An Open Letter To Attorney General Eric Holder

Dear Attorney General Holder:

I am writing to thank you for ordering the Department of Justice to investigate other potential federal crimes in connection with the murder of Dr. George Tiller. As someone who in the early days of the so-called pro-life movement was partly responsible for turning up the rhetoric to fever pitch, and thus indirectly responsible (amongst many others) for the violence that is now part of that movement, I feel that you need to expand your scope of interest in this matter. Unlike members of al Qaeda, our religious extremists aren't part of a conspiracy. It's worse: they are hard-to-stop lone actors energized by right wing media-driven far right Christian religion. I know-- been there-done that. Mea culpa.

My radical far right books used to be given away as a fund raising fulfillment by Jams Dobson on his "Focus On The Family" program. My Dad and I inspired the founders of Operation Rescue into taking up the "cause." We began to describe the American government as the enemy because of our stand on abortion. Our old followers were the same sorts of people that recently stocked up on guns and ammo when Obama was elected because they were fearful that their guns would soon be taken away (as the NRA had threatened would happen in their anti-Obama pre-election mailings).

In the wake of the election of our first black president, we've seen a rising tide of right wing hate. An abortion doctor was gunned down; three police officers in Pittsburgh were shot by a man who feared "they" would take his guns; and a black security guard at the National Holocaust Museum was slain. Then the FBI recently arrested a well-known white supremacist and the host of an Internet talk show and Web site for saying that three judges should be killed -- also related to a matter related to regulating guns. Then on June 26, another story exploded: The gunning down of a father, mother and child by a self-appointed "border patrol" dedicated to keeping America "safe" from Mexican immigrants.

To get to the bottom of what amounts to a growing and violent trend, you need to investigate various religious subcultures. If it is appropriate to investigate religious groups -- as Bush did with Muslim charities accused of ties to extremists -- then it should be right and proper to investigate evangelical and other Christian groups too.

Where is the extremism coming form? Well, a website maintained by Holocaust Museum alleged killer Brunn says that Brunn tried to carry out a "citizen's arrest" in 1981 on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors who he accused of "treason." He was arrested outside the room where the board was meeting carrying a sawed-off shotgun, a revolver and a knife. Police said he planned to take members of the Fed hostage. I'd first heard such ideas on the far evangelical right.

Some "mainstream" religious right leaders have been saying much the same thing as Brunn about the Fed (and race too) for years, particularly the so-called "dominionists" who believe it's their job to reestablish God's dominion on earth. They preach Old Tenement-style vengeance and "gold standard" economics from many evangelical pulpits. They hate America -- America as it is rather than America as they wish it to be -- and want a revolution in the name of God, "pro-life" beliefs, anti-gay laws, racism and far right Republican politics. They take the Republican anti-government propaganda to the next step and say that even paying any taxes is "unconstitutional."

I know them well. As I explain in my book Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back, the religious right has been awash in extreme people for the better part of 40 years. For instance I knew people like the late Reverend Rousas John Rushdoony the father of "Christian Reconstructionism" and the modern Christian home school movement and his dominionist group.

Rushdoony (who I met and talked with many times before I quit the religious right in the mid '80s) believed that interracial marriage, which he referred to as "unequal yoking," should be made illegal. He also opposed "enforced integration," referred to Southern slavery as "benevolent," and said that "some people are by nature slaves." And yet his home school materials are a mainstay of the evangelical home school movement to this day! In other words in thousands of evangelical homes children are being taught in what amount to American versions of Madrassas.

Rushdoony's 1973 opus, The Institutes of Biblical Law, says that fundamentalist Christians must "take control of governments and impose strict biblical law" on America and the world. That would mean the death penalty for "practicing homosexuals." Rushdoony was also a Holocaust denier, attacking the "false witness" that some 6 million Jews were murdered in World War II.

Many evangelical leaders publicly deny holding Reconstructionist beliefs but Beverly and Tim LaHaye (of Concerned Women for America), Donald Wildmon (American Family Association) and the late D. James Kennedy ( Coral Ridge Ministries) -- served alongside Rushdoony on the secretive Coalition for Revival, a group formed in 1981 to "reclaim America for Christ." I went to the early meetings. I first met Tim LaHaye at one such meeting. And these political views meld with an apocalyptic "End Times" cult that actually looks forward to Armageddon and hopes chaos and civil unrest will overtake us so that Christ will return all the sooner!

