It has happened again. The sick twisted intertwining of conservative ideology, religion, and violence. Violence that kills.
This time it was a killing the Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, TN. The most recent report on this is that Adkisson killed two people and wounded 5 more because of the church's liberal views. And of course he refers to gays. He selected this church, some 20 miles away from his house only because of their liberal views.
That apparently gave him the right to do this. Right.
Knoxville is just down the road from where I live. It's conservative, like most of East Tennessee. Frightfully conservative actually. And much of that conservatism stems from a religious/theological conservatism. This is truly the "buckle of the bible belt." But that gives no-one a right to kill, to maim, to terrorize.
Here is the crux of my dilemma: I am a Christian. I am a theologically conservative Christian. I am waiting for similar theologically conservative Christians to cry out in anger and disgust over this abomination in Knoxville.
If you believe at all in Jesus, in the Bible, then love and peace and justice trump everything else. To somehow accept that it is OK to target a unitarian church, or any church, or a Wikan group, or a gathering of atheists... it is all so contrary to the gospel, to everything Christians should believe.
In 1999, my oldest brother and his partner were murdered in Northern California simply because they were gay. Murdered in bed. Without warning. Simply for loving one another.
And he was murdered by a couple of brothers who did it in the name of a supposed faith in Jesus Christ. This is the height of religious afrontery and abomination -- to use a pure faith for unseemly violence. And for me, who assured my brother that my faith, Christianity, really did not want to do harm to him or his friends.... well, I was proven a liar. And so I hang my head in shame. As much because of the killers and their reason, but also because too few stood up to say "WRONG."
It is simply time to call all this violence against religion or in the name of religion for what it is: a hate crime.
The really sad thing to me is that it so sullies everything I bleieve it and hold dear. Christianity does not promote violence. Islam does not promote violence. Judaism does not promote violence. Buddhism does not promote violence. Every person or group of persons who then turns their faith into a cause to kill is destroying the very base of what it means to be good.