Over the weekend CNN reported Anders Behrig Brevik, the suspect accused of massacring dozens of youth at a Norway retreat center, returned to the scene of the shooting as part of a police investigation. As many can recall, numerous mainstream media (MSM) news sources began reporting that on Friday, July 22, 2011, there was a bombing of government offices in Oslo, Norway, and a connected shooting at a youth summer camp on Utoya Island, which left seventy-seven people dead. [1] The person who confessed to carrying out the attacks being the thirty-two-year-old Norwegian named Anders Behrig Breivik, who was arrested on the same day. [2] MSM sources such as CNN, MSNBC, and The New York Times describe Breivik as a “right-wing fundamentalist Christian” opposed to multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to Norway. Even “Christian” news sources like The Christian Post recapitulated the “right-wing fundamentalist Christian” label to describe Breivek.
Christ’s followers can certainly mourn with those who mourn over this tragedy; however, when mass murderers are labeled “right-wing fundamentalist Christian,” all are encouraged to use discernment in determining truth from error. One must ask, “Just what is a right-wing fundamentalist Christian?” The term right-wing has broad connotations, and it can be used in reference to views expressed in biblical Christianity as well as unbiblical pseudo-Christian ideologies such as those associated with militant extremist groups like Christian Identity and America’s Patriot Movement. As news reports continue to update the situation, one finds Breivik’s views are more akin to the latter than the former.
CNN offered readers’ comments on the question: “Should Breivik be called a Christian fundamentalist?” In a Washington Post op-ed piece entitled “When Christianity becomes lethal,” Susan Brooks Thislethwaite, professor at Chicago Theological Seminary, finds the term Christian fundamentalism to be “less helpful today in understanding right-wing Christianity,” but laments that “Christians are often reluctant to see…connections their religion and extreme violence.” The distinction between biblical Christianity and unbiblical pseudo-Christian ideologies is simply indiscernible in her article.
Biblical Christianity has good reason to reject multiculturalism’s moral relativism and liberal intolerance. Scripture also teaches Jesus is the only way; however, this truth claim is certainly not the grounds for any evil done in Christ’s name, and criticisms on the purported biblical justification of holy wars and divine genocide simply hold no water.
“The one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him” (Prov. 18:17, ESV).
—Warren Nozaki
Notes:
- CNN Wire Staff, “Norway Honors Victims of Terrorist Attacks,” http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/29/norway.attacks/index.html?iref=allsearch
- Cf. CNN Wire Staff, “Timeline: Recounting Norway’s three-hour nightmare,” http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/07/24/norway.terror.timeline/index.html?iref=allsearch
