October 28, 2010

Timothy McVeigh: The Lazy Journalist’s “Christian Terrorist”

If you’re tired of hearing Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh described by media pundits as a “Christian terrorist,” Jeremy Lott has you covered.

McVeigh has become part of the PC balancing act that analysts are expected to perform every time they are confronted with evidence of Islamist terrorism. Witness the flap over National Public Radio analyst Juan Williams’ recent firing because of impolitic remarks he had made about Muslims on FOX News. In his defense, Williams actually cited his casual smearing of Christians as evidence that he was not a bigot.

In an op-ed published in the Daily Caller, Williams explained that he had pointed out to Fox host Bill O’Reilly that we should rein in our feelings and be careful about holding the violent actions of individuals against their respective religions. To illustrate this, Williams had used a shoe’s-on-the-other-foot example. Take the Atlanta Olympic bomber “as well as Timothy McVeigh and the people who protest against gay rights at military funerals.” These people, said Williams “are Christians” yet “we journalists” do not typically “identify them by their religion.”

As it turns out, McVeigh’s religious beliefs were more in line with Voltaire than anything recognizably Christian — ironic, since that probably also describes the journalists who use him to illustrate the ‘dark side’ of Christianity.

We might call him spiritual but not religious. He claimed to be agnostic but not an atheist. McVeigh believed in “science” and not “religion,” he said. (In fact, he said his religion was science.) His murky metaphysical notions included some sort of Deistic creator who set things in motion, not the personal God of Christianity.

Head over to Patheos for the rest. Good stuff.

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Brian Saint-Paul

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Brian Saint-Paul was the editor and publisher of Crisis Magazine. He has a BA in Philosophy and an MA in Religious Studies from the Catholic University of America, in Washington. D.C. In addition to various positions in journalism and publishing, he has served as the associate director of a health research institute, a missionary, and a private school teacher. He lives with his wife in a historic Baltimore neighborhood, where he obsesses over Late Antiquity.

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  • Pammie

    Thanks for the link. There are numerous incidents of “Christian bashing” by media celebritards, Rosie O’Donnell, Ted Turner coming immediately to mind. All without negative financial consequence. In fact, were one to consider it all dispassionately ,one may still reasonably come to the conclusion that most Media Moguls and their Minions hold, support and encourage such bias, disdain and hatred. Not much we little people can do about it, but we can be aware that it exists.

  • Glenn M. Ricketts

    It’s by this same logical process that Adolph Hitler is is held to have been a “Catholic.” He was born to the faith, cf course, as was Al Capone, but the most cursory reading of Mein Kampf indicates that he’d moved in a rather different direction. Based on Timothy McVeigh’s reading list and scattered notes detected form the time of the 1995 bombing, he appears to have been something of a radical libertarian/anarchist/gun rights fanatic, to the extent that it’s possible to categorize him at all. He seems in particular to have been obsessed with avenging the destruction of the Branch Davidian cult in Waco Texas by federal agents in 1993, which moved him to view the fedral government as the ultimate. Doesn’t sound very Christian or “Catholic” I know, but really, when did the facts ever impede politically correct necessity in Hollywood or the mainstream media?

  • Glenn M. Ricketts

    The perils of writing too hastily – I’m well aware that the Oklahoma bomobing took place in 1995. God only knows why I wrote 1988. Mea Culpa!

  • Rich Browner

    The title of my headline would read:

    Juan Williams: The lazy bigot’s “FNC hero of the moment.”

    The point of the analogy about McVeigh, despite it’s sloppiness in terms of absolute specifics, is to say that using a very broad brush to paint all muslims as terrorists is bigotry. Using the same broad brush to paint all Germans as Anit Semitic would work too. It is wrong. Juan Williams was wrong.

    Juan Williams said that when he gets on a plane and sees muslims dressed like traditional muslims he “gets nervous.” The thing is, the muslim terrorists that we can name quickly were not dressed this way. The 9/11 terrorists looked like us. Heck, one of the most recent muslim terrorists was wearing US military camos when he started shooting at a US military base.

    Williams’ statement tells us a lot about the understandable nature of fear; but that does not mean we can give in to our fear, possibly allowing us to justify actions that are certainly wrong.

