On May 31, 2009, Dr. George Tiller, the controversial Kansas abortionist, was murdered in his church by a Christian fundamentalist.  Tiller was famous for his fearless provision of abortions — including late term (a.k.a. “partial-birth”) abortions — in the face of death threats and assassination attempts.  His murder has sparked a firestorm of controversy over Christian fundamentalists’ positions on abortion and abortionists, as well as debates about whether those positions (and the actions they sometimes lead to) essentially constitute terrorism.

Rachel Maddow of MSNBC recently had a long news piece on anti-abortion fundamentalists, repeatedly calling them “terrorists”. In her report, Maddow implicitly compared the anti-abortion movement to Islamic terrorist groups like al Qaeda.  The National Organization of Women issued a press release making similar comparisons. One could possibly dismiss such claims as extreme reactions, were it not for the voices of Christian fundamentalists refusing to condemn, or actually praising, Tiller’s murder.

A reader of this site recently emailed me, asking about the main arguments of articles I’ve written regarding religiously motivated terrorism and how they relate to actions like Tiller’s murder.

Here is my question.  TheOnlyOrthodoxy.com has made quite a point that Islam is qualitatively different from other religions today; that it cannot be compromised with in a democracy because its adherents will use violence and intimidation to get their way, no matter what they say on their way in the door. … However, from a moral and philosophical point of view, how can you continue to preach Islamic exceptionalism, except as a matter of degree and practicality?  … [In America] We have murders and violent intimidation of people exercising their legal freedoms in a democracy.  We have religious leaders inciting and condoning violence, and politicians and public figures disclaiming responsibility for hysteria they clearly encouraged and benefited from.  So how are we fundamentally different (pun intended) from Pakistan?

These are very good questions.  In answering them, I’ll try to differentiate between Christianity and Islam with respect to their stances on violence. I will also attempt to address claims that events like Tiller’s murder are indicative of a domestic Christian kind of terrorism.

First of all, Tiller’s murder was in no way of a piece with (small “o”) orthodox Christianity.  Anyone who attempts to justify it from the Christian tradition is standing apart from that tradition, period. Christians can claim absolutely no mandate for any kind of murder, regardless of who the victim is.  Jesus categorically forbade even the anger at people (as opposed to at their actions) that is the starting place for such murders, and through the witness of his life left no opportunity for others to challenge that interpretation.  His apostles also categorically forbade their followers from any such actions (such as when St. Paul denounced utilitarian motives for “doing evil so that good might result”).

As far as state-sponsored violence goes, the ancient Church was uncomfortable with Christians even serving in the military.  (The Church eventually decided that it was okay for soldiers who converted to remain soldiers, but strongly recommended [though never ordered] that Christian non-soldiers not join the military.)  St. Augustine developed, and the medieval Church later refined, a Christian Just War Theory, which severely limits the state’s ability to legitimately claim religious justification for war-making.

By contrast, Islam was spread almost exclusively by the sword through its first 1,000 years and has a set of scriptures and an interpretive tradition with a host of standing orders to kill or subjugate unbelievers.  It lacks any authoritative tradition limiting those standing orders.  And Mohammad’s life and witness fail to mitigate against those standing orders

To compare Christianity and Islam with regards to violence and terrorism, then  — even taking into account episodes like the Crusades, the conquering of the New World, and the colonization of Africa — is to look at Christianity with a jaundiced eye. It’s true that those actions were undertaken by Christians, often with state support.  The Church (at least the Catholic Church) opposed many parts of them and officially condemned others, however.  The perpetrators of such violence had virtually no justification for their actions from the Christian Scriptures, or from Church Tradition.  As stated above, that just isn’t an argument that Muslims or Islamic apologists can honestly make about Islam.  (This says nothing about the actions of individual Muslims, of course.)

Now, regarding the talk from commentators on the Left like Rachel Maddow regarding the prevalence of Christian terrorism, I would say that the extent to which the mere possibility of extremely rare acts of violence by ultra-fundamentalist Christians has led the state to severely limit the freedom of anti-abortion organizations to make their views known strongly mitigates against the legitimacy of fantasies like Rachel Maddow’s concerning Christian terrorism in America. Another way of putting that (very long sentence) is that the limits on the free expression of abortion opponents in America resemble the limits on the free expression of non-Muslims in places like Pakistan, Iran, or Saudi Arabia.  By law, abortion opponents can’t, for example, kneel in silent prayer within a certain distance of an abortion clinic.  The prevalence of such laws strongly suggests that Maddow’s claims of the success of Christian “terrorism” are, to be charitable, flawed.

Even more questionable, I would say, is the argument made by Maddow and others that it was the threat of violence that has severely limited the supply of late term abortions.  The truth, however, is that late term abortions are inaccessible largely because — as even abortion rights activists like the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan have admitted — they are essentially acts of infanticide.  Most people tend to recognize this and are tremendously uncomfortable with them.  That, not the prevalence of “Christian terrorism”, is a much likelier reason for the scarcity of their supply.

To sum things up, then, the murder of Dr. Tiller is wrong and cannot be justified by any teaching or tradition of orthodox Christianity.  Comparisons that attempt to equate the response of both Christianity and Islam to such acts of violence break down because the above statement can’t be made about Islam.  And, finally, arguments claiming that there’s a type of domestic Christian terrorism in America are ideologically-driven and just plain wrong on the facts.