As I said our very own extremists aren't from any one group. They are drawn from thousands of unstable individuals driven to extremes by people like Rushdoony, Limbaugh, the evangelical dominionists, Fox News, the NRA, Operation Rewscue and James Dobson.

The more successful our progressive President becomes with the majority of sane Americans the more extreme his far right critics -- including the "pro-life" movement -- are going to become. So I hope you and the FBI are investigating pro-life evangelical groups and their leaders, infiltrating pro-life outfits like Operation Rescue, and others from who's ranks more extremists will come to strike at the heart of our open society.

My late evangelical-leader father -- Francis Schaeffer -- wrote a best-selling book called A Christian Manifesto. He equated legal abortion to the Holocaust. He talked about the "fact" that if having exhausted all political and democratic means to change the laws on abortion Christians should turn to force here in America. He compared America to Hitler's Germany.

So it strikes me as ominous that there are some far right evangelicals (amongst others) talking about President Obama being the "next Hitler" because he supports legal abortion is said to be a "socialist" and so forth. (Check out many nutty and scary web postings flying around.) Given what my Dad wrote justifying force when "other options" run out, and given his massive following to this day in the far right evangelical subculture, and given the fact that the Religious Right now believes that options have indeed run out -- not just for changing the abortion laws but for everything from "returning to free market" ideology to turning back the clock on gay rights -- I see trouble looming.

And it isn't just the right wing crazies taking about Hitler's Germany and the Obama era. Consider this from the Washington Independent (July 9, 09)

Last night, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) gave a short talk and Q&A at at the National Press Club about his book "Saving Freedom." DeMint told a room of around 100 people about a conversation he'd had with an Iranian immigrant who was panicking about the surge of government spending and control under President Obama and the Democrats. Americans should listen to immigrants like her, said DeMint.

"They understand socialism. They understand tyrants. But none of us have ever had it here. We don't even know what it looks like. Part of what we're trying to do in "Saving Freedom" is just show that where we are, we're about where Germany was before World War II where they became a social democracy. You still had votes but the votes were just power grabs like you see in Iran, and other places in South America, like Chavez is running down in Venezuela. People become more dependent on the government so that they're easy to manipulate. And they keep voting for more government because that's where their security is. When our immigrants get here, they're worried, because they see it happening here. "

How far is the right -- including some "respectable media leaders" going toward endorsing possible extremism? Consider this.

Glenn Beck recently had the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, Michael Scheuer, as a guest. Scheuer said we can only be saved from President Obama by Bin Laden!

BECK: "Do you really, honestly believe that we have come to a place to where those very senior people in the highest offices of the land, Congress and the White House, really will not do the right thing in the end, that they won't see the error of their ways?"

SCHEUER: "No, sir, they will not. Not -- the only chance we have as a country right now is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon i n the United States. Because it's going to take a grassroots, bottom-up pressure, because these politicians prize their office, prize the praise of the media and the Europeans. Only -- it's an absurd situation. Again, only Osama can execute an attack which will force Americans to demand that their government protect them effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary."

We've hit bottom. I urge you to expand your investigation into the connection between this sort of extreme anti-American speech, implicitly condoned by Fox News --Beck never challenged this outrageous statement! -- that seems to imply support for not just domestic but also international violence in an "Obama-must-fail" cause. I urge you to investigate the connections between Operation Rescue and other pro-life groups and the extremists that sometimes pass through those groups on their ways to desperate and hateful acts. Liberals have use the sometimes constitutionally-suspect means that were used against the Left (when the the Right thought the Left was conspiring to overthrow the government) against the actually far more dangerous far Right.

America has a right wing violence problem exploding in our faces. It is time to take it seriously before far worse befalls us.

Frank Schaeffer is the author of Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back and the forthcoming Patience With God: Faith For People Who Don't Like Religion (Or Atheism)

Follow Frank Schaeffer on Twitter: www.twitter.com/frank_schaeffer

Comments

[John Whitbeck]

Learn more about why the extreme right wing crazies are so dangerous. Especially those who consider themselves Christians.