    I can understand the need to defend Christianity from being painted with too broad a brush, and pointing out that McVeigh was born Catholic but drifted very far from the faith is a good thing. Fine. Still, here on this Catholic website where is denunciation of what was said by Williams? This post can easily be taken as a seeming defense of the new FNC hero.

    It is as if we would rather prattle on about how McVeigh is NOT a true Christian than to have to admit that Juan Williams overstepped himself. Why do Juan Williams’ actions need defending? He began his controversial statement with the phrase “I am not a bigot, but….” If anyone says that, you have to wonder about what is coming out of their mouth next.

    All the subsequent dissmebling aside, he made a mistake, and doesn’t seem to have the humility to admit it. I dont think he is an evil person, nor any more biggotted than any of the rest of us. I have made many a mistake in my time, and some certainly bigotted. We can all make unwise statements, and his was certainly prejudiced.

    I understand the nature of fear, but I also think that public figures have a specific responsibility to the populace. Oddly, in this case, he was rewarded. He got a 2 million dollar contract from FNC, and, now he has a Catholic Blogger helping him to avoid humbly admitting he might have erred.

    I know some will probably say that Brian St. Paul is not defending Juan Williams, but I say, putting this up and NOT stating clearly his opinion on the matter could make it easy to presume tacit approval of Williams’ words.

  • Glenn M. Ricketts

    Rich:

    I don’t think that’s what Willians did, though. He did not tar all Muslims as terrorists, but indicated an involuntary, irrational response to the present climate. True, all Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists these days are Muslims, and one often wonders how to distinguish among them. To take a more apt example, recall Jesse Jackson’s observation soma years ago, when he reamrked that he had never expected to admit that, if he heard the footsteps of a stranger approaching from behind him, that he’d be relieved to turn around and see that it was someone white, rather than a young black man. Jackson, needless to say, was not a racist, but he was acknowledging the reality of a high crime rate among young urban black men. The trouble was, that even he couldn’t tell one from the other, similar to the fear Willliams expressed in reference to Muslims.

  • Rich Browner

    I take your point, and I have read Williams’ remarks since the initial statement. I agree that fear is powerful. And, understandable. The thing is, FNC (and most of the main stream media) is about the business of keeping people afraid so that they will tune in to see what to be afraid of next.

    There are NOT many terrorists in the world. There just arent. But to listen to fears of so many pundits these days, you would think it is the scourge of our world. It isnt. Fear is. The media is peddling fear, and Catholics should not be party to it.

  • Mark

    “Juan Williams said that when he gets on a plane and sees muslims dressed like traditional muslims he ‘gets nervous’ … “Juan Williams was wrong”

    How can someone “feeling nervous” be wrong? The liberals gave us the dictatorship of moral relativism but apparently “feeling nervous” is a moral absolute in the psuedo-religion of political correctness.

    It’s kind of ironic since most liberals are feeling more than a little nervous about next Tuesday.

  • Mike

    Rudolph himself has written, “Many good people continue to send me money and books. Most of them have, of course, an agenda; mostly born-again Christians looking to save my soul. I suppose the assumption is made that because I’m in here I must be a ‘sinner’ in need of salvation, and they would be glad to sell me a ticket to heaven, hawking this salvation like peanuts at a ballgame. I do appreciate their charity, but I could really do without the condescension. They have been so nice I would hate to break it to them that I really prefer
    Nietzsche to the Bible.”

    Although he now says he was born a Catholic and with forgiveness, hopes to die as one.

  • John

    Mcveigh never self identified as being a Christian. Though he sympathized with fundamentalist protestants over the Waco raid, Mcveigh believed in what he called “natural law” and “science”. After his capture, Mcveigh spurned conversion to both Islam and evangelical Christianity. Even after being sentenced to death, Mcveigh (born nominally Catholic) initially refused to even allow last rites to be said over his body.

  • Daniel Latinus

    At the time of the Waco incident, most “fundamentalist Christians” were completely unsympathetic to the Branch Davidians, who they viewed as heretics, a branch of an heretical sect (an extreme form of Adventism), who started idolizing David Koresh as a new messiah. Evangelical and fundamentalist preachers blamed the Branch Davidians for the violence that recoiled upon them. I don’t recall at that time any Evangelical or funadamnetalist preachers even suggesting (much less conceding) that government might have handled the Waco affair badly.

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