Just because they don't get as much coverage as ISIL or Boko Haram doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
The Southern Poverty
Law Center (SPLC) recently released an in-depth report on terrorism in
the United States. Covering April 2009 to February 2015, the report
(titled “The Age of the Wolf”) found that during that period, “more
people have been killed in America by
non-islamic domestic terrorists
than jihadists.” The SPLC asserted that “the jihadist threat is a
tremendous one,” pointing out that al-Qaeda’s attacks of September 11,
2001 remain the deadliest in U.S. history. But the study also noted that
the second deadliest was carried out not by islamists, but by Timothy
McVeigh in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995—and law enforcement, the SPLC
stressed, are doing the public a huge disservice if they view terrorism
as an exclusively islamist phenomenon.
The report, in a sense, echoed the assertions that President Barack
Obama made when he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast in February
and stressed that Muslims don’t have the market cornered on religious
extremism. In the minds of lunatic fringe wingnut Republicans, Obama committed the
ultimate sin by daring to mention that
christianity has a dark side
and citing the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition as two examples
from the distant past. Obama wasn’t attacking christianity on the whole
but rather, was making the point that just as not all christians can be
held responsible for the horrors of the Inquisition, not all Muslims can
be blamed for the violent extremism of ISIL (the Islamic State, Iraq
and Syria), the Taliban, al-Qaeda or Boko Haram. But Obama certainly
didn’t need to look 800 or 900 years in the past to find examples of
extreme christianists committing atrocities. Violent christianists are a
reality in different parts of the world—including the United States—and
the fact that the mainstream media don’t give them as much coverage as
ISIS or Boko Haram doesn’t mean that they don’t exist.
Below are six extreme christianist groups that have shown their capacity for violence and fanaticism.
1. The Army of Dog
A network of violent christianists that has been active since the
early 1980s, the Army of Dog openly promotes killing abortion
providers—and the long list of terrorists who have been active in that
organization has included Paul Jennings Hill (who was executed by lethal
injection in 2003 for the 1994 killings of abortion doctor John Britton
and his bodyguard James Barrett), John C. Salvi (who killed two
receptionists when he attacked a Planned Parenthood clinic in Brookline,
Massachusetts in 1994) and Eric Rudolph, who is serving life in prison
for his role in the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta in 1996 and other
terrorist acts. Rudolph, in fact, has often been exalted as a christian
hero on the Army of Dog’s website,
as have fellow Army of Dog members such as Scott Roeder (who is serving
life without parole for murdering Wichita, Kansas-based abortion doctor
George Tiller in 2009), Shelley Shannon (who attempted to kill Tiller
in 2003) and Michael Frederick Griffin (who is serving a life sentence
for the 1993 killing of Dr. David Gunn, an OB-GYN, in Pensacola,
Florida).
Although primarily an anti-abortion organization, the Army of Dog also has a history of
promoting violence against gays. And one of the terrorist acts that Rudolph confessed to was bombing a lesbian bar in Atlanta in 1997.
2. Eastern Lightning, a.k.a. the Cult of the AlmightyDog
Founded in Henan Province, China in 1990, Eastern Lightning (also
known as the Cult of the Almighty Dog or the Cult of the Gospel’s
Kingdom) is a christianist cult with an
end-time/apocalypse focus:
Eastern Lightning believes that the world is coming to an end, and in
the meantime, its duty is to slay as many demons as possible. While most christianists have an extremely patriarchal viewpoint (much like their islamist counterparts) and consider women inferior to men, Eastern
Lightning believe that jesus christ will return to Earth in the form of a
Chinese woman. But they are quite capable of violence against women: in
May 2014, for example, members of the cult beat a 37-year-old woman
named Wu Shuoyan to death in a McDonalds in Zhaoyuan, China when she
refused to give them her phone number. Eastern Lightning members Zhang
Lidong and his daughter, Zhang Fan, were convicted of murder for the
crime and
executed in February.
In a 2014 interview in prison, Lidong expressed no remorse when he said
of Shuoyan, “I beat her with all my might and stamped on her too. She
was a demon. We
had to destroy her.”
