CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE IN AMERICA

As the millennium approaches, the wave of antimodernism that has broug ht violent movements of religious nationalism in its wake around the w orld has arrived at America's shores. In the United States, attacks on abortion clinics, the killing of abortion clinic staff, and the destr uctive acts of members of Christian militia movements are chilling exa mples of assaults on the legitimacy of modern social and political ins titutions, based on the theological frameworks of reconstruction theol ogy and Christian Identity thinking. These examples of Christian milit ancy present a religious perception of warfare and struggle in what is perhaps the most modern of twentieth-century societies. The secular p olitical order of America is imagined to be trapped in vast satanic co nspiracies involving spiritual and personal control. This perception p rovides Christian activists with both the justification and the obliga tion to use violent means to fulfill their understanding of the countr y's Christian mission-and at the same time offers a formidable critiqu e of Enlightenment society and a reassertion of the primacy of religio n in public life.