On June 1, the New York Times ran a story, “Seeking Clues on Suspect in Shooting of Doctor,” an investigation into a little known anti-abortion activist, Scott Roeder, who’d been arrested for gunning down Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, as the latter handed out bulletins in the foyer of his Wichita Lutheran church. Apparently, Roeder caught the relevant civil agencies off guard. Though they knew of his outspoken anti-abortion views and his previous forms of protest, they did not consider him dangerous—a sentiment shared by Roeder’s fellow anti-abortion activists and family members.
As the Times headline suggests, there must have been something in Roeder’s background that everyone missed, which would explain why he crossed the line from protest to murder.
Similar questions regarding the motives for murder apparently do not linger around the June 1 killing of an army recruiter, Private William A. Long, in Little Rock, Arkansas. The June 2 headline in the Times purports to give the “Report of Motive in Recruiter Attack,” and introduces the alleged killer, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, as “an American convert to Islam.”
Details of Muhammad’s connection to Islam punctuate the article: he converted to Islam several years ago, legally changing his name from Carlos Bledsoe to the very Muslim-sounding name the article uses; he recently changed his name again (for unexplained “religious reasons”) to Abdulhakim Bledsoe; he once was detained in Yemen for traveling with a fake Somali passport; the FBI investigated him for possible connections to Muslim extremist groups (which it couldn’t establish); he was angry at the United States for killing Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan; preliminary police investigation reveals “political and religious” motivation for his crime; among his personal possessions were (gasp!) CDs labeled in Arabic and papers with Arabic handwriting on them. What was the “motive in [the] recruiter attack” according to this article? Muhammad’s religion, no doubt.
But the same can be said of Scott Roeder’s motive, according to his ex-wife Lindsey Roeder; though her claim doesn’t find much support in the articles published about her ex-husband in the major media outlets. According to Ms. Roeder, about a decade ago her then-husband underwent “a drastic personality shift” and sought a scapegoat for his undisclosed woes. “First it was taxes—he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion.”
In an AP story, Ms. Roeder remarked that her ex-husband became “very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way,” and later: “That’s all [Roeder] cared about is anti-abortion. ‘The church is this. God is this.’ Yadda Yadda.”
Finally, a CNN story quotes a fellow anti-abortion activist whose assessment of Roeder’s alleged crime revolves around the fact that “[Roeder] was a confessing Christian. He always read his Bible, which wasn’t uncommon. He professed faith in Jesus Christ.”
These details about the connection of Mr. Roeder’s violent actions to his Christian faith, however, are glossed over in the Times article devoted to investigating the motivation for his actions. Instead, this article points to various other details (supposedly of the non-religious variety): his prior abortion protests and acts of vandalism at the abortion clinic; his links to the Freeman movement, Operation Rescue, and Kansas’ Patriot movement (all described as either anti-government or anti-abortion); his authorship of articles in Prayer and Action News (about which the Times provides no information); his alleged past mental illness; and his prior arrest for possessing explosives.
In sharp contrast to its article about Abdulhakim Muhammad (and virtually every article published about him in all the major media outlets), the Times’ article about Roeder ignores almost every connection of his faith to his crime, despite what his ex-wife and his activist colleague claim. The point is that although some of this information does exist, you really have to dig to find the details which are buried amid a sea of other biographical data. Some, like the Times, actually manage to exclude nearly all of the details of Roeder’s religion altogether.
The Times, however, is not unique in its reporting of either case. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News all relegate Mr. Roeder’s religious motivation to the margins, while all play up Mr. Muhammad’s connections to Islam. Unsurprisingly, Fox News’ coverage is the most extreme. Its main story about Muhammad explores his every connection to Islam, with each of the first four sentences of the story providing separate details of Muhammad’s faith, including the shocking revelation (attributed to jihadwatch.org) that while in Yemen he studied jihad with a Muslim cleric. (Fox News is not known to let a dubious source stand in the way of a good story about scary Muslims.)
In contrast, Mr. Roeder’s Christian faith is not reported on in any Fox News-authored article. Details of his biography, in fact, are kept to a bare minimum, with the articles focusing instead on Dr. Tiller’s clinic and the history of protests, vandalism and violence that he and his clinic faced over the years. One article, redolent of the logic sometimes deployed against rape victims, even implies that Tiller himself was the source of his problems, since his profession made him a natural target. By playing up the murder victim’s connection to abortion and downplaying the alleged perpetrator’s connection to Christianity and anti-government ideology, Fox News is no doubt crafting its news coverage to the ideological tastes of its generally right-leaning audience (i.e., the victim was doing something we all think is bad; the criminal’s evil motives have nothing to do with what we think is good).