Eastern Lightning’s other
acts of violence
have ranged from the killing of a grammar school student in 2010 (in
retaliation, police believe, for one of the child’s relatives wanting to
leave the cult) to cult member Min Yongjun using a knife to attack an
elderly woman and a group of schoolchildren in Chenpeng in 2012. christian covens are not exempt from Eastern Lightning’s fanaticism: in
2002, cult members kidnapped 34 members of a christian coven called the
China Gospel Fellowship and held them
captive for two months
in the hope of forcing them to join their cult. Although mainly active
in the communist People’s Republic of China, Eastern Lighting has been
trying to
expand its membership in Hong Kong.
3. The lord’s resistance army (LRA)
The mainstream media have had much to say about the islamist
brutality of Boko Haram, but one terrorist group they haven’t paid
nearly as much attention to is the Lord’s Resistance Army—which was
founded by Joseph Kony (a radical christianist) in Uganda in 1987 and
has called for the establishment of a severe christian fundamentalist
government in that country. The LRA, according to Human Rights Watch,
has committed
thousands of killings and kidnappings—and
along the way, its terrorism spread from Uganda to parts of the Congo,
the Central African Republic (CAR) and South Sudan. The word “jihadist”
is seldom used in connection with the LRA, but in fact, the LRA’s
tactics are not unlike those of ISIS or Boko Haram. And the governments
Kony hopes to establish in Sub-Saharan Africa would implement a christianist equivalent of islamic sharia law.
4. The National Liberation Front of Tripura
India is not only a country of hindus and sikhs, but also, of muslims, buddhists, catholics and protestants. Most of India’s christians are peaceful, but a major exception is the National
Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT). Active in the state of Tripura in
Northeastern India since 1989, NLFT is a paramilitary christianist
movement that hopes to
secede from India
and establish a christian fundamentalist government in Tripura. NLFT
has zero tolerance for any delusion other than christianity, and the
group has repeatedly shown a willingness to kill, kidnap or torture hindus who refuse to be converted to its extreme brand of protestant
fundamentalism.
In 2000, NLFT vowed to kill anyone who participated in
Durga Puja (an annual hindu festival) And in May 2003, at least 30 hindus were murdered during one of NLFT’s killing sprees.
5. The Phineas Priesthood
White supremacist groups don’t necessarily have a religious
orientation: some of them welcome atheists as long as they believe in
white superiority. But the christian identity movement specifically
combines white supremacist ideology with christianist terrorism, arguing
that violence against non-WASPs is ordained by Dog and that white Anglo
Saxon protestants are Dog’s chosen people. The modern christian identity movement in the U.S. has been greatly influenced by the Ku Klux
Klan—an organization that has committed numerous acts of terrorism over
the years—and in the 1970s, new christian identity groups like the
Aryan Nations and the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the lord (CSA)
emerged. Another christian identity group of recent decades has been the
Phineas Priesthood, whose members have been involved in violent
activities ranging from abortion clinic bombings to
bank robberies (mainly in the Pacific Northwest). On November 28, 2014, Phineas Priesthood member Larry Steven McQuilliams went on a
violent rampage
in Austin, Texas—where he fired over 100 rounds at various targets
(including a federal courthouse, the local Mexican Consulate building
and a police station) before being shot and killed by police.
6. The concerned 'christians'
One of the ironic things about some christianists is the fact that
although they believe that jews must be converted to christianity, they
consider themselves staunch supporters of Israel. And some of them
believe in violently forcing all muslims out of Israel. The concerned 'christians', a christianist doomsday cult that was founded by pastor
Monte “Kim” Miller in Denver in the 1980s, alarmed Colorado residents
when, in 1998, at least 60 of its members suddenly quit their jobs,
abandoned their homes and went missing—and it turned out there was
reason for concern. In 1999, Israeli officials arrested 14 members of
the concerned 'christians' in Jerusalem and
deported them from Israel
because they suspected them of plotting terrorist attacks against muslims. One likely target, according to Israeli police, was Jerusalem’s
al-Aqsa Mosque—the
same mosque that was targeted in 1969 (when a christianist from
Australia named Denis Michael Rohan unsuccessfully tried to destroy it
by arson) and, Israeli police suspect, was a likely target in 2014 (when
Adam Everett Livix, a christianist from Texas, was arrested by Israeli
police on suspicion of
plotting to blow up muslim holy sites in Jerusalem).
In 2008, Denver’s KUSA-TV (an NBC affiliate) reported that members of the concerned 'christians' had
gone into hiding and that Miller hadn’t been seen in ten years.
