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Christian terrorism is religious terrorism by groups or individuals, the motivation of which is typically rooted in an idiosyncratic interpretation of the Bible and other Christian tenets of faith. From the viewpoint of the terrorist, Christian scripture and theology provide justification for violent political activities.^[1]

Contents 1 History 2 Organizations and acts 2.1 Canada 2.2 India 2.3 Ireland 2.4 Romania 2.5 Russia 2.6 Uganda 2.7 United States 3 Motivation, ideology and theology 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography

[edit] History

In the beginning, Christianity was terrorized ruthlessly, with members losing their property, citizenship, privileges, tortured and often killed horribly by Roman authorities. When Emperor Constantine became a Christian, it was declared the state religion and the scales had reversed. The pagans were persecuted brutally and forced to convert. A wave of conversions backed up with force spread Christianity across Europe, until Lithuania fell as the last pagan nation. The Crusades pitted Christians against Muslims, who had used the same methods. As recounted by many sources, when Jerusalem fell the first time, every Muslim and Jew in the city was killed, except perhaps for a few spared by less ruthless Crusaders. On the way, dissident monks and Eastern Christians had also been attacked, even slaughtered. Heretical Christian sects were stamped out by force, often with followers massacred or forced to give up their beliefs. When the Reformation occurred, religious wars began that killed millions in the struggles between Catholics and Protestants.^{[citation needed]}

Ian Gilmour has cited the historical case of the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre as an instance of Christian terrorism on par with modern day terrorism, and goes on to write, "That massacre, said Pope Gregory XIII, gave him more pleasure than fifty Battles of Lepanto, and he commissioned Vasari to paint frescoes of it in the Vatican".^[2] It is estimated that ten thousand to possibly one-hundred thousand Huguenots (French Protestants) were killed by Catholic mobs, and it has been called "the worst of the century's religious massacres".^[3] The massacre led to the start of the fourth war of the French Wars of Religion.Peter Steinfels has cited the historical case of the Gunpowder Plot, when Guy Fawkes and other Catholic revolutionaries attempted to overthrow the Protestant aristocracy of England by blowing up the Houses of Parliament, as a notable case of Christian terrorism.^[4]

[edit] Organizations and acts

[edit] Canada

The Sons of Freedom, a sect of Doukhobor anarchists, have protested nude, blown up power pylons, railroad bridges, and set fire to homes, often targeting their own property.^[5]

[edit] India

The National Liberation Front of Tripura, a rebel group operating in Tripura, North-East India classified by the National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism as one of the ten most active terrorist groups in the world, has been accused of forcefully converting people to Christianity.^[6][7][8]

The Nagaland Rebels of Nagaland, North-East India is a coalition of rebel groups including the National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak-Muivah, has been involved in an ethnic conflict that has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths since the Indian Declaration of Independence.^[9]

[edit] Ireland

Several people have stated that the religious divide between Roman Catholics and Protestants was a contributing factor to The Troubles:

Mark Juergensmeyer wrote "Like residents of Belfast and London, Americans were beginning to learn to live with acts of religious terrorism: shocking, disturbing incidents of violence laced with the passion of religion - in these cases, Christianity" and "The violence in Northern Ireland is justified by still other theological positions, Catholic and Protestant." and "The ferocity of religious violence was brought home to me in 1998 when I received the news that a car bomb had exploded in a Belfast neighborhood I had visited the day before.

