Pretty pathetic that he cannot see the lunatic was motivated politically... Emphasis on lunatic and pathetic.
Was Anders Breivik Really a Christian?
By Timothy Dalrymple, July 25, 2011 2:59 pm
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What do we do with the fact that Anders Behring Breivik — the perpetrator of a terrorist attack in downtown Oslo and the mass murder of children on the nearby island of Utoya — identifies himself as a Christian? How do we make sense of the fact that he refers three times in his “European Declaration of Independence” to the “Lord Jesus Christ”?
1. First, before we say anything else, absolutely the first response of every Christian without exception must be unqualified condemnation of the horrific, disturbing, and profoundly sinful actions Breivik took last Friday. As I’ve written before, on occasion I’ve been frustrated when moderate Muslims fail to condemn acts of terrorism as loudly and unequivocally as possible; yet I understand how Muslims resent that the American public associates them with terrorism and looks to them for a response. The implication is that the moderates are somehow accountable for the actions of the fringe, and it’s incumbent upon them to distance themselves from the madmen who detonate school buses and attack summer camps.
I too resent the implication that I have to offer some sort of account for Breivik’s action. It should be abundantly clear that I have nothing to do with him. And yet – and yet – I do need to condemn his actions. Every Christian does. Every person of good will does. An act of such extraordinary moral monstrosity must, before anything else, be buried beneath an avalanche of condemnation. Christians should always be humbly willing to examine whether a cancer might be growing within their midst, a cancer that is hidden within the body because Christians assume that everyone in their community shares their best intentions. Extremists arise everywhere, and we ought not assume that our ranks are free of them. So let us respond with the moral clarity to call evil evil, and the humility to examine the record and consider whether our actions or inactions, the things we’ve said or left unsaid, could have contributed to the worldview of the madman.
2. Second, we should clarify precisely what kind of “Christian” Anders Breivik is. Because, as it turns out, he’s not much of a Christian at all, at least by ordinary definitions of the term.
Anders Breivik
Raised in a secular household, Breivik went from “moderately agnostic” to “moderately religious” and was baptized and confirmed in the Norwegian State Church at the age of 15. He is consistently critical of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church (which he thinks has served its purpose and should reassimilate into the Catholic Church, in order to give a united front against Islam), as he believes both have abdicated their responsibility to defend Christian subjects against an Islamic invasion.
Then, square in the middle of his sprawling 1500-page manifesto, in a section (3.139) entitled “Distinguishing between cultural Christendom and religious Christendom,” Breivik himself tells us what kind of Christian he is. He argues that the inheritors of western Christendom are all, whether they like it or not, cultural Christians. Some are liberal cultural Christians, engaged in a massive act of cultural suicide by facilitating Islam’s demographic conquest of Europe. Others are conservative cultural Christians, such as himself, who have recognized the threat of Islamicization and the infection of a weak and accommodationist “cultural Marxist multi-culturalism” in the elite sphere of European society. Conservative cultural “Christians” should arm themselves for the new Crusade to reassert Christian cultural hegemony and drive the Islamic threat from European lands. As for religious Christians:
If you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God then you are a religious Christian. Myself and many more like me do not necessarily have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and God. We do however believe in Christianity as a cultural, social, identity and moral platform. This makes us Christian.
Well, no, actually it doesn’t make you a Christian. Most believers – liberal and conservative alike – decry the notion of “cultural Christendom,” or the theory that a person could be Christian by participating in the outward forms of Christianity while abandoning its inward beliefs, values and relationships. Breivik several times asserts the superior authority of logic and science, and clarifies his commitment to “Christendom” as a monoculture, not “Christianity” as a life of personal devotion to Jesus Christ. Breivik does not see himself as a follower of Jesus Christ, but as a Crusader defending Christendom from Islamicization. He does not defend Christianity as a system of beliefs, stories and existential commitments; he defends Christendom as his own side in the clash of civilizations.
