Voicesofthearmory

Christianity is based upon the teachings of Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Bible. The Bible also includes numerous other teachings and sources, but all of these are secondary to those lessons presented by Christ. Furthermore, modern Christianity has focused itself even further by ignoring certain elements of Christ’s lessons, in order to create a fundamentally moral core for the modern world. There is a certain amount of illogic in doing so, but in the end, this is forgivable, as it shapes Christianity into a religion which should, at its heart, embrace forgiveness, mercy, generosity, and other such important human values. Except clearly, some elements of Christianity do not seem to understand this core kernel of Christ’s morality, as is best evidenced by the recent attack on a Michigan police officer by a Christian militia group.

This group of armed and angry supposed followers of Christ formed a plan to kill the Michigan police officer, and then to attack the officers who would attend the murdered officer’s funeral. The group, known as the Hutaree, apparently perceives law enforcement of all kinds as its opposition. Their beliefs are summed up in a quote taken from their website: “As Christians we all are a part of the Souls of the Body of Christ, the one true church of Christ. Not any specific man made building or any man controlled organization. This is the belief of the Hutaree soldier, as should the belief of all followers in Christ be.” What Christ would actually have to say about this group is unknown, of course, but one can imagine the extent to which Christ would claim that this group is as far from Christianity as it is possible to be. Indeed, it is hard to imagine any element of Christianity endorsing a group that, as the director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center says, seeks to incite an apocalypse.

Christianity can ill afford to be characterized by groups of these types, not in a country where every day the number of atheists is growing. These groups are utterly abnormal, and are closer to terrorist organizations than they are to the anything else. But the fact that such groups exist and claim to be a part of Christianity is a further blow to the credibility of the religion. Obviously, one could dismiss this group as simply a crazed group of extremists, not really indicative of any aspect of Christianity, as evidence by the fact that they so clearly do not follow Christ’s most basic teaching. But the fact that there are outspoken elements of Christianity which incite crowds to a fury not unlike that preached by the Hutaree would lead one to believe that Christianity itself is not helping to prevent groups like this from arising.

This Christian militia group is clearly wrong, from any perspective, not least of all the perspective of Christianity today, or of Christ. But it is up to the members of Christianity to attempt to make clear how wrong groups like this are, and to assist in the prevention of their creation.

Tags: Christian, christians, christin militias

This entry was posted on Monday, April 12th, 2010 at 6:20 pm and is filed under Christian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.