TheCall and Christian Extremists Declare War

Fellow Bilerico blogger, Patricia Nell Warren, has an interesting - one might say even frightening - and timely post on the growing possibility of far right Christian religious terrorists in this country. It is a long post but worth a full read because too often we discount just how fanatical some of the extreme Christianist organizations are becoming. While there is much attention given to Islamic extremists, little focus is given to equally threatening Christianist extremists. Worse yet, the main stream media continually resists exposing the insanity and level of hatred of these "Christian" groups - using the term Christian very loosely given how the Gospel message has been perverted - out of both laziness and some false fear of being accused of being anti-religion. These people DO constitute a clear and present danger that too many people ignore. Here are some post highlights"

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Just this morning, an announcement went out from TheCall, asking its list of followers to join a national prayer-and-fasting movement aimed at "the spiritual darkness of the homosexual agenda" and the "restraining" of our "ideology." TheCall is not just another fringy extremist church group -- we need to pay serious attention to this move it's making. Lou Engle, founder and leader of TheCall, is not the familiar old bible-thumping enemy like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. A major figure in the New Apostolic Reformation that I've been writing about, Engle has close ties with the violent anti-abortion movement called The Army of God, who stirred up such a frenzied atmosphere of attacks on abortion clinics that they finally incited someone to assassinate the well-known doctor George Tiller.

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Now Engle's . . . . movement also calls for acts of "martyrdom" -- meaning followers who are willing to commit violent acts, including murder, who will willingly go to prison or be shot down by police, so they can rid the world of the movement's "enemies," namely prominent abortionists and LGBT leaders and the like.

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TheCall's message (which is below) has to be read in its entirety, to get the full fanatical sweep of what Engle is calling for. So I've copied it verbatim from the email I saw. In my opinion, we will now see the violent Army-of-God-type of inciting turned openly against the LGBT community. These extremists are nothing like the conventional enemies we've gotten used to fighting. . . . essentially a form of religion-motivated domestic terrorism that is apparently being winked at by conservative American government and law enforcement who don't have the brains to see how dangerous it is.

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Here is Lou Engle's email message to his faithful this morning: . . . 40 years ago the Stonewall Riots of New York City, marked the beginning of the homosexual revolution. 40 years later we are coming to the ripening and legal empowering of the movement. Apart from God there is no way of turning this back. . . . . I believe the Lord wants to raise up a "Stonewall" of intercession, a prayer stand if you will, expressed in Ezekiel 22:30 "I looked for a man to stand in the gap to build up a wall before me ..."

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The Christianists can deny the danger that extremists within their ranks pose all they want, but the report released by the Department of Homeland Security back in April said it all. The reality is that these people are dangerous and need to be taken seriously for the risk they pose to the religious freedom of other citizens as well as the rule of law. Among other things, the report found:

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Anti-government conspiracy theories and “end times” prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons. These teachings also have been linked with the radicalization of domestic extremist individuals and groups in the past, such as violent Christian Identity organizations and extremist members of the militia movement.

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Unlike the earlier period, the advent of the Internet and other information age technologies since the 1990s has given domestic extremists greater access to information related to bomb-making, weapons training, and tactics, as well as targeting of individuals, organizations, and facilities, potentially making extremist individuals and groups more dangerous and the consequences of their violence more severe.