Today is the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Discussion of this anniversary has been relatively quiet; I didn't know until yesterday that it was happening. What is the reasoning behind this? In two years, we will celebrate the five-year anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. In a country where anniversaries of events that are multiples of five are big deals, Oklahoma City's anniversary is without a lot of fanfare.

For thirty years prior to Oklahoma City, Americans could safely say that terrorists were Muslims. It was Muslims who killed nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games in 1972. It was Muslims who took 66 Americans hostage in 1979. It was Muslims who blew up a Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983. It was the Muslims who blew up Pan-Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, scotland in 1988. Imagine the nation's surprise when we discovered that it was a Christian -- Timothy McVeigh -- who was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing.

An ABC News piece about the 10th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing says:

But McVeigh, though influenced by the anti-government and racist ideology of militia and white supremacist groups, was a member of none of them. Like Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph, he was essentially a lone wolf who acted on his own.

"That's where the danger is," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino. "If there's anything Oklahoma City demonstrated, it's that a committed domestic terrorist doesn't need to be a part of an organized group to have a devastating effect."

This isn't true. Evidence shows that McVeigh was a member of some white supremacist groups. He was a believer in Christian Identity, a conservative Christian movement which holds that white North Americans are the racial descendants of the ancient tribes of Israel and Jews are the descendants of Satan. They hate non-whites, communists, and homosexuals, as well. Christian Identity believers are what is called "post-millennial" in their eschatology. They believe that the world must be cleansed before the Second Coming of Christ ("post" meaning that Christ will return after a godly dominion on Earth is established), and they are logically the ones to do it. Violence caused by human beings will be necessary in order to create the conditions under which Christ will return. Christian Identity believers are also believers in Reconstruction theology, which says that the ideal system of government is a Christian theology rooted in the Bible, and our civil laws should change to match what the Bible (the infalliable word/law of God) says about what is right and what is wrong.

It's far too easy to shrug Timothy McVeigh or Eric Rudolph off as independent "crazies." They are definitely part of a larger theological movement which uses violence as a means to either (1) get its politics across, or (2) bring about Judgment Day. Both of these uses of violence are grounded in religion, since they are using Christian values to determine what should be blown up and what shouldn't be, and their politics are Christian (i.e., the Christians should be in charge). Eric Rudolph hates abortionists and homosexuals and feels that the government, in its implicit endorsement of homosexuality and abortion (ostensibly because it doesn't outright outlaw both practices), is no longer legitimate, and he must take the law into his own hands. These are not individual "crazy" viewpoints. There are thousands of people around the country who believe what Rudolph believes.

It is quite easy for Christians to believe that Islam is a religion of violence, since it isn't their religion. It's much harder for them to accept that there are people out there committing violent acts in the name of Christianity, and harder still to believe that there are entire communities of support ("interpretive communities," says Mark Juergensmeyer) out there who believe the same thing. If Timothy McVeigh were "a lone wolf," then we could chalk his violence up to being a wacko who radically misinterprets Christianity, while in the meantime, Islam is a religion of violence. But to suggest that Christianity could lend itself to violence is a heretical statement indeed, but the fact is that both religions have been used -- and continue to be used -- to justify terrorist acts. Christians are terrorists, too, and they commit terrorist acts in the name of a Christianity that they believe is the true Christianity (while others who talk about "non-violence" are in fact non-believers who have been co-opted by a tyrannical secular government; if they were "real Christians," then they would be fighting alongside the Christian Identity people and the Reconstructionists).

This is a statement from someone who adamantly believes that true Christians cannot be violent, while true Muslims can certainly be violent:

I am, as most informed people are, aware of the political climate of today. I am aware of the hatred for Osama bin Laden [I myself hate him] and other terrorists. I am aware that after the vicious, violent acts of terrorism, carried out by terrorists, on September 11th, irrational people associated terrorism with Islam, with Muslims, with anyone of that skin color. But, these people do not speak for the entire American public. This class, just because of the political climate, should not try to manipulate the study of a particular religion in a certain light, whether that be a more violent depiction Christianity, or less violent depiction Islam. To do so would be a perversion of the truth, unfaithful to the academic pledge of honesty and integrity, and would be an unethical teaching practice void of all reason but sympathy for the very people we as a country are in a fight for our lives against.

But the simple fact is that people commit violent acts in the name of religion all the time. Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus do it. Our attitude that terrorism comes from without, not within, is a naive one. Christians commit terrorist acts all the time. But, because we are a Christian country, we don't attribute that violence to a trend, but rather to a specific, abnormal instance. It is a trend -- a chronic problem rather than an acute one -- and on this tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, we would do well to remember that terrorists are regular, everyday people, and terrorism can come from anywhere, from any person of any religion or ideological persuasion.