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Christian terrorism is terrorism that the perpetrator claims is performed in furtherance of Christian goals or teachings; This distinguishes Christian terrorism per se from criminal acts performed by people who merely happen to be Christians. Examples include the Ku Klux Klan, Adolf Hitler and Nazism, James Charles Kopp's shooting of abortion provider Dr. Barnett Slepian, and the tactics of strategic rape, and abduction and conscription of children by the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda.

Mainstream believers consider these acts to be egregious violations of the religion's ethics. They regularly condemn all acts of terrorism, including those perpetrated by self-professed Christian terrorists. The violent Christian Identity movement, for instance, is regarded as a highly un-Christian organization by most non-members.

History

In Europe during the middle ages, acts that would be described as Christian terrorism in the modern definition may include the invasion and forcible religious conversion of pagan Lithuania by the Teutonic Knights in the 1100s, as well as various acts committed during the conflicts of the Reformation. However, because such events typically accompanied broader military conflicts and conflicts between sovereigns (which quite frequently involved substantial issues of traditional political warfare related only tangentially, if at all, to religion), it is sometimes difficult to precisely attribute such acts to Christian terrorism, or simply to wartime atrocities that happened to involve aspects of religious conflict.

November 5 in Great Britain is a major celebration of the foiling of the Roman Catholic inspired Gunpowder Plot in 1605 when a group of terrorists tried to blow up the Protestant English leadership at the opening of Parliament. A major part of Bonfire Night is the burning of the effigy of the bomber Guy Fawkes who was hanged, drawn and quartered for his part in the plot.

See also Protestant and Roman Catholic conflicts which resulted in terroristic acts, often on a huge scale. Reformation, Counter-Reformation, Inquisition, Thirty Years War, Wars of the Three Kingdoms (English Civil War).

Groups or individuals that commit acts termed Christian terrorism are frequently not exclusively motivated by their beliefs about Christianity. Often, their activities correspond to pre-existing ethnic or social conflicts—for example, the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which has root causes traceable as far back as the Norman invasion of Ireland. While some of the Christian terrorist groups active today may be motivated by the prospect of converting subjects to join their faith, others have territorial/political motives for fighting. Still others have more in common with Nazi ideology than with religious ideology, and work primarily with racist ideals, such as white supremacy (see, for example, the Christian Identity movement).

In Sri Lanka, a Buddhist political party Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU) claims that Christians attempt to forcibly convert Buddhists to Christianity.

Christian terrorism in the United States

In the United States, the most frequent examples of Christian terrorism include the intimidation of abortion clinic employees and patrons, and the murder of abortion providers by (occasionally self-professed Christian) anti-abortion extremists.

Recently the controversy over Terri Schiavo's death has caused many extremist Christians to make death threats against Schiavo's husband and Judge George Greer, who ordered the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube to be pulled. One man had planned to kidnap Mrs. Schiavo from the hospice where she was in a plan that most likely would have involved violence, but police had stopped him.

Eric Rudolph engaged in terrorist activities closely associated with Christian terrorism, such as the targeting of abortion clinics and the bombing of a gay nightclub; also, Rudolph had been suspected to be associated with the Christian Identity organization. However, Rudolph has himself refuted such associations, writing that he "prefers Nietzsche to the Bible" and espousing an Atheistic philosophy.

List of Christian Terrorist Organizations

• Christian Identity movement
• Freedomites (also Svobodniki or Sons of Freedom, Canada, 1902-present)
• Ku Klux Klan (A racist Protestant Christian organization founded during the Reconstruction period in the former Confederate States of America)
• The Order (1980s-present)

Other Christian-related terror groups with nationalist motivations include:

• Lord's Resistance Army (Christian/Pagan) (1987-present) (Uganda)
• Nagaland Rebels (1948-present) (Nagaland), including:
  • The National Liberation Front of Tripura
• God's Army (a rebel faction of the Karen ethnic minority in Burma)

See also

• Antisemitism
• Religious terrorism
• Christian patriot
• Islamic extremist terrorism

• Christianity
• Terrorism