Anti-Christian Mood Seen In Texas Killings

By Andrea Billups
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

September 17, 1999

A "virile and fertile" anti-Christian sentiment is growing around the country, religious groups said Thursday, a day after a gunman spouting blasphemous rhetoric burst into a youth service at a Fort Worth Baptist church and fatally shot seven persons.

"I believe there is a growing climate of hostility that is directed against Christians . . . who find themselves as the targets of a great hostility in this culture," said William Merrell, a spokesman for the Southern Baptist Convention.

A "disturbing double standard" is evident in the way attacks on Christians are viewed compared with crimes against other groups, a spokesman for the Family Research Council said.

From the Matthew Shepard murder in Wyoming last year to the shootings last month at a Jewish community center in California, the media and many politicians moved swiftly to label those episodes of violence "hate crimes," said Robert Regnier, a cultural studies writer at the FRC.

In the Texas church shootings, he said, "I just don't see any of that."

Republican presidential candidate Gary Bauer urged the Justice Department "to determine if a pattern of crimes against men and women of faith exists" in such crimes as Wednesday's shootings at Wedgwood Baptist Church in Fort Worth.

Citing the 1997 shootings of a high school prayer group in Paducah, Ky., and the April murders of Christian students at Columbine High School in Colorado, Mr. Bauer said Americans are "witnessing a disturbing pattern."

Attorney General Janet Reno warned reporters that it was too early to characterize the Fort Worth shooting as a "hate crime," but said law enforcement authorities on the scene would uncover the facts.

"We must get answers and must move carefully to make sure that we understand exactly what happened so that we can take the most effective action possible," she said. "We should not jump to conclusions."

In recent years, politicians and others have frequently blamed "hatred" for headline-making crimes. After the April 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, President Clinton named G. Gordon Liddy among the conservative talk-show hosts he called "purveyors of hatred and division," saying they were "encouraging violence."

Concerned over arson attacks on black churches in 1996, civil rights leader Joseph Lowery accused the Christian Coalition of fostering an "extremist climate." Gay-rights advocate Joan M. Garry suggested last fall's murder of Mr. Shepard, a homosexual university student, was the result of a conservative anti-homosexuality campaign she said "fuels the fires of bigotry."

Anti-Christian bias as a crime motive is routinely ignored by the news media, said Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Council.

"The media were very quick in August to draw the conclusion that the shooter at the Los Angeles Jewish community center was motivated by anti-Semitism," Mr. Baker said, but with Wednesday's shootings at the Texas church, reporters are "being much more hesitant to assign a motive."

When 14-year-old Michael Carneal killed three students praying at a Paducah high school, religious bias "was never a theme raised on TV networks, that this guy was anti-Christian," Mr. Baker said. Instead, reporters focused on Carneal's parents and the influence of violent entertainment, he said, although "it became quite clear later on that [anti-religious sentiment] was the motivation."

"When it is a particular minority group that's attacked, the media assume that's the reason for the attack," Mr. Baker said. "When it happens to Christians, the media don't assume that at all."

Mr. Merrell of the Southern Baptist Convention agreed that crimes committed against Christians often are treated differently. "It does not pass our notice that there are many who appeal to the populace for hate crimes legislation when certain groups are targeted, but remain curiously silent when other groups are," he said, adding that the "virile and fertile culture" of hostility to Christians is "growing rapidly."

The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy, executive director of the Interfaith Alliance Foundation, said he doubts there is a climate of violence directed at religious groups, but fears some people will use episodes like Wednesday's shootings "to try to politicize yet another tragedy."

"I don't think we're seeing a concerted effort of attack on people of faith," said Mr. Gaddy, who used to live near the Fort Worth church where the shootings occurred. He blamed "a high level of anger, frustration and mental illness among people in our society who have a ready accessibility to weapons" for the killings.

Others, however, have compared increased suspicion toward Christians to the Roman Empire's persecution of the early church.

Harold O.J. Brown of the Howard Center for the Family, Religion and Society wrote in March that he saw a "similarity between the way the Roman authorities charged Christians of that era with "odium humani generis" [hatred of the human race] and the way the political and media establishment charge the Christians with creating a "climate of hate." David Overstreet, national director of field ministries for the National Network of Youth Ministries, said Christians have endured persecution throughout the ages.

As evidenced by the targeting of Christians in the Columbine and Paducah shootings, however, "there is a heightened potential for prejudice on school campuses," he said. Mr. Overstreet blamed a collapse of moral standards for producing what he called "a growing culture of violence."