'Christians are terrorists, too'

I don't know how many times I've heard it.

Over the years I've had many debates with moral relativists who insist on turning a deaf ear to the obvious connection between Islam and terrorism.

They never fail to minimize the direct connection between Islam's embrace of violent jihad and the actions of its adherents, while claiming, "Christians are terrorists, too."

When you ask for an example of a Christian terrorist, the name Timothy McVeigh, the man executed for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, is usually offered as exhibit A.

Next month, ABC will be airing a documentary called "Different Books, Common Word: Baptists and Muslims" featuring the Rev. Bruce Prescott, executive director of something called "Mainstream Oklahoma Baptists."

In publicizing the documentary, Prescott made the following statement: "We have extremists in both our faiths. We're just trying to find some common ground to promote peace."

Ask Prescott about who those extremists are within his faith and he will readily point to McVeigh.

There's just one problem with this example: McVeigh was not a Christian.

McVeigh was a secular humanist who claimed "science is my religion."

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On May 11, 2001, Time magazine published a jailhouse interview with McVeigh where he elaborated on his beliefs about religion.

Here's what he said: "I was raised Catholic. I was confirmed Catholic (received the sacrament of confirmation). Through my military years, I sort of lost touch with the religion. I never really picked it up, however I do maintain core beliefs."

Asked if he even believed in God, McVeigh offered: "I do believe in a God, yes. But that's as far as I want to discuss. If I get too detailed on some things that are personal like that, it gives people an easier way to alienate themselves from me and that's all they are looking for now."

Try as one might, you will not find McVeigh ever associating himself with Christian beliefs. In all the interviews he gave on this subject, he does just opposite – distancing himself from Christianity.

Nevertheless, in the nine years since his execution as a mass murderer, he continues to be the poster boy for some non-existent link between Christian belief and terrorist violence.

Now, this is not to suggest that the name of Christianity hasn't been misused throughout history to perpetrate some horrific crimes and injustices. Indeed it has.

But to suggest a moral and quantitative equivalence between terrorist violence inspired by Islam and terrorist violence inspired by Christianity is so absurd it hardly needs to be stated. One would need to be willingly blind of horrors taking place around the world on a daily basis – beheadings, bombings, riots, misogyny in unspeakable forms, genocidal policies and the forcible imposition of Saudi-style and Taliban-style Shariah law.

On the other side of the coin, there is McVeigh – a man with a tenuous childhood connection to the Catholic faith who openly rejected it as an adult and embraced "science."

Is this the best evidence Prescott and others have for "extremism" among Christians?

I suspect there's a subtle form of racism at play here. McVeigh is a white guy who was raised in a Western country. As he makes clear himself in more than one interview, his religious beliefs were secular, not Christian. But being a white Westerner is enough, apparently, to lump him in with Christianity, which is somehow perceived as a "white" religion – which it is clearly not. Christianity is growing rapidly in Africa and other non-white countries. Nowhere is it used as a justification for terrorist violence on a scale approaching Islam.

Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims are disproportionately the victims of terrorist violence in the U.S. and around the globe.

To continue to blame the terrorism we see at work around the world on "extremists" and to pretend it is simply the work of individuals disconnected from any ideology is a disservice to reason and, to be put it mildly, a disservice to the truth.