Investigate Radical Christianity? Yeah, Why Not

And on the other hand, we have recent “radical Christian” acts of violence committed by people who invoked the Bible and Church teaching to explain and justify their deeds, including — no one at all. Not one. Even the much-vaunted abortion clinic bombers number only a handful, versus nearly 19,000 jihad attacks around the world since 9/11, and have been repudiated by all Christian sects and leaders — as opposed to the many Islamic authorities that teach jihad warfare against unbelievers and exhort their faithful to commit acts of violent jihad.

Rosie O’Donnell enunciated the idea memorably a few years ago: “radical Christianity is just as dangerous as radical Islam.” Since then, this has become a commonplace of mainstream media political discourse — remarkably enough, since it has absolutely no evidence to back it up.

Emblematic of how hard it is to find a “radical Christian” — that is, someone driven to violence by the teachings of Christianity, as opposed to genuinely radical Christians like Mother Teresa and the Amish — is that when Green spoke about “the radicalization of Christianity,” he was actually referring to Islamic jihadists, not to Christians at all.

Green was apparently referring to Colleen LaRose, aka “Jihad Jane,” a convert to Islam from Pennsylvania who plotted to murder a Swedish cartoonist, Lars Vilks, for drawing a cartoon of the Muslim prophet Muhammad. If LaRose had remained a Christian, of course, she never would have been moved to kill by a cartoon of Muhammad; her crime has nothing to do with Christianity and everything to do with Islam. And so here again, the moral equivalence that Rosie O’Donnell stated baldly and that Green was apparently reaching for founders on the facts. 

Yet Green soldiered on, concluding: “I do know what it feels like to look like a Muslim in the minds of some people and to be demeaned in a public venue. I look forward to the day that we’ll have that hearing that deals with the radicalization of Christians in America.”

So do I, in fact. Investigate radical Christianity! If such a hearing were held with any degree of honesty, it couldn’t help but shed light on the fact that Islam has a unique capacity to incite its adherents to violence today, in a way that neither Christianity nor any other religion shares. And that realization, contrary as it is to official government and media assumptions, could go a long way toward focusing law enforcement upon the real problem the nation faces today, instead of upon politically correct fictions. Much as that prospect may infuriate Congressman Al Green.