Eschatology as Murder Motive

In its coverage of Saturday's Wisconsin church shootings, The New York Times dove right into the heart of the story, in its view: the crazy beliefs of the church, especially the church's "end times" beliefs:

The church's "pre-millennial" view of history, which asserts that humankind is moving inexorably toward the "end times," when the world will go through a series of cataclysms before the second coming of Christ, is not uncommon among evangelicals. Dr. Meredith preached in a recent sermon broadcast internationally that the apocalypse was close, warning members to pay off credit-card debt and hoard savings in preparation for the United States' coming financial collapse.

But James R. Lewis, author of "The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects and New Religions," said such focus on the end of the world "doesn't make them violent."

"All traditional, conservative religious groups have an end-time belief, even peace groups like the Amish and the Mennonites," said Mr. Lewis, a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin at Steven's Point. "It is radically unfair to say that because they have a belief in the apocalypse, they are prone to violence. They shouldn't be stigmatized on basis of theology."

I appreciate the gracious opportunity afforded by The Times for Mr. Lewis to disassociate a belief in the apocalypse from any murder committed by an individual holding such a belief, but exactly who (besides the reporter) was making such an accusation in the first place? Perhaps the journalistic reasoning goes like this: reasonable folk recognize that mass murder makes no sense; reasonable folk recognize that a belief in a divinely ordained end to human history makes no sense; therefore, the two must be connected. Is this part of the mainstream media's effort to take religion more seriously?

Rob