Last year, a former counterterrorism official who served in the Department of Homeland Security during Donald Trump’s first term published a book sounding the alarm on violent Christian extremism.
Elizabeth Neumann wrote “Kingdom of Rage: The Rise of Christian Extremism and the Path Back to Peace” as a warning about a metastasizing strain of Christian-led violence against people who don’t accept their worldview — a crisis she'd been sounding the alarm about for years. And recent news reports seem to illustrate how right she was.
In Arizona, a man accused of killing a local pastor in April reportedly confessed during a news interview in which he said he was carrying out God’s will and planned to target church leaders in other parts of the country in some sort of crusade.
This, of course, follows the recent arrest of Vincent Boelter, who authorities say targeted Democratic Minnesota lawmakers in shootings that left two dead and two injured. Multiple news outlets have reported on Boelter’s alleged Christian nationalist ties and his promotion of violent, Christian extremist rhetoric, including in sermons posted online. Authorities said his list of potential targets included other politicians, abortion-rights advocates and Planned Parenthood facilities. (Boelter has not entered a plea.)
And these killings have occurred in an environment that is awfully permissive of Christian nationalist violence. A 2022 report from the advocacy group Christians Against Christian Nationalism showed how Christian nationalist rhetoric fueled the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. And the blanket clemency afforded to these insurrectionists this year by Trump — someone who has used messianic rhetoric to portray himself as anointed by God — could embolden other violent Christian extremists going forward.
In 2023, MSNBC columnist Sarah Posner wrote about a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution that found a disturbing rise in belief among white evangelicals, who are essential to the MAGA base, that violence could be necessary to save the country. And if the killings in Arizona and Minnesota are any evidence, the crisis seems to have only worsened since then.