Killer of Amish Was 'Angry at God'

Today’s Top Five

1. Amish again in spotlight after school shooting After Monday’s murder of five students at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, media outlets are full of articles about how different the Amish are. The op-ed pages, meanwhile, are full of comments about much this shooting makes the Amish just like the rest of us. (“The Amish 9/11” is a phrase we’re starting to see, but this also ties into the other two fatal school shootings this week.) It’s good to see so many articles on Amish belief and culture that truly try to understand what happens in a religious community and why. Of course, in this situation, “why” answers are often hard to come by. Take the shooter, Charles Roberts, for example. Reports say he was tormented by his molestation of two young relatives two decades ago (when he was about 12). And his suicide note suggests that he was also tormented by the death, nine years ago, of a daughter who lived for only 20 minutes.

“It changed my life forever,” he wrote. “I haven’t been the same since it affected me in a way I never felt possible. I am filled with so much hate, hate toward myself hate, towards God, and unimaginable emptiness. It seems like everytime we do something fun, I think about how Elise wasn’t here to share it with us, and I go right back to anger.”

“He was angry at life and angry at God,” Pennsylvania state police commissioner Jeffrey Miller told reporters in a widely quoted comment.

“The man who did this today is not the Charlie that I’ve been married to for almost 10 years,” said Marie Roberts, whom the Philadelphia Inquirer says is “involved in Christian groups,” in a written statement. “He was an exceptional father. … Please pray, especially for the families who lost children. And please pray, too, for our family and children.”

2. What’s the Foley scandal really about? There are any number of “Foley stories” right now. One is purely political. Here’s how The New York Times phrases it: “A growing number of Republicans and conservative advocates fear the Foley scandal will cause many of the party’s most conservative supporters to stay home on election day.”

Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, is one of those conservative advocates. “I think this is a real problem for the Republicans as they, right or wrong, are seen as the guardians of values,” he told CNN (quoted by The New York Sun). “This is going to be, I think, very harmful for Republican turnout across the country.”

But religious conservative leaders aren’t going to have to shift much. Their speeches in recent days have been critical of the Republican leadership, but more critical of Democratic values. “I have flat-out been ticked at Republicans for the past two years,” Focus on the Family Action’s James Dobson said at the September 20 Stand for the Family rally in Pittsburgh. “[But] this country is at a crisis point. Whether or not the Republicans deserve the power they were given, the alternatives are downright frightening.”

Speaking on Laura Ingraham’s radio program yesterday (again quoted by the Sun), Dobson didn’t have to change that message. “Who can overlook what Foley has done? I mean, that is breathtaking,” he said. The Sun paraphrases him saying that voters might forget about Foley by Election Day, but they don’t forget that Republicans have sat on measures of interest to religious conservatives. Still, Dobson said, “I don’t think we can afford to teach the Republicans a lesson that I wish they would learn on their own.”

Gary Bauer makes a similar argument in an interview with the American Family Association’s Agape Press:

“Both parties are full of sinners. Our faith teaches us that it’s a fallen world,” [he said.]

But Bauer says when it comes to voting, the GOP platform supports the sanctity of life and traditional marriage, while liberal Democrats support same-sex “marriage” and abortion on demand. “Those differences remain the same,” he points out, “and in view of that, I would hope that the obvious disgusting behavior by this one Republican congressman would not affect turnout on election day.”

Bauer alleges that the timing of the revelations is “an attempt to discourage Christian conservative voters and to get some percentage of them to stay home so that the Left can retake the United States Senate and the United States House.”

Whether it’s Hastert or a politically motivated media, “at this stage, all we know is that it appears that someone knew something and kept quiet temporarily for reasons of their own,” Gina Dalfonzo writes on The Point, the new blog of Charles Colson’s Breakpoint. She continues:

Until everything comes out—and in this politically charged climate, maybe it never will—should we say anything at all? Maybe not much, but I think there’s at least one thing we can and should say with certainty. It used to go without saying among grown-ups that the exploitation of children and teenagers for any reason—including wanting to retain power or wanting to overthrow those in power—is a complete and utter disgrace. Apparently, it no longer does go without saying. Because whoever knew and withheld this information for their own purposes is morally just as guilty as Mark Foley.

Meanwhile, several religious conservative groups are less interested in the Hastert angle than in the gay angle.

“We are all shocked by this spectacle of aberrant sexual behavior, but we shouldn’t be,” Perkins said in a press release. “This is the end result of a society that rejects sexual restraints in the name of diversity.”

“Okay, so let me get this straight,” responds conservative columnist Rod Dreher in his Crunchy Con blog “The fact that the Republican Party leadership in the House was rather less than aggressive in looking into a matter of a scumbag gay Congressman chasing a teenage boy is … society’s fault? Is the fault of gay people asking for tolerance? … If NOW had blamed society for Bill Clinton’s dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, we’d have all hooted them out of the room, and deservedly so.”

Elsewhere, Perkins says that “the real issue” in the Foley case “is the link between homosexuality and child sexual abuse.”

