A couple of days ago an article appeared in the local paper about how the world couldn’t tolerate anymore religious intolerance. At one point the author insinuated that the bombing of abortion clinics is connected to Christianity. A reader took offense and responded with:
…the suggestion that the bombing of abortion clinics is a hallmark of Christian fundamentalism is absurd. Such events are so rare, and so thoroughly condemned by the Christian community, that it should be obvious they are the acts of deranged individuals, not part of any religious movement.
The author obviously doesn’t spend anytime with anti-abortion Christians nor look at some of the offerings and writings by this contingent of Christians. Some examples to show the connection between the two:
This site offers Christian apparel where for $16.99 you can get a shirt that says “ABORTION: infant genocide” with a swatzika, “Vote Pro-choice. -Satan” or “God will not continue to bless a nation that murders its unborn”. And if those don’t float your boat, there’s always the one that says “Abortion is murder” written inside a sniper scope.
Operation Rescue claims to be the leading anti-abortion Christian organization that is taking “direct action” to stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandates. You can buy how-too essays for a few dollars if you lack imagination or need pointers on how to best harass women outside of Planned Parenthood.
Various sites have essays about what the Bible “says” about abortion such as this one where the author concludes from Genesis 25:21-22, Luke 1:41-44, Pslam 139:13-16 and Jeremiah 1:5 that the Bible does teach ‘that the unborn baby is a human child’. By stringing together other verses, the author also concludes that abortion is murder. And what is the punishment for murder as far the Bible is concerned? That’s right – execution.
Yet, our letter writer is thoroughly convinced there is no connection between anti-abortion violence and Christianity. Why is this? Why doesn’t America connect Christian violence with Christian beliefs? Why is it alleged that there is a difference between violent Christians and violent Muslims? Why isn’t Eric Robert Rudolph and others like him called Christian terrorists when its quite obvious their acts of violence are directly related to their Christian beliefs?
It all comes down to privilege, something American Christians are quite used to here in the U.S. One of these privileges is the right to be an individual. American Christians – even if they hold the beliefs that created the situation they are hypocritically condemning – never have to worry about being called one of the pack. Instead, they get to call their violent co-religionists “insane”, “deranged” and it is taken as fact that the religious beliefs that lie at the heart of the violence are not connected to the religion that teaches them.
This is no longer acceptable. It’s time that Christians be stripped of their individualism. They hold some very disturbing beliefs taken from a book that is just as hateful, intolerant and violent as the other holy books that plague our world. If Muslims and other religionists must take responsibility for the things their religions and holy books support – then so must the Christians. If Muslims cannot be “deranged”, then neither can the Christians.
And that includes dear sweet Grandmom who’d never blow up a building, shoot a doctor or wreak havoc on the lives of those who don’t share her religious convictions even though she agrees that those of us who don’t are evil sinners that God’s going to get even with one day.
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I have SO blogmarked you…
Like you were reading my own mind this morning, after an encounter with a coworker who tried to ’save’ me on Monday.
If you go by the statistics the number of incidents of abortion clinic bombings and attacks on doctors are surprising small and have as often as not been carried off by individuals that are mentally unstable. You attempt to paint Christians as violent because they are willing to call abortion murder. Yet there is no correlation between their willingness to expose murders for what they are and their willingness to commit murder themselves.
Approximately 1.5 million abortions are committed each year. If one thought these were acts of murder it would be an incredible act of restraint not to have taken up arms against the killers by now. The murder of just 5000 caused this country to mobilize troops and invade another country. Yet very few clinics are ever attacked by anyone in any manner much less with lethal force.
Operation rescue, the group you ominously state as “taking direct action†does indeed take direct action…through America’s court system. That is where most Christians appear to fight this battle. You might want to actually check into the actions of these “extremists†before making accusations.
What disturbing Christian beliefs bother you most? “If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.†Sounds pretty dangerous…to the Christian.
You state “It’s time that Christians be stripped of their individualism.†This implies that you want to lump all Christians together and treat them the same way instead of treating them as individuals. This seems to bring up shades of 1984. This country has been founded on individual liberty. You seem happy to let it go…for someone else.
If you are going to suggest this, are you willing to be the first to give up your individuality? What group do you get lumped in with? How about those who blithely persecute anyone with a different opinion? I think you’d find yourself up against the wall next to the extremely small group “christians†that have bombed abortion clinics.
MK, have you read your bible? The Christian Bible is a horrible book. People smashing babies against stones, people getting damned to hell, Job getting treated like shit by God.
It’s funny – I read the bible a few times through as a kid – logical thing to do when you think it’s the word of God. But now as an athiest, I’m shocked that I know the bible better then almost every christian I’ve met.
I’ve started reading to Koran, ouch!, it’s no better.
People who call themselves Christians are responsible for a lot of shit. When is the last time you heard about a killer who calls himself an athiest on the news. I don’t think I ever have.
When you believe in B.S., it is easy to justify any action you want to take. Lucky most Christians don’t try to justify murder, just trying to control other peoples sex life.
Is it because they are jealous?
I was a big time Christain once … but then I got an education. Veritas Omnia Vingit.