Martin Dillon interviewed paramilitaries on both sides of the conflict, questioning how they could reconcile murder with their Christian convictions.^[10]

First Minister of Northern Ireland The Revd. and Rt. Hon. Ian Paisley often cast the conflict in religious terms. He preached that the Roman Catholic Church, which he termed "Popery", had deviated from the Bible, and therefore from true Christianity, giving rise to "revolting superstitions and idolatrous abuses". Paisley held that there were links between the Catholic Church and the Provisional Irish Republican Army, a group which is classified as a proscribed terrorist group in the United Kingdom and as an illegal organisation in the Republic of Ireland.^[11][12]. He once said "The Provisional IRA is the military wing of the Roman Catholic Church"^[13] and has claimed several times that the Pope is the Antichrist, most famously at the European Parliament, where he interrupted a speech by Pope John Paul II, shouting "I denounce you as the Antichrist!" and holding up a red poster reading "POPE JOHN PAUL II ANTICHRIST".^[14][15]

Pastor Alan Campbell has also identified the Papacy as the Antichrist, and has described the IRA as "Roman Catholic terrorists".^{[citation needed]} Campbell preaches a Christian Identity theology; he is strongly against race-mixing, and supports the British Israel hypothesis, claiming that the Celto-Anglo-Saxon people of Ulster are the true "Israel of God".^{[citation needed]}

Steve Bruce, sociology professor at the University of Aberdeen, wrote:

"The Northern Ireland conflict is a religious conflict. Economic and social considerations are also crucial, but it was the fact that the competing populations in Ireland adhered and still adhere to competing religious traditions which has given the conflict its enduring and intractable quality".^[16]:249

Reviewing the book, David Harkness of the The English Historical Review agreed "Of course the Northern Ireland conflict is at heart religious".^[17]

John Hickey wrote:

"Politics in the North is not politics exploiting religion. That is far too simple an explanation: it is one which trips readily off the tongue of commentators who are used to a cultural style in which the politically pragmatic is the normal way of conducting affairs and all other considerations are put to its use. In the case of Northern Ireland the relationship is much more complex. It is more a question of religion inspiring politics than of politics making use of religion. It is a situation more akin to the first half of seventeenth‑century England than to the last quarter of twentieth century Britain".^[18]

Padraic Pearse was a devoted believer of the Christian faith, a writer, and one of the leaders of the Easter Rising.^[19] In his writings he often identified Ireland with Jesus Christ to emphasise the suffering of the nation, and called for his readers to resurrect and redeem the nation, through self-sacrifice which would turn them into martyrs.^[19] Browne states that Pearse’s "ideas of sacrifice and atonement, of the blood of martyrs that makes fruitful the seed of faith, are to be found all through [his] writings; nay, they have here even more than their religious significance, and become vitalizing factors in the struggle for Irish nationality".^[19]

William Edward Hartpole Lecky, an Irish historian, wrote "If the characteristic mark of a healthy Christianity be to unite its members by a bond of fraternity and love, then there is no country where Christianity has more completely failed than Ireland".^[20]

Sweeney argued that self-immolation, in the form of hunger strikes by Irish republicans, was religiously motivated and perceived.^[21] He wrote:

"The Rising catapulted the cult of self-sacrifice to centre stage of twentieth century Irish militant politics in a strange marriage of Catholicism and republicanism. A religious and a sacrificial motif can be detected in the writings of those who participated in the 'bloody protest'".

Brian O'Higgins, who helped in the rebel capture of Dublin's General Post Office in O'Connell Street, recalled how all the republications took turn reciting the Rosary every half hour during the rebellion. He wrote that there

"was hardly a man in the volunteer ranks who did not prepare for death on Easter Saturday [sic]^[22] and there were many who felt as they knelt at the altar rails on Easter Sunday morning that they were doing no more than fulfilling their Easter duty - that they were renouncing the world and all the world held for them by making themselves worthy to appear before the Judgement Seat of God... The executions reinforced the sacrificial motif as Mass followed Mass for the dead leaders, linking them with the sacrifice of Christ, the ancient martyrs and heroes, and the honoured dead from previous revolts... These and other deaths by hungerstrike transformed not only the perceived sacrificial victims but, in the eyes of many ordinary Irish people, the cause for which they died. The martyrs and their cause became sacred."^[21]

Sweeney went on to note that the culture of hunger strikes continued to be used by the Provisional IRA to great effect in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in a revamped Sinn Fein, and mobilising huge sections of the Catholic community behind the republican cause.^[21]:13