Breivik demonstrates no belief in the deity of Christ, in part because he’s not really sure that there is any God at all. Although he says that those who live “under full surrender with God the Father” will receive his “anointing” for battle, he also says that belief in God is a crutch in the face of death. He writes:
I’m not going to pretend I’m a very religious person as that would be a lie. I’ve always been very pragmatic and influenced by my secular surroundings and environment…Religion is a crutch for many weak people and many embrace religion for self serving reasons as a source for drawing mental strength…Since I am not a hypocrite, I’ll say directly that this is my agenda as well. However, I have not yet felt the need to ask God for strength, yet…But I’m pretty sure I will pray to God as I’m rushing through my city, guns blazing…
Breivik describes how he will be on a steroid rush in the midst of the attack, listening to his iPod (perhaps Clint Mansell’s Lux Aeterna, he says), in order to ward off fear. He explains that he chooses to pray and believe in God in order to overcome the fear of death. He recommends other martyr-crusaders do the same, as religion is “ESSENTIAL in martyrdom operations.”
So, while it was obviously wrong for some commentators to rush to the assumption that this attack in Norway was perpetrated by a Muslim, it is a dramatic mischaracterization to say that it was perpetrated by a “Christian fundamentalist.” He might have been a “cultural Christian” by some definition, and a political fundamentalist, but he was certainly no “fundamentalist Christian.” It’s important to be clear: by almost every definition, Anders Behring Breivik was no Christian at all.
3. Finally, Christians should consider how they can build relationships of mutual respect and understanding across religious boundaries, and should understand the distinction between cultural and religious differences. Breivik is critical of George W. Bush, among others, for saying that our war is not with Islam. Yet Breivik’s atrocity illustrates the wisdom and the importance of this approach. As a matter of fact, there may be a sort of implicit, long-term struggle underway between different cultures and different civilizations, in the way that cultures and civilizations evolve and grow or else fade into obscurity. Yet this is not remotely the same thing as a religious war, and what is emerging may minimize cultural differences and let the truly religious and spiritual differences come through more clearly.
Christianity is not a cultural system. In fact, in those cases where it has become so intertwined with a culture that the two cannot be separated, this is inevitably to the detriment of Christianity. Christianity is fundamentally a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, a community and a way of life, all wrapped up in historical, moral and theological beliefs, values and commitments. These things are not culture and civilization. They shape culture and civilization. They ground and judge culture and civilization, and they can be expressed in a variety of cultures and civilizations. But if we grow committed to the culture and civilization, while the faith and spirituality are hollowed out of them, then we worship empty idols.
All of the western monotheistic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have violent elements in their sacred texts and histories, bloodstained threads that run through the tapestries of their stories. Christianity and Judaism had largely excised or decisively reinterpreted those elements by the time of the Enlightenment. It’s telling that Breivik had to look back to a medieval order (the Knights Templar) to find a version of Christianity that would arm and equip him for a battle with Islam. But even as we encourage those remaining pockets of extremists within contemporary Islam to reassess and reinterpret the violent threads in its scriptures and stories, we need to make sure that no one else, like Breivik, draws those violent threads out of Christianity and leaves the rest behind. If Breivik had been a “religious Christian,” and not merely a “cultural Christian” who chose to honor the most violent strains of Christendom’s cultural history, it almost certainly would have prevented him from taking the actions he took.
Uncategorized | Anders Breivik, atrocity, Christian, Christianity, conservative politics, evangelical, Evangelicalism, fundamentalist, fundamentalist Christian, liberal politics, Norway, Oslo, politics
25 Responses to “Was Anders Breivik Really a Christian?”
Adrian in NZ says:
July 25, 2011 at 3:09 pm
Thank you for this very clear clarification, Tim. That’s really helpful.
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Ted Olsen says:
July 25, 2011 at 4:34 pm
“Absolutely the first response of every Christian without exception must be unqualified condemnation.”
Why? Especially: Why so many superlatives (“Absolutely … first … every … without exception … unqualified”)?
