When is Terrorism ‘Christian’?
The shorthand descriptions of such groups and individuals sometimes depends on the context. Some fall under the category of “hate groups,” and their acts as “hate crimes.” While these terms can be useful, they too can obscure religious motivations. For example, the once infamous Aryan Nations group referred to itself as the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian, and its leader was Rev. Richard Butler, a minister in one of the sects generally referred to as Christian Identity.
The uneven evolution of our thinking about these things, and the language we use to describe them, casts fresh light on how we use other shorthand terms in this complex and fraught dimension of public life. The term “faith-based,” for example, we use more or less synonymously with “religious” and as substitutes for such terms as “ecumenical” and “interfaith.” It has become a warm and fuzzy term used for glossing over religious differences, both for reasons of inclusiveness and to conceal exclusion. But we would never describe the Aryan Nations as a “faith-based” hate group or the Hutaree as a faith-based militia, or Clayton Waagner as a “faith-based terrorist.”
The rise of the term “faith-based” is probably closely related to our difficulty in ascribing religious motivations to hate and violence, unless of course it is the religion of foreigners with whom we are at odds or at war. Such characterizations can be taken as highly inflammatory. Terms like “Christian militia” or “Islamic terrorism” can suggest that terrorism and militias are more characteristic of these enormous and highly varied religious traditions than is the case. And there are certainly those who do not hesitate to exploit such opportunities. At the same time, the current use of the term “Christian militia” suggests to me at once a certain inevitability (since the Hutaree feature their religious identity on their web site) and a certain maturity in our collective ability to acknowledge the reality of the situation without hyperbole or inappropriate defensiveness with regard to the use of the term–Christianity–that fairly describes the majority of religious believers in the U.S., for all of their extraordinary diversity.
Finally, what terms we use depends on the occasion. While the media term of choice for the Hutaree was “Christian militia,” federal prosecutors have carefully avoided religious references. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ronald Waterstreet who summarized the case in court insisted that the charges “aren’t about a religion or the militia. It’s a group of like minded people who decided to oppose the authority of the United States by using weapons and force.” Similarly in the indictment he described the Hutaree as “an anti-government extremist organization” whose members wear a patch on their uniform that includes a cross and the initials CCR. The indictment did not explain that the name Hutaree meant “Christian warrior” and that CCR stands for “Colonial Christian Republic.”
“The Hutaree’s enemies,” the indictment continues, “include state and local law enforcement authorities deemed to be “foot soldiers” of… the new World Order.” Of course, foot soldiers for the New world Order does not help anyone understand that the Christian warriors of the Hutaree saw themselves as fighting an end times battle with the agents of the anti-Christ. For their purposes, they may not need to. But even as the feds sought to elide references to religion, they certainly opened the door to draw on the full palette of possibilities in their vision of end times religious war, since the indictment also said that the Hutaree’s enemies list includes “anyone who does not share their beliefs.”
Berlet:
The government has a legitimate law enforcement role in stopping domestic terrorism, though most dissidents on the political right and left are not breaking any laws and are protected by the First Amendment. The current and volatile right-wing populist movement spans from reform-oriented conservative black Republicans to recruiters for insurgent white supremacist groups, with the Tea Party activists and members of citizens militias falling somewhere between these ideological and methodological poles. It would be sloppy to lump all of these folks into one undifferentiated mass of potential terrorists.
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