{"id":517,"date":"2009-06-02T12:19:37","date_gmt":"2009-06-02T12:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeders-mystery-religion.html"},"modified":"2009-06-02T12:19:37","modified_gmt":"2009-06-02T12:19:37","slug":"scott-roeders-mystery-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeders-mystery-religion.html","title":{"rendered":"Scott Roeder’s mystery religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\"Roeder<\/span>That Scott Roeder <\/strong>is mentally unstable, a devotee of right-wing, anti-government extremism, and a fierce opponent of abortion seem to be a few of the hard facts  we have on him. <\/p>\n

But the suspect in the killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller is also being portrayed as a religious wingnut, apparently of a Christian variety. But which variety, exactly? <\/p>\n

There are only a few hints, and it doesn’t seem that journalists are asking the question directly, or if they have, it hasn’t made the final copy. <\/p>\n

Here’s what I can find: <\/strong><\/p>\n

–A profile in today’s Wichita Eagle<\/font><\/strong><\/a> quote ex-wife Lindsey Roeder as saying that when Scott Roeder (latest mug from the Wichita Eagle’s arraignment story today<\/a>) turned to extremism and religion a decade ago he became “adamant about his Old Testament beliefs and observed the Sabbath from Friday night through Saturday. Nothing could get in the way of that. Not soccer games when his son was younger. Nothing.” <\/p>\n

But she noted that last Friday night was different, and he took his 22-year-old son to see “Star Trek.” (I went on Saturday, but the film didn’t make me do anything crazy. Yet.) “In hindsight, my son said, ‘He was saying goodbye to me.’ “<\/p>\n

–She also gave the AP a keeper of a quote<\/a>: “That’s all he cared about is anti-abortion, ‘the church this, God is this,’ yada yada.”  <\/p>\n

–A Time magazine story<\/font><\/strong><\/a> today also notes that Roeder’s car had was “decorated with a red rose — an antiabortion emblem — and a Jesus fish.” Not much there. <\/p>\n

–A Monday New York Times story<\/font><\/strong><\/a> quotes Roeder’s ex-wife as saying Roeder was looking for a “scapegoat” to blame for his troubles. “First it was taxes — he stopped paying. Then he turned to the church and got involved in anti-abortion,” she said.<\/p>\n

Perilous to speculate<\/strong> of course but I won’t be surprised if it emerges that Roeder was involved in some kind of Christian Reconstructionist<\/a> group, or the Christian Identity<\/a> movement, or influenced by those beliefs. These groups rarely have “churches,” per se, or broader communities which could temper (or inflame, I suppose) extremist views. That’s problem: folks like Roeder keep it bottled up, for the most part, occasionally let off some steam. So friends and family express “shock” when they go off the deep end. <\/p>\n

For good background on these radical Christian movements, read a 1998 Southern Poverty Law Center paper here<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“The militant anti-abortion movement is driven by three different but overlapping theologies that motivate violence: Christian Reconstructionism, Christian Identity and apocalyptic Catholicism. To understand this movement’s increased militancy and its goal of instituting a theocracy — a goal that by definition means ending democracy — it is necessary to examine these three ideological strands.” <!–
\n3
\n1
\n1
\n–><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read more<\/strong><\/a>… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That Scott Roeder is mentally unstable, a devotee of right-wing, anti-government extremism, and a fierce opponent of abortion seem to be a few of the hard facts  we have on him. But the suspect in the killing of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller is also being portrayed as a religious wingnut, apparently of a Christian variety.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6,7,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-catholic","category-church","category-history","category-politics","category-pop-culture"],"yoast_head":"\nScott Roeder's mystery religion - Pontifications<\/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\/pontifications\/2009\/06\/scott-roeders-mystery-religion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Scott Roeder's mystery religion - Pontifications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"That Scott Roeder is mentally unstable, a devotee of right-wing, anti-government extremism, and a fierce opponent of abortion seem to be a few of the hard facts  we have on him. 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He came by all those vocations by accident, or Providence, during a longer-than-expected sojourn in Rome in the 1980s. Gibson began his journalistic career as a walk-on sports editor and columnist at The International Courier, a small daily in Rome serving Italy's English-language community. He then found a job as a newscaster and writer across the Tiber at the English Programme at Vatican Radio, an entity he describes as a cross between NPR and Armed Forces Radio for the pope. The Jesuits who ran the radio were charitable enough to hire Gibson even though he had no radio background, could not pronounce the name \"Karol Wojtyla,\" and wasn't Catholic. Time and experience overcame all those challenges, and Gibson went on to cover dozens of John Paul II's overseas trips, including papal visits to Africa, Europe, Latin America and the United States. When Gibson returned to the United States in 1990 he returned to print journalism to cover the religion beat in his native New Jersey for two dailies. He worked first for The Record of Hackensack, and then for The Star-Ledger of New Jersey, winning the nation's top awards in religion writing at both places. In 1999 he won the Supple Religion Writer of the Year contest, and in 2000 he was chosen as the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year. Gibson is a longtime board member of the Religion Newswriters Association and he is a contributor to ReligionLink, a service of the Religion Newswriters Foundation. Since 2003, David Gibson has been an independent writer specializing in Catholicism, religion in contemporary America, and early Christian history. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Boston Magazine, Commonweal, America, The New York Observer, Beliefnet and Religion News Service. He has produced documentaries on early Christianity for CNN and other networks and has traveled on assignment to dozens of countries, with an emphasis on reporting from Europe and the Middle East. He is a frequent television commentator and has appeared on the major cable and broadcast networks. He is also a regular speaker at conferences and seminars on Catholicism, religion in America, and journalism. Gibson's first book, The Coming Catholic Church: How the Faithful are Shaping a New American Catholicism (HarperSanFrancisco), was published in 2003 and deals with the church-wide crisis revealed by the clergy sexual abuse crisis. The book was widely hailed as a \"powerful\" and \"first-rate\" treatment of the crisis from \"an academically informed journalist of the highest caliber.\" His second book, The Rule of Benedict: Pope Benedict XVI and His Battle with the Modern World (HarperSanFrancisco), came out in 2006 and is the first full-scale treatment of the Ratzinger papacy--how it happened, who he is, and what it means for the Catholic Church. The Rule of Benedict has been praised as \"an exceptionally interesting and illuminating book\" from \"a master storyeller.\" Born and raised in New Jersey, David Gibson studied European history at Furman University in South Carolina and spent a year working on Capitol Hill before moving to Italy. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and daughter and is working on a book about conversion, and on several film and television projects.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/author\/dgibson"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/pontifications\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}