{"id":4981,"date":"2011-07-27T09:02:54","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T13:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=4981"},"modified":"2011-07-27T20:15:09","modified_gmt":"2011-07-28T00:15:09","slug":"washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","title":{"rendered":"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian"},"content":{"rendered":"

“So long as there are differing interpretations of Christian Scripture,” writes Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in the Washington Post<\/em>‘s On Faith section, “there can be ‘Christian terrorism.’<\/p>\n

He continues:<\/p>\n

Anders Behring Breivik justified his views and actions through a lens of what is in my mind painful misunderstanding of biblical texts and a ‘Christian’ worldview to which very few Christians subscribe. Sure, he had political and racial ideologies that may have been fostered by studying non-Christian sources, but there seems to be no evidence contradicting his rooting in his religious faith \u2013 twisted as it might have been.<\/p>\n

I notice that Bill O\u2019Reilly says bringing up Breivik\u2019s Christian beliefs is a scheme by the evil liberal media to vilify the faith generally. This is nonsense. Breivik says he is a Christian; he wrote a \u201cmanifesto\u201d in which he attempts to link Christianity to opposition to Muslim immigration. Yet he failed miserably to understand the faith he claimed to champion.<\/p>\n

Over the centuries, Christianity has inspired some people to end slavery, work for social justice and feed the hungry. A corruption of its views has inspired others to make war, hate others and slaughter perceived \u201cinfidels.\u201d It useless to pretend that some people don\u2019t claim the mantle of Christianity to do wicked things. We know they do. A more productive route would be to look for the warning signs that someone has perverted the doctrines of a faith based on love and peace (remember, one of Christ\u2019s great commandments is to love your neighbor) and turned it into an excuse for violence. In our habitually connected online world, such signs are rarely hidden. They can be seen in any number of rambling manifestos devoted to violence and death on the web. More forceful challenges to the corrupters of Christianity (or indeed any religion) might prevent the next mass slaughter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“So long as there are differing interpretations of Christian Scripture,” writes Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in the Washington Post‘s On Faith section, “there can be ‘Christian terrorism.’ He continues: Anders Behring Breivik justified his views and actions through a lens of what is in my mind…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,8,5,956],"tags":[1262,1261,2240],"class_list":["post-4981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-news","category-politics","category-washington-post-on-faith","tag-americans-united-for-the-separation-of-church-and-state","tag-barry-lynn","tag-washington-post-on-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nWashington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"“So long as there are differing interpretations of Christian Scripture,” writes Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in the Washington Post‘s On Faith section, “there can be ‘Christian terrorism.’ He continues: Anders Behring Breivik justified his views and actions through a lens of what is in my mind…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-07-27T13:02:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-07-28T00:15:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian","og_description":"“So long as there are differing interpretations of Christian Scripture,” writes Barry Lynn, Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, in the Washington Post‘s On Faith section, “there can be ‘Christian terrorism.’ He continues: Anders Behring Breivik justified his views and actions through a lens of what is in my mind…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-07-27T13:02:54+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-07-28T00:15:09+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian","name":"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-07-27T13:02:54+00:00","dateModified":"2011-07-28T00:15:09+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/07\/washington-post-breivik-says-he-is-a-christian#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Washington Post: Breivik says he is a Christian"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4981"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4985,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4981\/revisions\/4985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}