Is this man a “Christian fundamentalist”? The Atlantic thinks so. It titles its profile of Anders Behring Breivik, “The Christian Extremist Suspect in Norway’s Massacre.” But note the URL: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2011/07/christian-fundamentalist-charged-death-toll-norway-soars-past-90/40321/. Over at GetReligion.org, Mollie Hemingway asks a few impertinent questions about this article. If you’d like to make up your own mind, try reading Behring’s 1500-word 2083: A Declaration of European Independence. You can also sift through comments he made on the site, Document.no. Evidently, he plagiarized key passages of the Unabomber’s manifesto. Atheist P. Z. Myers scanned 2083 and highlights several interesting passages, including one where Behring admits, “I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie.” In my opinion, that pretty much answers the question I asked at the outset of this paragraph.
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“Anders Breivik is not Christian but anti-Islam”:
The Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, who shot dead more than 90 young socialists at their summer camp on Friday after mounting a huge bomb attack on the centre of Oslo, has been described as a fundamentalist Christian. Yet he published enough of his thoughts on the internet to make it clear that even in his saner moments his ideology had nothing to do with Christianity but was based on an atavistic horror of Muslims and a loathing of “Marxists”, by which he meant anyone to the left of Genghis Khan.
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Despite what the Norwegian authorities suggested over the weekend, those beliefs probably aren’t a form of Christian fundamentalism. Breivik’s writings bear no resemblance to the theology of a Jerry Falwell or an Oral Roberts, and his nominal Christianity (“I guess I’m not an excessively religious man,” he writes at one point) seems to be more of an expression of European identity politics and anti-Islamic chauvinism than any genuine religious fervor.
But it’s fair to call Breivik a right-winger. As Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz put it, the Norwegian killer is “exactly the kind of psychotic ideologue of the right so many in this country instantly assumed Jared Loughner, the schizophrenic who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords” to be. His compendium quotes repeatedly from conservative writers on both sides of the Atlantic, and it’s filled with attacks on familiar right-wing targets: Secularism and political correctness; the European Union and the sexual revolution; radical Islam and the academic left.
Indeed, stripped of their context, some of his critiques of multiculturalism and immigration resemble arguments that have been advanced, not just by Europe’s far-right parties, but by mainstream conservative leaders such as David Cameron in Britain, Angela Merkel in Germany and Nicolas Sarkozy in France.
This means that last week’s tragedy is also a political opportunity for Europe’s left-of-center politicians, should they choose to respond to Breivik’s rampage the way President Bill Clinton responded to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.
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“Christian Terror in Norway: I Predicted Terror from the Religious Right in My New Book ‘Sex, Mom and God’”: Frank Schaeffer has pretty much lost his mind. “My family was part of the far right/violent right’s rise in the 1970s and 80s when we helped create the ‘pro-life’ movement come into existence that in the end spawned the killers of abortion providers. These killers were literally doing what we’d called for.” Actually, I read Frank’s fathers Francis’s books in the 1980s, and even watched their movie series, Whatever Happened to the Human Race. I don’t remember any calls for violence, and all major pro-life organizations have condemned the murder of abortion providers. So “literally” evidently means “I’m making this crap up in order to sell copies of my new book.” Shame, shame, shame! Oh, and there’s always the fact that, as I noted above, Behring admitted he’s not much of a religious person.
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“They get around”: Speaking of the pro-life movement, the Beach Boys “headlined a pro-life fundraiser in Ohio.”
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“C. S. Lewis Should Be An Evangelical Reject Too”: Forget Lewis’s views on inclusivism and universalism, he smoke and drank. That alone would make him an evangelical reject.
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“Why Religion Is Better Than Secular Ethics for Human Rights”
Religious practice is based on the assumption that God desires the just and the good. Thus, suggesting that the religious are bound to do whatever God says even if God commands us to do something immoral makes no sense. It is, as the philosophers say, a counterfactual. Given that we are humans prone to mistakes, we may err in our understanding of what is just, but such a command cannot exist. I hope it is not too presumptuous to suggest that this may be true for other faiths, as well. My faith tradition commands us, over and over, that we must be holy because God is holy, that we must do justly because God is just, and that we are obligated to provide for the poor, lift up the weak and free the bound. Is that not a basis to speak about human rights?
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“What monks could teach Washington’s politicians”: Chastity, poverty, obedience? (Especially for Anthony Weiner and David Wu?) Um, no.
Our 21st century politicians are not monastics. Far from it. But they would be more effective leaders if they learned to strike a balance between personal discipline and community life, and between strong positions and hospitality. These habits create healthy spiritual and political lives, and our nation suffers — as it does today — when they are not being practiced.
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“Why evangelicals should stop evangelizing”: Carl Medearis writes, “Just because I believe that evangelicals should stop evangelizing doesn’t mean that they should to stop speaking of Jesus.” Umm, isn’t “speaking of Jesus” basically what evangelism is?
GeorgePWood.com 