Infact I am always shocked by the educated Christian. Somehow these people are able to separate their logical mind from the part that believes in God. As I noted above, many I think havn’t read thier bibles much or thought about it much.
I am sad but I have grown to realize that education will not remove the virus of religion, though it does help.
How will we cure society of this virus, or at least make it stop hurting innocent people.
MK is completely right and you are woefully missing the point.
MK, I think you missed my point. My point is this:
Christians in America have assigned themselves the privilege of being “individuals” instead of a “group” when it comes to the violent behaviour of other Christians who commited that violence because of religious beliefs. Such violent Christians are often and repeatedly characterized as “deranged”, “insane” or less than “true” Christians.
Practically the only time one can see Christians claiming group membership is when Christian supremacy is under threat, be it real (school prayer challenges) or imaginary (the war on Christmas). Christians absolutely refuse to see themselves as a group when it comes to who is doing the persecuting. Even if said Christian-in-denial holds the exact same beliefs that lead to the situation.
And this self-assigned privilege (denying group-membership when it comes to violent members) is something Christians completely deny every other group. For example, All Muslims must account for Koran supported (direct or indirect) violence of any Muslim.
So, what am I advocating? I am advocating that the self-assigned privileges as described above be stripped from Christians. It time they took a damned hard look in the mirror and look at the world they’ve created with their superiority complex. They need to be forced to get it through their heads that they do indeed exist as a group and that group is indeed guite damned guility of persecuting others on the basis of the groups beliefs about itself and its religion.
And if that is “lining them up against the wall” so be it.
KC – I just “stumbled upon” your blog and it is a well put together site. It’s interesting to read what you’ve written, as I am a Quaker. I like the content you have on your site though you seen to have pretty fundamentalist views for an Atheist. Please understand I don’t mean this as a slam, I just assumed Atheists tended to be more tolerant and universal. Maybe you are normally and the exception is Christianity…?
Anyways oddly enough I agree with you estimation of the Christian church, violence and a lot of what you have said, especially when you talk about Christians assuming their individual status. I particulary appreciate this comment,
You are right for the most part on this, I for one wouldn’t mind having prayer taken out of the schools. When spirituality becomes law violence and coersion follow. Of course this is true when most things become law but especially bad when it comes to religion.
I do take issue with this comment however,
This just isn’t true across the board – now I realize that you are making generalizations and you are basing your generalizations on a certain “right-wing Moral Majority” group of fundamenatlist Christians but I’d like to suggest to you there is a competing narrative of Christianity to the one you’ve stereotyped.
Granted, you may not like this group anymore, but we still exist. There are many of us who reject: the supremecy the church has violently taken for itself, the reading of the Bible you’ve been most influenced by, and the terriorism/fundamentalism that dominates many of these “anti-abortion” and “anti-gay” groups.
There really is just another side to the side, and a different understanding of God to the ones suggested above.
In fact, this is not a small portion of the church that takes this view – it’s just that we aren’t trying to assume power so you hear about us in different ways. The Mennonites, Brethren, Quakers and strands of the Catholic church and other for instance all consider the Christians you are talking about to be “misguided” and bury our heads everytime someone gives them the mic or a TV Camera.
At any rate there has been a lot of violence done by people of every faith and people without faith – this stems from our greed, pride and lack of love for one another. Christians who are violent are wrong, plain and simple, and since I am in that “group” I am too am wrong for their violence. The church needs more forgiveness in some of these areas than those we are supposedly trying to “evangelize.” I am terrified by the fact that these people have misread, and misunderstood Jesus and the Bible so much that they would bomb abortion clinics and countries in the Middle East. Theirs is a divergent Christianity, and one that a major part of the church likes even less than you.
Hi, thanks for seeing what I’m trying to say C.Wess. I’ll answer in more detail as soon as I get the time.
Also, just so you know – if you want to post anything else, you’ll have to register as I’ve had to turn off anonomous commenting due to some problem children.
C.Wess
I think ‘tolerance’ is a bad doctrine that we ought to get rid of. Though it got it’s start in the various religious wars (Catholics vs. Lutherans for example), it’s come to be used primarily as a means to deflect and quelsh criticism of ones own beliefs.
I’ve seen this kind of behaviour a lot. Someone will be criticizing the beliefs of practices of another group. Somewhere in the course of the conversation a similar belief that the critic holds is thrown into the mix and subjected to the same criticism. The critic starts screaming bloody murder and eventually gets around to calling the most ardent of their critics “intolerant”.
And perhaps betraying its real purpose, I’ve seen it used as a weapon by majority groups or opinon holders. My latest brush with this happened here on my site with four people deciding a blog about religion was the place to declare war on homosexuals.
When that was nipped in the bud and all were banned, three of them decided to do an end-run around the ban and post comments to the effect that they were being “attacked” and I was being extremely “intolerant” by refusing to give them the space to wage their little war.
So, I don’t do “tolerance” as I think it’s ultimately self-defeating. Imagine if your Quaker forefathers and mothers had “tolerated” religious imperialism for example.
As for those of you who actually oppose Christian supremacism, if you won’t come out and state such in a straight forward manner – how are the rest of us to know that? It seems to me that you all would rather be seen as “nice” in the same manner that whites would rather be seen as “nice” when it comes to dealing with racist BS.
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