Are you saying that my mother is derelict in her Christian duties by not finding some blog or call-in radio show or Facebook wall so that she can register her “unqualified condemnation”?
You can’t possibly mean this. And you can’t possibly mean that any Christian who rushed to help the wounded was wrong because their “first response” was not condemnation.
So what do you mean?
And does it hold true for every bad act that someone does? For every bad act that person does who claims some kind of connection to Christianity, however un-Christian or anti-Christian their religious beliefs are?
In such a case, wouldn’t we just be walking around condemning things all day? Evil is all around us.
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C & C Admin 1 says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:10 pm
Ted, I hate to speak so frankly to a senior person in my business, but this is absurd. *Of course* I’m not saying (a) that your grandmother must call a radio show, (b) that first responders should have paused to condemn the act, or (c) that Christians must condemn every bad act. You know full well that’s not what was meant. Can’t we have conversations without taking things to extremes like this? Do I really have to fill my writing with qualifications like “Bear in mind: I don’t mean first responders?” or can I just assume that readers will be, you know, reasonable?
A reasonable construal of my comments would be: I am encouraging the audience to whom I speak, largely an American Christian audience, writing three days after the fact, that when the question of Breivik’s actions comes up, they should first condemn those actions before they go on to contextualize them. I think it’s important first, especially since Christians often ask this of Muslims, to condemn the act clearly and unanimously, and then to be open about where the evidence leads. Was this guy really a Christian? What if there is something sinister in Christian culture that needs to be removed? Those are empirical questions and we should be open to the answers. But it’s only after condemning the act and making ourselves open to the evidence that we can, after looking at the evidence, authentically show that he is not a Christian. Otherwise, if we go straight to the “Yes what he did was bad but…” or “What he did should be seen in context,” then it’s going to come across as inauthentic.
I do think it’s incumbent upon those of us who have a public Christian platform – like you – to condemn an act of this magnitude carried out in the name of “our Lord Jesus Christ,” assess it, and respond. It will be used by those with anti-Christian agendas to tarnish the Christian faith. It already is being used in that way. But if we respond with moral clarity, but also humility, and then with evidence reasonably presented, we’ll get a lot further than refusing to answer or weaseling out of the question.
-Tim
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Ted Olsen says:
July 25, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Meh. I’m not so senior. At least, I hope, not yet! Besides, please do be frank. It’s your party I’ve entered here!
As you say, “this is absurd,” and I knew you agreed (see my comment that “You can’t possibly mean this.”) You may find my questions extreme, but they are too real: the language in your initial post is along the lines I hear all the time about how it is incumbent upon every Christian to speak against the evil of X (fill in whatever issue the speaker cares deeply about: homophobia, sexual trafficking, the prosperity gospel, etc.) A week doesn’t go by that I don’t see someone claiming that every pastor or every church needs to address some specific social ill. Likewise, I regularly hear how Christians must apologize for the sins of their fellows, however distant relatives or strangers they may be.
Now, hearing you explain your comments, I understand that you’re taking more of the brunt of this criticism than you probably deserve. But I still reject the notion that we can’t say anything in the context of evil without first spending a significant amount of time condemning the evil.
I just don’t see anything in Scripture requiring us to condemn every evil (nor do I think it’s a rhetorical necessity, but that’s a separate issue). Different people are going to be called to different issues. And different people are going to have different important points to make as issues arise.
Look for a moment at Jesus’ response when he heard about the Galileans slain by Pilate (Luke 13). He does not condemn Pilate at that moment. He does not even address the evil. He has a different point to make: “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”
It is not the answer that those coming to Jesus were expecting. It is not the answer they were hoping for. He did not worry about how the answer would affect his reputation. He had a point to make, and he made it: Repent or perish.
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:02 pm
“Christianity and Judaism had largely excised or decisively reinterpreted those elements by the time of the Enlightenment?”
I strongly disagree. Many (probably most) of my Christian friends have fused their religion and their patriotism which, they will be quick to tell you, may just require you to kill your enemy instead of loving them.
