Mark Juergensmeyer writes about the recent attack on the Holocaust museum and the murder of George Tiller, and asks if the timing of these incidents are coincidence or if “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”:
Scott Roeder’s religio-political stance is a disturbing example of the revival of this 90s-era Christian terrorism. Though Roeder has been identified with the right-wing Freeman movement, he is also closely related to one of the 1990s most vicious Christian extremist groups, the Army of God [warning: while this link leads only to the Wikipedia page, should you then decide to click through to the AOG website please note that it can be very disturbing]. Roeder has been associated with the movement for some years, and his actions—such as pouring glue into the locks of clinics that perform abortions—are straight out of the Army of God Manual, said to have been authored by Rev. Michael Bray, the Army’s “chaplain.”
Last week, soon after Roeder’s attack on Dr. Tiller, Bray wrote a publicly-published letter to Roeder, declaring that the assassin had acted in “righteousness and mercy.” Bray went on to praise Roeder for following the commandments of God as he “sought to deliver the innocents from the knife of a baby murderer.”
[…]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.
Read the full article here.