Why aren’t we calling Vance Boelter a Christian terrorist?
If Vance Boelter had a different faith or a different skin tone, we might have an easier time seeing him as a religious terrorist.
The alleged assassin of Minnesota’s DFL House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who also attempted to take the lives of DFL state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, would perhaps be more believable in that role if he more closely resembled the religious terrorists we’re used to hearing about — most often, radical Islamic terrorists. Instead, here’s this middle-class white guy from Minnesota.
There’s been a focus on Boelter as a political terrorist because his list of about 70 targets included mostly Democrats. But it seems apparent they were on that list because their beliefs didn’t line up with Boelter’s religious beliefs, and therefore were selected to die by him. That would make him a Christian terrorist — a person using religion as a vehicle to terrorize others into submission. His warped faith seems to have led to his bloody suburban rampage, just as the warped faith of other religious fanatics have led to horrific deeds done in the name of their religious beliefs.
When Boelter was 17. He had a religious conversion that “shook his life.” He later enrolled at Christ For The Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, where he graduated in 1990 with a degree in practical theology.
Known as a prominent training institution for charismatic Christians, Christ For The Nations Institute was founded in 1970 by evangelist Gordon Lindsay, a disciple of the revivalist movements that began in this country soon after World War II.
“Followers believed that an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way, raising up new apostles and prophets and a global End Times army to battle Satanic forces and establish God’s kingdom on Earth.” This was all part of the New Apostolic Movement, which the story noted, is considered the grassroots engine of the Christian Right.
Instructors at the school also promoted the belief that “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer every day.” Violent prayer, also known as imprecatory prayer, is often defined as praying to God to rain down curses on one’s enemies, and is found in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament’s Book of Psalms.
As writer Logan Davis has noted, one of the instructors at the institute was Dutch Sheets, a prominent Christian evangelist who started his own ministry that advocates a very literal kind of spiritual warfare.
Sheets and other prominent pastors of this approach not only believe in battling satanic beliefs by force but also view Democratic policies as manifestations of demonic influence and claim that Christians face persecution in the U.S., according to Davis.
A steady diet of demonizing Democrats may have inspired Boelter to compile a list of about 70 politicians and other officials, most of whom were Democrats, as enemies of Christians.
Just what beliefs qualified victims for his list can be glimpsed from some of the videos of his sermons to a congregation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past few years. The videos show him condemning Christians who don’t fight abortion and homosexuality and insisting “God is going to raise up apostles and prophets who will correct his church.”
So politicians and officials not opposing abortion as a choice or those in favor of LGBT people having civil rights seem to have qualified for Boelter’s list. Apparently Boelter felt they deserved to die, both for their views and to prevent them from allowing anyone else such choices.
Some of these views used to be the talking points of a handful of extremists. Now, according to Davis, “These false beliefs of demonic Democrats and persecuted Christians are not the views of a far-out minority but central to the modern Christian nationalist movement.”
This is exactly the approach the founders of this country wanted to leave behind. They insisted on a separation of church and state, with people able to choose whatever religion — or no religion — and allowing everyone the same rights to choose their own religious beliefs.
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-la.../601450869
If Vance Boelter had a different faith or a different skin tone, we might have an easier time seeing him as a religious terrorist.
The alleged assassin of Minnesota’s DFL House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, who also attempted to take the lives of DFL state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, would perhaps be more believable in that role if he more closely resembled the religious terrorists we’re used to hearing about — most often, radical Islamic terrorists. Instead, here’s this middle-class white guy from Minnesota.
There’s been a focus on Boelter as a political terrorist because his list of about 70 targets included mostly Democrats. But it seems apparent they were on that list because their beliefs didn’t line up with Boelter’s religious beliefs, and therefore were selected to die by him. That would make him a Christian terrorist — a person using religion as a vehicle to terrorize others into submission. His warped faith seems to have led to his bloody suburban rampage, just as the warped faith of other religious fanatics have led to horrific deeds done in the name of their religious beliefs.
When Boelter was 17. He had a religious conversion that “shook his life.” He later enrolled at Christ For The Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas, where he graduated in 1990 with a degree in practical theology.
Known as a prominent training institution for charismatic Christians, Christ For The Nations Institute was founded in 1970 by evangelist Gordon Lindsay, a disciple of the revivalist movements that began in this country soon after World War II.
“Followers believed that an outpouring of the Holy Spirit was under way, raising up new apostles and prophets and a global End Times army to battle Satanic forces and establish God’s kingdom on Earth.” This was all part of the New Apostolic Movement, which the story noted, is considered the grassroots engine of the Christian Right.
Instructors at the school also promoted the belief that “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer every day.” Violent prayer, also known as imprecatory prayer, is often defined as praying to God to rain down curses on one’s enemies, and is found in the Bible, especially in the Old Testament’s Book of Psalms.
As writer Logan Davis has noted, one of the instructors at the institute was Dutch Sheets, a prominent Christian evangelist who started his own ministry that advocates a very literal kind of spiritual warfare.
Sheets and other prominent pastors of this approach not only believe in battling satanic beliefs by force but also view Democratic policies as manifestations of demonic influence and claim that Christians face persecution in the U.S., according to Davis.
A steady diet of demonizing Democrats may have inspired Boelter to compile a list of about 70 politicians and other officials, most of whom were Democrats, as enemies of Christians.
Just what beliefs qualified victims for his list can be glimpsed from some of the videos of his sermons to a congregation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo over the past few years. The videos show him condemning Christians who don’t fight abortion and homosexuality and insisting “God is going to raise up apostles and prophets who will correct his church.”
So politicians and officials not opposing abortion as a choice or those in favor of LGBT people having civil rights seem to have qualified for Boelter’s list. Apparently Boelter felt they deserved to die, both for their views and to prevent them from allowing anyone else such choices.
Some of these views used to be the talking points of a handful of extremists. Now, according to Davis, “These false beliefs of demonic Democrats and persecuted Christians are not the views of a far-out minority but central to the modern Christian nationalist movement.”
This is exactly the approach the founders of this country wanted to leave behind. They insisted on a separation of church and state, with people able to choose whatever religion — or no religion — and allowing everyone the same rights to choose their own religious beliefs.
https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-la.../601450869
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