Few things make Christians angrier than a discussion over Jesus’ instruction to love your enemies. They hate it. Far from excising the idea of violence from their theology, American Christians celebrate it for the sake of patriotism and ethnocentrism.
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C & C Admin 1 says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:22 pm
Wyatt, I would like you to produce those Christians who hate discussing love for enemies and who believe their religion and patriotism require them to kill their enemies instead of love them. If you could have them introduce themselves, that would be great.
-Tim
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:06 pm
I’ll be happy to do that, Tim, although I’ll have to dig up a facebook post I made a few months back. Two comments I specifically remember were: 1) “I say ‘kill ‘em all, and let God sort ‘em out” (from a lady with whom I attend church), and 2) “I’m more of an ‘eye-for-an-eye; person myself.” Something to that effect, two different people. As I recall, both were made in the context of a discussion on Islam, so it’s very apropos. I must say, I’m surprised you don’t seem to believe these people exist. In academia, maybe not so much…
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C & C Admin 1 says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Thanks, Wyatt. I expect these people to explain why they believe their faith requires them to kill your enemy instead of loving them. And…only two? And people over Facebook? People say just about anything on Facebook. But I’m sure they’ll agree with what you said. And if “2? constitutes “many” (or even “most”) of the Christians you know, then you have a pretty small sample pool.
-Tim
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:22 pm
I’m still looking. But I’ve increased my sample size to three now: huffingtonpost.com
kevin s. says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:45 pm
“Few things make Christians angrier than a discussion over Jesus’ instruction to love your enemies. They hate it.”
No, they reject your interpretation of it, especially insofar as it just so happens to accord with your political view.
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:05 pm
And what is my political view, Kevin?
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kevin s. says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:30 pm
On war? You are a pacifist, or something close. Either way, you synopsis is not remotely fair, and so I’d question your motivation for creating a straw man.
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:50 pm
If, by pacifist, you mean someone who doesn’t believe in killing people, then yeah, I am one of those.
But this is no “straw man” argument; I disagree with Tim’s statement about Christians having “excised” violent OT passages from their theology. I’m pretty sure most American Christians believe Jesus is gonna come back with a sword and a whole lot of Christians to wage physical warfare on the enemies of God. Ergo, violence is still very much a part of the theology of many, if not most, American Christians.
stergeye says:
July 25, 2011 at 7:02 pm
You draw a false distinction. Like most Christians, I find the command to love my enemies to be very hard.
But the command is to LOVE my enemies, not make excuses for them, or pretend that they’re not odious or hateful when they very plainly are.
The history of the Christian West is replete with numerous examples of the failure to live up to this, or any of the commandments. You can point to all the examples of individual failures of Christians to live up to the demands of Charity that you like, but can you name a Christian martyr or saint who is celebrated for killing people?
Can you find a single individual on any Christian website anywhere who offers anything except condemnation for Breivik? I can find you hundreds of Islamic sites which call the murderers of 9/11 as heroes.
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Wyatt Roberts says:
July 25, 2011 at 9:18 pm
What is your point about Islamic sites and 9/11? It’s true that Christians have condemned Breivik, but so have the leaders of most Islamic countries.
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Jeremy says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:36 pm
I agree with a lot of this article which is well-judged and insightful, except that I think imposing such a sharp distinction between ‘cultural’ and ‘religious’ Christians can cause those of us with affiliation to the latter to feel somewhat superior. ‘Cultural’ Christians could act like this, but not a TRUE Christian, etc.
‘Religious’ Christians have at times been among the worst offenders in the bloodstained history, to the church’s shame. Many Knights Templar may have been mere mercenaries flying the Christian flag; I suspect others will have been deeply motivated by their religious impulses. The madness of the Inquisition is not far from the faith-filled. I wholeheartedly agree that a living faith is one of the best motivators to the kind of peace-making this article aspires to; I’m just less confident that being the right side of the line will guarantee that we do what’s right.