Again, it would be a mistake for criticism to be focused solely on Fox News. By choosing to paint Roeder as a right-wing, anti-government, anti-tax, anti-abortionist, the Times utterly failed to explore Lindsey Roeder’s assertion about the central role of faith in her ex-husband’s alleged crime. Even more perplexing is that even as the Times ignores Ms. Roeder in exploring alternative explanations for Roeder’s crime, it ends up providing accidental and unwitting verification of Ms. Roeder’s very claim.
For example, the Times articles link Roeder to the Freeman and Patriot Movements, both of which are right-wing groups with anti-government, anti-banking, and/or anti-abortion views. What remains unreported is the fact that these views stem from each group’s commitment to the Christian Identity Movement, an extreme right-wing branch of American Christianity.
Further, while the Times’ articles do link Roeder to Operation Rescue (an active anti-abortion organization), they again neglect to include the critical information that the group promotes itself as a “Christian activist organization” that attempts “to stop abortion in obedience to biblical mandate.” And while they identify Roeder as the author of articles for the Prayer and Action News, a publication that bills itself as “a trumpet call for the Armies of God to assemble,” which mixes “Politics and Religion the way our Founding Fathers Did,” it plays up the anti-abortionist slant of the publication but fails to disclose that its views on abortion stem from its overarching and extreme right-wing version of Christianity.
The willful silence about the apparent centrality of Mr. Roeder’s faith is evidenced most glaringly in the most recent Times coverage: in the course of providing biographical details about Roeder, it has deleted his ex-wife’s link between his church and his anti-abortion activism (which the prior article actually does include). In this latest article, however, we learn a new detail about Roeder that might account for his crime—namely a recent, newly developed pattern of erratic behavior.
The Friday before he killed Dr. Tiller, Roeder invited his 22-year-old son to go to dinner and a movie; which was odd for him, claims his ex-wife, because Roeder normally celebrated the Sabbath beginning at dusk every Friday (a detail the article pursues no further). In other words, the Times fails to explore the connection between Roeder’s seemingly erratic behavior and his religious practice. For what appears to be innocuous behavior (going to dinner and a movie with his son) would not be noteworthy were it not for a more basic religious practice (Sabbath observance) that is evidently of primary importance to Roeder, and suggestive of the centrality of his faith.
Moreover, had the Times pursued this issue more deeply, it would have discovered the particular contours of Roeder’s religiosity: it is a distinctive practice of many who belong to the Christian Identity Movement to observe the Jewish Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) instead of the traditional Christian one on Sunday.
I do not know either Mr. Muhammad or Mr. Roeder, nor had I even heard of either man prior to several days ago, but I am reasonably confident that Roeder’s religious commitments supplied comparable motivation for his violent actions as did Muhammad’s for his. I am also confident, given the details unwittingly supplied in the various articles about Roeder, that he, like Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, subscribed to Identity Christianity (in contrast to other high-profile Christian abortion activists discussed in RD here, who generally arrive at their vitriolic and dangerous brands of Christianity via the Christian Reconstructionist and Dominionist theologies). An exploration, however, of Roeder’s apparent immersion in the Christian Identity Movement does not fit the dominant story line that has emerged of Roeder in news articles about him. According to these articles, he is right wing, anti-government, and anti-abortionist, with a prior arrest history and perhaps mental problems. His faith, apparently, is irrelevant.
The Times and other major news outlets have done their readers a tremendous disservice by playing down Mr. Roeder’s faith as a motivating factor in his alleged crimes. But more is going on here than simply flawed journalism. The reporting of Mr. Roeder’s and Mr. Muhammad’s alleged violent crimes is a clear indication of the generally unspoken and likely unreflective assumptions held by many Americans about the world’s two largest religions, Christianity and Islam.
The former is generally taken to be a peaceful religion that promotes what is good and virtuous; the latter as a religion of violence. The effects of these assumptions have been well discussed here on RD, including in two recent articles, one about a Doonesbury comic strip repeating a misleading and offensive caricature of the God of the Old Testament in contrast to the God of the New; the other about “Intellectualized Islamophobia.” The effect of these assumptions on recent journalism, however, is an excessive focus on the Muslim faith of one alleged killer, and an automatic disregard for the Christian faith of the other. The articles confirm what we already “know” about what turned Mr. Muhammad and Mr. Roeder into killers: the Muslim faith of the former is all the explanation required, while the Christian faith of the latter is not relevant to the explanation at all.
