The Faith-Based Militia: When is Terrorism ‘Christian’?

This essay originally appeared at Religion Dispatches. It is re-posted here in its entirety with permission.

By Frederick Clarkson

The arrest of the Michigan-based Hutaree Militia has drawn worldwide attention, and in so doing surfaced one of the knottiest issues we face as a culture to which religious freedom and free speech are so central: How do we think about and describe religiously-motivated violence?

The Hutaree’s plans to murder a police officer and use IEDs to attack the funeral procession in order to catalyze an uprising against the federal government was shocking and made headlines around the world. Their action plan, while preposterous on its face, is not terribly surprising, and is in many respects a logical outgrowth of the eschatology of a wide swath of the Christian Right. But what has been most striking to me is the media’s high-profile use of the term “Christian militia.” This suggests to me that a tectonic shift may be underway in our underlying culture and politics as we continue to struggle with how to acknowledge the realities of actual and threatened religiously-motivated violence in the United States.

Until now, of course, the elephant in the room has been our double standard, at least since 9/11. We’ve had little difficulty acknowledging religious motivations when Muslims are involved, but it’s been rare to find the word “Christian” modifying terms like “militia” and “terrorism” in mainstream discourse.

Faith-Based Terrorism?

In 2003, I reported on the trial of convicted serial anti-abortion terrorist Clayton Waagner for Salon.com. Even the fiercely pro-life Attorney General John Ashcroft described him as a terrorist. Waagner had FedExed envelopes of white powder purporting to be anthrax to some 550 reproductive rights groups and clinics. In a manifesto published on the Web site of the anti-abortion Army of God, he declared himself to be “God’s warrior” and a “terrorist,” and threatened to kill as many abortion providers as he could.

Waagner’s threats arrived during the same period when real, post-9/11 anthrax attacks on media outlets and Congress killed five people. In some cases, whole city blocks were evacuated when Waagner’s pacakges were opened. People were stripped and hosed down with Clorox by hazmat teams in protective gear.

I quoted several people who agreed that the term “Christian terrorist” is practically taboo; even as the term “Islamic terrorist” was ubiquitous. The same double standard would have applied to militias. I don’t recall the term “Christian militia” ever being used, even if a group’s motives could be fairly described as religious.

Chip Berlet, senior analyst at Political Research Associates (a progressive think tank in Somerville, Massachusetts) agreed that the press stayed away from reporting the Waagner trial in droves.