreading Christianity to those who hadn’t heard the Good Word.
The President’s right, of course. History is replete with examples of Christian brutality and genocide. If anything, it’s worse than what Islam is guilty of, but the truth is that it’s not about who did what to whom and when. It’s about zealots using religion as an excuse to oppress and kill those “infidels” not enlightened enough to share their beliefs (and who therefore threaten their path to power and control).
This sort of faux outrage over the truth is just the latest argument for the validity of atheism. If people like Todd Starnes, Erick Erickson, and other Conservatives are representative of Christianity, it just confirms that I made the right choice. I want no part of a God who would countenance such willful ignorance of the truth. If we can’t be honest with ourselves about our history, what Supreme Being would even bother with us? And why would any thinking person chose to follow a faith tradition based on rampant dishonesty?