Tags: abortion, abortion-related violence, anti-abortion, doonesbury, george tiller, islam, islamophobia, new york times, scott roeder, white supremacy
A firm network of hate oriented Christians nurtured this aledged killer. Bishop Jackel is one. Bill O'Reilly is another. The e-mail service for Bishop Jackel is still down. The man seems to be in hiding. He ought to be forced to confess his part in killing a Lutheran health care provider.
There is a double standard in reporting Catholic hate criminals.
WAKE UP!
Whenever the Christians disagrees with your stand for "abortion on demand" and "same sex marriage," you call it hate.
Tiller and his church is responsible for their own undoing! Tiller murdered 60,000 innocent little girls and boys through the legalized, tortureous precedure called "Partial Birth Abortion."
The Word of God says, "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."(Galatians 6:7)
If he was in church honestly seeking the truth through the Word of God, he had to be familiar with this warning in Galatians 6:7.
The facts are Tiller legally murdered and tortured 60,000 poor innocent unborn girls and boys. There were "no legal consequences" for his actions in this world. However, there were spiritual consequences called "reaping and sowing" that he ultimately faced in this world and the world to come.
For those of you familiar with biblical history, you know that God will allow both the righteous laws of the land and the consequences of one's action to determine how long they will be able to inflict injustice upon others.
Secondly, Tiller's church allowed harm to come to the body of believers and Tiller by allowing him to serve in a leadership position at the Lutheran Church, while continuing his reign of terror against innocent unborn children.
The failure of the leadership at Tiller's church in holding him accountable for his ungodly actions caused it to become a spiritually dead church. (apostate church)
They are responsible for opening the door to the evil act that Tiller brought on himself. (murder)
An excellent essay. The alternative media has been doing a better job. Fred Clarkson, Bill Berkowitz, Rob Boston, and Bruce Wilson on Talk2Action have been on top of this part of the story. My posts on the PublicEye.org website and Huffington Post have been detailing this angle since June 1, including discussing Christian Identity. On June 3, Carol Mason wrote about the apocalyptic religious nature of anti-abortion violence. Amy Goodman on Democracy Now featured Fred and me in a half hour interview talking about the militant religious aspects. Dori Smith on talknationradio did a long segment.
I agree; much more attention was paid to Roeder's religion in these sources. I especially liked your interview on Democracy Now.
Well, I was going to say what Mr. Berlet said in some form, more from my perspective as a reader of those articles rather than a participant of their writing.
As a former "believer," I have watched this slide into Christian militantism since the 80s. It will however, in my opinion, peak.
Not that we have seen that peak yet. More killings will happen here in America in Jesus' name. Then American citizens will finally react to the religious conservatives en masse, and begin reporting them to the authorities who will also be looking at this emerging domestic terrorism. These groups, including the large one that Governor Palin is hooked into, have a spectrum of followers. A small minority of disciples who leave their brains at home on a shelf, all the way to those who hardly believe it but like the excitement rush of claiming they belong. Well, when push comes to shove, the bottom two thirds will jump ship. Which will have the cultural effect, I believe, of Christianity somewhat imploding in America into a small sect of rather quiet people for a long time. Their confusion as to what they believe will be similar to what the GOP is experiencing right now.
We can either let it happen, or step in now and keep a sharper eye and call this belief system for what it is: a dangerous cult.
There is no Christian militancy!
There is no such thing as a former "believer."
You are an imposter! A minion of satan!
We will speakout against the wicked and ungodly and you will use any ungodly action by one person to condemn all Christians.
That's your M.O.
A very, very small percentage of people who call themselves Christians will participate in acts of violence. Some people who call themselves Christian will support issues such as same sex marriage and abortion on demand and by nature are angry and violent... demonstrated by the very evils that they support. These are imposters!
If you call yourself Christian and support ungodliness you are an "imposter"!
The democratic party has a history of supporting same sex marriage, abortion on demand, supporting organizations (ACLU) that are hell bent on removing all declarations by God, such as the Ten commandments from the public arena and are (for the most part) anti-Israel.
The Word of God says, "you will know them by their fruits. (their deeds,the things they support)
I have come to the conclusion that the Democratic Party as a whole is anti-christ and a danger to the constitution of the United States.