The Guardian newspaper attributed the murder of Martin O'Hagan, a former inmate of the Maze prison and a fearless reporter on crime and the paramilitaries, to the revival of religious fundamentalism.^[23]

Although often advocating nationalist policies, these groups consisted of and were supported by distinct religious groups in a religiously partitioned society. Groups on both sides advocated what they saw as armed defence of their own religious group.^[24]:134-135

The Orange Volunteers are a group infamous for carrying out simultaneous terrorist attacks on Catholic churches.^[25]

[edit] Romania

Anti-Semitic Romanian Orthodox fascist movements in Romania, such as the Iron Guard and Lăncieri, were allegedly responsible for involvement in the Holocaust, Bucharest pogrom, and political murders during the 1930s.^{[26][27][28][29]:24}

[edit] Russia

Many Russian political and paramilitary groups combine racism, nationalism, and Russian Orthodox beliefs.^[30][31]

Russian National Unity, a far right ultra-nationalist political party and paramilitary organization, advocates an increased role for the Russian Orthodox Church according to its manifesto. It has been accused of murders, and several terrorist attacks including the bombing of the US Consulate in Ekaterinburg.^[30][32]

[edit] Uganda

The Lord's Resistance Army, a sectarian guerrilla army engaged in an armed rebellion against the Ugandan government, has been accused of using child soldiers and committing numerous crimes against humanity; including massacres, abductions, mutilation, torture, rape, porters and sex slaves.^[33] It is led by Joseph Kony, who proclaims himself the spokesperson of God and a spirit medium, primarily of the Christian Holy Spirit which the Acholi believe can represent itself in many manifestations.^{[34][34][35][36]} LRA fighters wear rosary beads and recite passages from the Bible before battle, but some Islam is mixed into their beliefs as well.^{[37][38][39][40][41][42]}

[edit] United States

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, white supremacist Ku Klux Klan members in the Southern United States engaged in arson, beatings, cross burning, destruction of property, lynching, murder, rape, tar-and-feathering, and whipping against African Americans and other social or ethnic minorities.^[43]

During the twentieth century, members of extremist groups such as the Army of God began executing attacks against abortion clinics and doctors across the United States.^[44][45][46] A number of terrorist attacks, including the Centennial Olympic Park bombing during the 1996 Summer Olympics, were carried out by individuals and groups with ties to the Christian Identity and Christian Patriot movements; including the Aryan Nations and the Lambs of Christ.^{[47]:105–120} A group called Concerned Christians unsuccessfully planned to to attack holy sites in Jerusalem at the end of 1999, believing that their deaths would "lead them to heaven."^[48][49]

[edit] Motivation, ideology and theology

Christian views on abortion have been cited by Christian individuals and groups that are responsible for threats, assault, murder, and bombings against abortion clinics and doctors across the United States and Canada.

Christian Identity is a loosely affiliated global group of churches and individuals devoted to a racialized theology that asserts North European whites are the direct descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, God's chosen people. It has been associated with groups such as the Aryan Nations, Aryan Republican Army, Eric Robert Rudolph, Phineas Priesthood, and The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord. It has been cited as an influence in a number of terrorist attacks around the world, including including the 2002 Soweto bombings.^{[50][51][52][53]}

But it is argued that there is a disconnect between what these terrorists do and what the code they claim to follow actually asserts, and that ultimately Biblical Christianity doesn't promote terrorism; terrorism is the exception to the rule.^[54]

[edit] See also

Christian pacifism Hate groups

Islamic terrorism Jewish terrorism

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• Mason, Carol. 2002. Killing for Life: The Apocalyptic Narrative of Pro-Life Politics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
• Zeskind, Leonard. 1987. The ‘Christian Identity’ Movement, [booklet]. Atlanta, Georgia: Center for Democratic Renewal/Division of Church and Society, National Council of Churches.