From the information emerging about Minnesota murderer Vance Boelter, several things seem to be coming into focus.
The Washington Post (WaPo) offers an abbreviated account of his childhood, reporting that Boelter grew up in a family of five sons that attended an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America in a small Minnesota town. He purportedly had a religious conversion forty years ago when he was 17, after which his childhood friend David Carlson shared that Boelter began preaching in a local park. In the early 1990’s, Boelter attended Christ for the Nations, an independent, charismatic missions organization.
Now for some observations and speculations on the tragic events and still-emerging analyses:
First, at this time, Boelter appears to have twisted Scripture into something unrecognizable, which he used to justify his grievous, savage sins of murder.
Second, to many who are Christians and to some, perhaps many, who are not Christians but who know Christians, it will be clear that Boelter suffered from moral, mental, and theological derangement. Morally and mentally sound, theologically orthodox Christians do not murder.
Third, from both the WaPo article and Sarah Jones’ article appearing in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, it appears leftists and atheists will use Boelter’s crimes to condemn and undermine theologically orthodox beliefs about the reality of a spiritual realm, spiritual darkness, principalities, and powers.
The religious expert cited by WaPo is Matthew Taylor, a left-leaning Christian academic who writes a lot about “Christian extremism,” “Christian Nationalism,” and Trump. WaPo writes,
Boelter’s views now appear to align with the political “far right” of Christianity in the United States, said Matthew Taylor, a senior Christian scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies.
Its core believes in demons and satanic evil in the world and a need “to fight back against it,” Taylor said. He added that the group disseminates “very extreme” rhetoric about abortion, which he said some of its leaders have portrayed as a form of child sacrifice that empowers demons.
While there exists a “far right” that distorts Christianity, just as there exists a far left that distorts everything including Christianity, beliefs in demons, satanic evil, a “need to fight back against it,’” and the belief that abortion is a form of child sacrifice are not exclusive to the “far right.” Mainstream Catholics, Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox Christians believe in the Bible’s teaching on Satan and his malevolent work.
In her effort to create paranoia against and distrust of Christians who believe in a spiritual realm, atheist Sarah Jones mentioned Eric Rudolph who “hid in the North Carolina wilderness for years after he bombed Centennial Olympic Park, a gay nightclub, and two abortion clinics.” She mentioned QAnon, Pizzagate, and Frank Peretti’s book This Present Darkness. And for emphasis she added this:
For authoritarians, spiritual warfare is a useful notion. Their political opponents aren’t simply misguided; they’re agents of the devil, and their humanity is questionable. Boelter’s Christianity did not force him to kill, but it did give him permission to act. And although he is accused of carrying out an assassination campaign by himself, he is not, in the broadest sense, alone. In the run-up to Obergefell, I saw a man blow a shofar outside the Supreme Court and I laughed. After the decision came down, I forgot about him for a while. …
Trump won the presidential election just over a year later, and I remembered the shofar and what it means to some Christians. In the Book of Joshua, the Israelites sound them as they besiege the city of Jericho. The walls fall down, the Israelites march in, and they kill nearly everyone they find. The average crank may be content to blow his horn, but what happens when his side loses a battle? Maybe he went home, not just to pray, but to vote, and to donate to the Alliance Defending Freedom, an act that has material consequences on its own. But sometimes there’s a man like Boelter, who decides that prayer is insufficient and that voting is no good as long as liberals can still do it. CNN reported on Monday that he texted his family after his shooting spree. “Dad went to war last night,” he said. He’s stopped playing army men. Now he’s in it for real.
Unwillingness to commit murder is insufficient for atheist Jones. Even voting or donating to an organization that fights for religious freedom is too much for her. She demands much more—or perhaps much less—from Christians. It appears Jones wants theologically orthodox Christians to retreat from any political or cultural engagement.
Worse still is her suggestion that those who believe in a spiritual realm also believe that the humanity of their political opponents is questionable. Theologically orthodox Christians who believe in a spiritual realm also believe that every human is created in the likeness and image of God and deserves to be protected from unjust extermination from conception till natural death.
No mention from Jones of the murderous acts committed by far left atheists throughout history. No mention of James Hodgkinson who attempted to murder multiple Republican congressmen at a charity baseball game or Floyd Corkins who attempted to murder employees at the D.C. office of Family Research Council, both men inspired by the anti-Christian rhetoric of the mainstream leftist Southern Poverty Law Center.
After penning a litany of horribles—both real and literary—committed by Christians who believe in spiritual darkness, Sarah Jones kinda, sorta conceded that not everyone who subscribes to theological orthodoxy becomes murderous when she confessed to growing up in a church that held those beliefs:
Millions of Christians believe in spiritual warfare, and for most of them, prayer is where it ends. The concept is not even unique to … charismatic and Pentecostal Christians. I grew up with similar ideas in an Evangelical congregation where no one spoke in tongues or laid hands on the sick or anointed new apostles, and I can still recall Ephesians 6:12, which says, “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” I became an atheist, not a terrorist, and although that’s more common than Boelter’s trajectory, I don’t think spiritual warfare is an innocuous belief. It is apocalyptic in character and profoundly conspiratorial. …”
After admitting the idea of spiritual warfare is biblical and that it is uncommon for Christians to follow “Boelter’s trajectory,” Jones hastens to add that such a belief is still really bad.
While atheist Jones may find belief in spiritual warfare harmfully apocalyptic and profoundly conspiratorial, her faith-based beliefs may in reality be ignorant, naïve, dangerous, and wrong.
This fervid attack on theologically orthodox beliefs in a spiritual realm brings me to my fourth speculation. For theologically orthodox Christians, it should be clear that it was Satan who drove Boelter’s murderous actions, and it is Satan who now rejoices that God-haters will point accusatory fingers at God and his followers. Unfortunately, Boelter’s aberrant, anomalous actions will likely be exploited by faithful atheists and far left Christians not just to turn society further against Christians but also to undermine First Amendment speech and religious protections as is happening in other Western countries, like Canada and those in the European Union.
We live in a culture that does not believe all humans are created in the image of God and worthy of life. We live in lawless, atomistic, subjectivist, relativist culture that exalts autonomy and rejects absolute truth—a culture where men and women wantonly murder school children, legally kill full-term babies, attempt to assassinate a president, and allows physicians to kill patients. As Richard Weaver wrote over fifty years ago, ideas have consequences.