[carolinhouston]

As a pastor and a Christian I truly lament the way the word "Christian" is thrown around all over the blogosphere. It is unfortunate that those posturing as "Christians" in no way resemble Jesus and in no way reflect the way of life that he taught. The bastardizing of a "religion" linked to politics has nothing to do with anything that the New Testament teaches. Jesus was repeatedly called upon by persons to become politically involved, to usurp governmental authority, to defeat Roman rule, to take over the government by allowing himself to be made a king. He adamantly refused. Rather, he focused on teaching people to love each other, to accept each other's differences, to heal the sick, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, learn to live together in peace and harmony. I don't know what these fundamentalists are, but nothing about them is even remotely Christian.

[GregorZap]

Pardon me for being so bold, but I find your assessment very Orthodox, Mr. Schaeffer, or at least within my understanding of what that word means.

I believe that a fundamental part of the problem we have developed within Christianity is our desire to detach from A truth, that there is a truth. Or more boldly, that God is The Truth. Being Divine and we being only human, it is completely unknowable and we need to pursue greater understanding, which will take eternity, so our undestanding is inherently flawed, but we, as a people, can examine and discuss our ideas related to truth and hopefully come to know God a littel better. When we agree, based on a thorough evaluation of something that it is a truth, then we can and should call it Orthodox with an understanding, that we may not really know it all, but we are fairly sure, this one thing is orthodox. It takes a Council to decide this, never one man, although we should consider that one man, or one woman, at any given time, may have a truth.

[JimReed]

In theory that sounds good, but in practice there is a real danger that the group will become the god that they worship. I have seen this happen to Christianity as a whole in my lifetime. There was a time when it was a more humble religion, but after linking with the Republican party they became more of a Republican religion, highly sensitive to finding flaws in non-believers, and showing tolerance for sins committed by others of the Christian community. Christians listen to the group, they believe what they hear, and sometimes they speak for the group. This can become a kind of idolatry, believing in the people and doctrines and literature and activities and gatherings of the religion, and putting that ahead of the God of truth, and dedicating their lives to believing and recruiting others to believe. They follow this path because it is easier than looking at what has happened the last few years.

[JimReed]

Gregor,
I reread your post. If you add some experimental verification to your analysis, it sounds amazingly close to a desription of the scientific method with some of the terminology adjusted. This opens up a new question, why has science been so successful in explaining the development of the universe and everything in it including life and humanity, and leading the way to such a wide range of incredible technological advances, and religion always stagnates locked in obsolete thinking patterns until the advance of civilization slowly forces it to make small changes? Perhaps that experimental verification is the key. If religion could stop assuming they already have the answers, and allow some questioning and verification, and apperciate the value to be found outside of the religion, they might start making advances as science has been doing in recent centuries.

[Tavi]

I hope your letter receives the attention it rightfully deserves.

I think most people, including HuffPo readers, simply cannot grasp the magnitude of your observations. They are spot on, insightful, prescient, and frightening.

[GEP]

Frank, I'm working as a counter-terrorism analyst for a private organization, focusing on the Tiller assassination and related threats. I've turned up some things about several anti-abortion groups that are concerning, which may indicate a conspiracy (both in the Tiller murder and going forward). I don't want to name people or groups, but some scary names from the 90s are now better organized, more reliably funded, and (worse) more broadly followed. I'd like you to review some of our research if you have time; I think you'd be able to fill in some of the gaps and know other places to look. We are coordinating with the FBI, so the research will have a tangible impact. Is there a way you can post an email address or reach me through HP's user database? I don't think HP has a PM system.

By the way, Madrassa-e­quivalents exist in even more centralized forms than homeschooling. Several AOG members are involved in an aggressive anti-abortion, evangelical boot-camp, targeting youth and the weak-minded. The line of thinking is that minors have less to lose from illegal activity.

[alphonsegaston]

I agree with what Mr. Schaeffer has written. However, Jim Reed makes a good point. But because Obama himself must seem above all this, it does not mean that he cannot have his administration work on the issue and become involved in surveillance of these dangerous loons.

[JimReed]

The last administration was involved in deception. The Republicans and their Christian allies would love to have any justification to claim the same of Obama. They will make a dishonest claim if needed. We just need be sure that is what it will be, dishonest.