Link? Apparently there’s an equivalence in the mind of Concerned Women for America, which says that “Congressman Foley’s sexual orientation was no secret in Washington, D.C. [Peter] LaBarbera uncovered this news for CWA in 2003.” LaBarbera’s 2003 article outing Foley as gay made no mention of a predilection for teens, which might make one wonder if CWA understands what the scandal here is.

Actually, a statement from CWA president Wendy Wright does repeatedly note that the problem is that Foley tried “to take sexual advantage of minors.” “Americans know that some lifestyles, such as aberrant sexual behavior, are just too damaging and dangerous to individuals, and that society and children especially should be protected from them,” Wright says.

Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery doesn’t mention homosexuality. He calls the case “yet another sad example of our society’s oversexualization, especially as it affects the Internet, and the damage it does to all who get caught in its grasp.” He adds, “This is not a time to be talking about politics, but about the well-being of those boys who appear to have been victimized by Rep. Foley.”

3. Lebanon’s Christians rally It’s hard to tell how much religious fervor was behind Beirut’s rally of tens of thousands of anti-Hezbollah Lebanese on Sunday. And it’s hard to get too excited about the Lebanese Christian opposition to the militant group when it manifests itself as a rally to support militant leader Samir Geagea, former leader of the Lebanese Forces. And it’s frustrating that the anti-Hezbollah demonstration was only a fraction the size of a pro-Hezbollah demonstration two days earlier. But it’s still good to see Lebanese criticism of Hezbollah.

4. Christian Coalition’s new president “The selection of the Rev. Joel Hunter” as the new president of the Christian Coalition “may not placate evangelicals who claim the conservative political-advocacy group has become too liberal and its agenda too broad,” reports The Orlando Sentinel. “If anything, his appointment cements those trends.”

Well, it’s not like they appointed John Danforth or Welton Gaddy. He’s solidly conservative. He’s just not the Religious Right. In fact, he just published a book, Right Wing, Wrong Bird: Why the Tactics of the Religious Right Won’t Fly With Most Conservative Christians.

“There ought to be more than just gay marriage and pro-life issues, because the Bible is concerned with all of life,” Hunter wrote in that book. “We need to do everything we can to relieve poverty, to heal the sick and to protect the Earth.”

Hunter says pastoring his multi-site Florida church remains his priority. “God called me to be a pastor,” he said at Sunday’s services. “He didn’t call me to go out and get my face in the media. … You’re not going to hear me talk, sermon after sermon, about political issues.”

One thing that might help keep his priorities in check: The Christian Coalition presidency doesn’t pay anything, and the Christian Coalition doesn’t really exist right now except as a post office box and a mailing list.

5. Murder mystery in Philippines Alberto Ramento, bishop of the Philippine Independent Church, was stabbed to death inside his convent Tuesday morning. Police called the attack a robbery gone awry with no signs of political motives, but the fact that Ramento was a strong critic of the Philippine government has many people asking questions. Actually, more than that: It has the opposition party making accusations.

Quote of the day “I still think Iraq is one of the more noble things we’ve done.”

—Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in an interview with the Associated Press. “It would be foolish to say anybody’s pleased” with the war, Land said. “I don’t think the President’s pleased with the progress of the war. Clearly, he would have wished things would have gone better. So do I. … [But] we went there to try to restore freedom and to bring freedom to the Middle East.”

Killings | Missionaries attacked in Solomon Islands | International religious freedom | Indonesia | Darfur | Lebanon | Iraq | Military | Life ethics | Contraceptives | Abortion | Phill Kline | Politics | Church and state | Church discipline case at Tex. Supreme Court | All Saints vs. IRS | A bunch of bills | Christian Coalition(s) | Values Voters convention | Backlash against Religious Right | Immigration and refugees | Religion and politics in Australia | Religion and politics books | Books | Books about Christian youth | Jesus Camp | VeggieTales on NBC | Theater | Entertainment and media | Money and business | Giving | Priest shortage? Pulpit shortage? | Church life | People | Crime | Missions & ministry | Priests allegedly stole $8.6M | More thefts | Abuse | BBC says Pope Benedict XVI covered up abuse | Catholicism | Supreme Court mass | Emmanuel Milingo excommunicated | Pope Benedict XVI and Islam | Islam | Judaism for non-Jews | Eastern Orthodox | Anglicanism | Homosexuality | More marriage | Education | Education (U.K.) | Bible and schools | Evolution | Higher education | Georgetown University | Devil | Other stories of interest

Killings:

Bishop stabbed dead in convent | Victim was outspoken critic of government (The Philippine Inquirer)
Brutal El Salvador priest killing mystifies police | The suspected murder of a Catholic priest, whose battered body was found on the side of an El Salvador highway on Monday, has mystified authorities in a country with a troubling history of killing religious figures (Reuters)
Horrific betrayal of church trust | Father Gerry Nugent – “utterly shattered” by the discovery of a body in his church – is facing the prospect of a breach of trust (BBC)

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