...is that it continues to ignore the threat posed by fundamentalism to American culture. Very insightful article.
What is needed is conversations at the writer and editor level of the offending papers and stations.
Are we seeing inept reporting from the bottom up, or the much more dangerous editing out of uncomfortable truths from the top down?
The only people who think that christians are predominantly peaceful are christians themselves. The rest of the world has had at least 1500 years of experience with christians invading their countries, stealing their lands and killing their peoples. The US, Australia and New Zealand are prime examples. Christianity isn't the only violent religion, but it is definitely not a peaceful one.
Thanks for a well-written, incisive, article.
It segues directly into a larger, related, issue; that of how the American press & legal system defines 'terrorism' regarding who's charged with that crime as opposed to others.
Overwhelmingly, white Christians are charged with common crimes regardless of the terroristic nature of their actions. The best example is of the April '07 arrest of 6 "Alabama Free Militia" members who were armed with various illegal weapons and planned an attack upon an encampment of migrant workers. None were ultimately charged with anything beyond routing 'weapons charges' despite the overtly terrorisic nature of their plot. Had a group of Muslims been arrested under similar circumstances... well, need I say it?
America has always had two standards of "justice".
Professor Mathewson,
Thank you extremely for writing this piece. It's true of so many news stories, from the trivial to the world-changing. For example, the reactions to Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust (shameful, to be sure) were very different to the Pope re-installing the Catholic bishop who also denied the Holocaust (also shameful). The former caused outrage. The latter was not deemed as offensive, was not discussed as part of a "Catholic worldview" and Catholics worldwide (correctly) were not assumed to share the bishop's viewpoint. As a Muslim, I am often called upon to defend Ahmadinejad's views as if they were my own (they're not) and as if all Muslims shared them (they don't). We need to inject more reasonableness and less of a double standard into the public discourse.
That is an interesting parallel, and I think you're right that the assumption generally wasn't that Catholics worldwide shared the Pope's view. He was criticized, but only for being out of touch and insensitive -- and maybe for having some sort of anti-modern agenda.
Did the mainstream press suggest that Ahmadinejad speaks for the Muslim world? It wouldn't surprise me at all if Fox News suggested this; but I don't remember the Times doing so. Maybe the same logic applied in the coverage of this situation as in the Roeder/Muhammad case: Ahmadinejad's comment springs from his Muslim faith; the Pope's action springs from some other source aside from his Catholic faith.
I note that FoxNews has mentioned Roeder's faith at least several times.
In this article it's noted that " Roeder's former wife said his family life began unraveling more than a decade ago when he got involved with anti-government groups, and then became "very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way.""
Later in the article: "[Roeder] then became involved with a church based on the Old Testament, but [his ex-wife] said she did not know much about its beliefs. She thought it was strange when he showed up Friday to take their son out to dinner and to see the movie "Star Trek." "That's his Sabbath," she said. "So we wouldn't usually see him on a Friday or Saturday." Which as you note is an indicator of the Christian Identity movement, even if Fox doesn't mention that connection.
Then, ironically, comes this Fox Blog entry which complains that, while both terrorists' faith has been ignored, that it's Muhammad's that has been more overlooked... I'd say that's it's a question of who's ox is gored, but the authors are affiliated with the Simon Wiesenthal Center which has equal oxen to gore on either side.
Thanks for pointing this out; I really don't know how I missed this article. It does, however, stand in sharp contrast to the rest of Fox's reporting on the shooting, though some of the more recent articles do focus a little more on Roeder.
Organizations that operate under the banner of Christianity who practice hate and violence are as dangerous as Islamic terrorist.
However, the Muslims' Koran is explicit in it's instructions concerning the death of all outside the Muslim faith. How often do you hear Muslims from around the world condemning it's militants?
About 93 percent of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims are moderates and only seven percent are politically radical.
Thats 91 million radical muslims who want to kill you and I.
Where should our primary focus be? On the small percentage of radical Christian imposters here in the U.S. or on the radical Muslim population in the U.S. and around the world? (the 91 million)
I say our focus should be on all radicals.
However, make no mistake about it, the 91 million will continue to be a major threat for many, many years to come.
The latter was not deemed as offensive, was not discussed as part of a "Catholic worldview" and Catholics worldwide (correctly) were not assumed to share the bishop's viewpoint. GED | Online High School Diploma | High School Diploma
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