[jcscown]

I feel the same way. My sister and her bunch think that Oprah and Obama are workers for satan. My sister was raised in the midwester suburbs...­..do you think that something was in the water?

[Retrofuturistic]

Mr. Schaeffer, I like your point about the modern day Christian home schooling movement being the equivalent of Muslim madrassahs. Very accurate. All fundamentalism is the same (far right, anti-woman, anti-science, violent, and repressive), whatever religion you find it in.

W. Bush opened the lid to this can of American extremist worms when he undermined the separation of church and state. And it didn't end when he was voted out, because we still have people rewriting history books to suit a far right agenda, school vouchers that use money to support religious schools, people advocating for Creationism and abstinence education, etc. Obama did not help matters by continuing faith-based initiatives.

As usual, religion inhibits our evolution into a saner and more united world.

[suzc]

NO. The problem is not with religion, any more than it is "in our stars". The problem is in ourselves. There are far-right wackos and far-left wackos and all are welcome in this country but both extremes need to be, and no doubt are being, watched for another Oklahoma-like attack. There are organized Hispanic groups planning to "take back America" from the white Europeans here. There's plenty of insanity to go around. But it isn't religion per se. Any more than it is God's Divine Plan. Stop confusing the message with the worst-possible messengers.

[Ankhst]

I feel that religion, while absolutely not solely at fault, plays a critical role in this. So much about religion -- especially Christianity in the US -- is blindly accepted, and it is considered bad form to question its followers. No, the major problem as I see it, is that these wackos are allowed to stay "in the club" even though they are perpetrating some of the most unChristian behavior possible -- violating many of their precious 10 Commandments in the process. I'm not saying that "moderate" "good" Christians should become intolerant and rail against anyone who doesn't worship as they worship (that's fundamentalism); rather, I'm saying that the more conscientious believers should ask their troubled fellows to examine their own faith, and not just say "well we're all sinners after all" and just put up with their hate. When an atheist behaves this way, we say "well they're just a bigot and a bad person", instead of "well they are troubled, but the Lord will guide them".

I say, it doesn't matter how faithfully someone goes to church on Sunday if he abuses his wife, his black or gay or Jewish neighbor, or anyone else, the other 6 days of the week. Any God that ultimately doesn't care what you do as long as you pray and praise Him, is NOT TO BE FOLLOWED.

I basically agree with you that "ourselves" are the problem, not religion or right-wing radio, etc. -- but the latter have sure provided an easy

[GregorZap]

YES, the problem IS with religion, and any organization that suggests the veracity of their message supercedes that of a legitimate government. When a person puts their faith in God and believes that God has the final authority in matters, they feel a waiver to ignore the laws of the land, in favor of their understanding of what God's will is. At the end of the day, I doubt anyone has a perpetually accurate understanding of God's will. If they did, they would be God, instad they are merely humans and giving others any more power then that is an abomination, IMHO.

[JimReed]

President Obama has taken the right approach on the uprisings in Iran, don't intervene because we would only mess things up and unite a majority of Iranians against us.

The white house should not be involved in our struggle with right wing Christianity. Everything you say would be justified, but it could damage the country. The crazies seem to be a shrinking group. If they come under political attack from the Obama government, they would deserve it, but they would unite as never before and grow in strength and numbers. Trying too hard to prevent that next death might take us to the edge of the abyss with no way to turn it around.

We should try to involve everyone we can in this battle, but not Obama because he has too many other things to do.

[GodIs]

When Jesus taught us about Hell, He mentioned those in Hell as being in agony. Consider the story of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man died and went to Hell and he said, “I am in agony in this fire.”
Nearly everyone has been burnt and has felt the stinging pain and how it continues. Well, this is the description the Bible uses to show how painful Hell really is and how that pain will never go away.
In Hell, unbelievers will be blaming others for being there. They will protest their being cast into Hell. They will never acknowledge the truth, that they are blameworthy for their sins, because denial and darkness reign in Hell.
God is love.

[Virginia Plain]

Your post was frightening until the last line, and then I laughed.

You write of "burning", "stinging pain", "darkness", and then imply that all this comes from God's love.

(Shakes head in disbelief).

[Sinick]

I don't know what to say. I don't know what to think. You, sir are well spoken and have impeccable credentials. I am torn. I am "Sinick."