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A H Selle says:
July 25, 2011 at 5:43 pm
I read your excellent article on Crosswalk.com. One important matter I would like to add: Leaders from true Christian churches world-wide must rise up and speak with a united voice, “This wicked man is NOT a Christian. He is without Christ and lost and destined for hell! Yet he could still be saved if he were to repent and believe the TRUE Gospel instead of his blasphemous false one.” I have often wished that moderate Muslims would clearly declare, “Islamist terrorists are NOT Muslims. They are hypocrites.” Now the tables are turned on us. For the honor of name of Christ, the world Church must publicly excommunicate this Norwegian mass murderer. See Matt 18:17-18; 1 Cor 5:4-5).
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Paul says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:04 pm
Of course he isn’t a real Christian, but neither are most of the fundamentalist “Christians” in the United States, including fellas like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and George W.
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C & C Admin 1 says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:11 pm
George W. was a pretty run-of-the-mill evangelical Methodist, not a fundamentalist.
-Tim
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Nic says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:40 pm
I would caution you that not every church-attending person is actually a believer in Christ. Attending church doesn’t make you a Christian. Just as being a Templar Knight doesn’t make you a Christian. Having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and acknowledging/accepting what he did on the cross for us, does.
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stergeye says:
July 25, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Thank you Timothy, for delving into the fever swamp of Breivik’s manifesto deep enough to uncover the nature of his “Christian” self-identification. I gave up after viewing about 10 minutes of his video post.
For true Christians, the very fact that he planted bombs and murdered mass numbers of young people sufficiently tells us that his religious beliefs are heterodox. One will search the long list of Christian martyrs in vain to find one whose life is celebrated for all the infidels he killed.
Those who try to draw equivalence with Islamic terror overlook such critical distinctions such as the fact that there are no Christian spokesmen of ANY denomination ANYWHERE who are celebrating his actions, or even offering the slightest shade of justification for them. Nobody passed out candy to strangers, as Palestinians did in celebration after the murder of Jewish infants and children in Israel last April. There’s no chance of streets, schools, or housing projects being named after him.
You are right that all Christians must condemn Breivik’s actions. They are not the actions of someone remotely Christian. We must also pray for the victims and their families, and that Breivik comes to comprehend the awful nature of his crime. Given that the maximum sentence he’s facing in Norway will put him back on the street by age 53 at the latest, we’d better pray for the last one with particular fervency.
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John Haas says:
July 25, 2011 at 9:01 pm
“All of the western monotheistic traditions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have violent elements in their sacred texts and histories, bloodstained threads that run through the tapestries of their stories. Christianity and Judaism had largely excised or decisively reinterpreted those elements by the time of the Enlightenment.”
This is true as far as it goes, but it leaves out a huge part of the story: the entwining of (much of) Christianity since the 1600s with the nation state by way of civil religion (with a parallel development between certain branches of Judaism and the state of Israel).
While it is true that neither the churches nor the state embark on “Holy Wars” in their medieval form anymore, some/most American Christians have fused a sense of providential destiny to the nation, speak of it as sacred, and regard its wars inherently spiritual contests that God oversees and wills.
In this, as you say, theology plays a less important role than politics. While Jerry Falwell might publish an op-ed titled “God is Pro-War” in the run-up to the Iraq War, it seems clear that what was driving Falwell–like most American Christians–was his allegiance to the state–or perhaps only to a particular political party–and went on a proof-texting hunt after the fact.
Still, was not Falwell’s “Americanism” an essential part of his religion (and is not the same true for the large majority of American Christians)? And is it not this civil religion which moves to center stage (at least for awhile), determining what to support and what do oppose, during war-time?
It can be very hard–even impossible–to determine quite where “real” Christianity stops and civil religion begins in any individual or church. And so, while civil religion acts through the instrumentation of the largely secular state (unlike Islam in its more conservative iterations), its practical, real-time entwining with Christianity (or Judaism) means that, while important things have changed since the Enlightenment, a lot of equally important things have not. |
