This is wishful thinking of the most dangerous sort.Īccording to Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, 'Breivik is not a Christian.' According Ross Douthat, the conservative Catholic columnist at the New York Times, “it’s fair to call Breivik a right-winger” but not a Christian fundamentalist. They had nothing to do with his Christian faith or his anti-Islamic ideology. Now in the wake of the Oslo massacre bloggers and pundits are reassuring us that the crimes of the alleged perpetrator Anders Behring Breivik can be understood simply as the product of a deranged mind. Unpacking the 'Christian fundamentalist' label for Norway terror suspect? Gabrielle Giffords was shot, we were told that the crime had nothing to do with our current climate of political hatred. After 9/11, many Muslims said that the men who flew those planes into those buildings had nothing to do with Islam.

Yet whenever ideas do things we do not want them to do, as they did in Oslo, Norway on Friday, we try to pretend that ideas are powerless.įor the last two decades, Christian students have told me that Christianity had nothing to do with the Holocaust. It is why pastors preach, why professors profess, and why pundits do whatever they do. Editor's Note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of 'God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World,' is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.

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