To paraphrase Donald J. Trump, “I love the Christians. I’m sure they’re great people.”
Descending further down a path alongside the one Trump is blazing, let’s reflect on a question many of this newspaper’s readership may find offensive and infuriating. Then imagine how our Muslim friends and neighbors must be feeling these days, hearing the mirror-image question.
That question is: Don’t recent events warrant that we curtail immigration of Christians to our shores in order to combat the threat of radical Christian terrorism?
Consider this: The mass shootings in Colorado by Christian fanatic Robert Lewis Dear followed his Internet proclamation, “Turn to JESUS or burn in hell […] WAKE UP SINNERS U CANT SAVE YOURSELF U WILL DIE AN WORMS SHALL EAT YOUR FLESH” (emphasis his). His terrorist act is the most recent of a series of assassinations and mass killings perpetrated in Christianity’s name, heinous crimes that should repulse us all.
Consider this: Although Christian extremist bomber Timothy McVeigh has been executed, the Christian Identity Movement and the Aryan Republican Army with whom he had close ties are alive and well, still actively advocating white supremacy and preparing for Armageddon.
Consider this: The Christian terrorist group Army of God has claimed responsibility for nail bombings of clinics and assassinations of health care providers. The Hutaree, or “Christian Warrior Army,” a Christian militia movement, has been accused by the FBI of planning to kill police officers, then to attack their funerals, as part of their coming apocalyptic battle with the antichrist.
Until now, extremist Christian groups and individuals have targeted women’s health clinics and providers, lesbian and gay citizens, police officers, sporting events and nonbelievers in general. But who knows when the Christian Reconstructionist movement, for example, will act on its advocacy of biblical punishment instead of divorce court solutions to anti-family behavior such as adultery: “The mob will stone them and cut them down with their swords; they will kill their sons and daughters and burn down their houses” (Ezekiel 23:47).
For groups who give literal credence to Old and New Testament scripture that prescribes stoning for those who worship false gods ( Leviticus 20:27), mass killings of those outside the faith are within the realm of the permissible: “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass” (Samuel 15:3).
Does all this not prove Christianity is a violent and barbarous religion and that its holy books justify detestable behavior?
Of course not. But anyone who goes down this rabbit hole might then argue, Trump-style, that stemming Christian immigration is not religious profiling but just common sense: How can we know for sure, they would ask, which Christian could become radicalized, then pose a lethal threat?
If Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and their ilk crying “Radical Islamic Terrorism” at the top of their lungs object to this substitution of Christian for Muslim, Bible for Koran, Old Testament injunctions for Sharia Law, then they are obliged to tell us how Muslim, Christian or Jewish zealots are any different from each other. Because terrorists who pack avenging gods come in all flavors, all religions. And the crimes they commit are no less heinous, one from the other.
We know this to be true, even though in frightening times it’s tempting to view one’s own religion in the light of its most noble ideals and those of others through the distortion lens of its most deranged practitioners.
But preying on our most visceral fears when we feel so vulnerable is political arson, which will scorch the precious fabric of our pluralist culture. If so-called political leaders spewing such venom are sincere, they belong in juvenile detention, not in the White House. If they are insincere, they are hate-mongers pure and simple and deserve our contempt.
Radical religious terrorists of every stripe need to be isolated and disavowed by the vast majority of the peace-loving adherents of the religions they claim to represent. And condemned by all of us. The tenets of Islam and Judeo-Christianity share a moral taproot that can and should unite instead of divide us, despite the best efforts of those who would profit from peddling fear and hate.
Dennis Chinoy lives in Bangor.