On May 31, 2009 George Tiller, an abortion doctor in Wichita, Kansas, was shot and killed in the foyer of his church. Authorities apprehended and charged Scott P. Roeder with aggravated assault and first-degree murder. While Tiller’s death has been widely covered noticeably missing from early news items on the event was an analysis of Roeder’s connection to Christianity. As Dan Mathewson pointed out recently, news analysis ranged from holding conservative media outlets responsible for inciting violent action to implying Tiller’s death may have been inevitable since his profession made himself a target for violence. Though relatively silent in media analysis, Christianity appears central to Roeder’s motives. Considering this to be the case, Mark Juergensmeyer recently proposed that the United States may be experiencing a new wave of Christian, anti-abortion violence akin to that of 1990s. See more here.
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Tags: abortion, anti-abortion, Christianity, conservative, Dan Mathewson, Faith, George Tiller, Kansas, Mark Juergensmeyer, media, Murder, religion, religious studies, Scott Roeder, terrorism, violence, Wichita
June 20, 2009 at 1:53 pm |
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