page_title: Christian terrorism
section_title: Anti-minority violence
hierarchical_section_title: Christian terrorism / Tactics of terrorists / Anti-minority violence
caption_attribution_description: English: In the evening on 17 March 2019, over 11,000 people in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand, gathered in the Basin Reserve for a vigil for the victims of the terrorist attack on mosques in Christchurch on Friday, 15 March 2019. This photo was taken at the end of the vigil when everyone was standing.
context_page_description: Christian terrorism comprises terrorist acts which are committed by groups or individuals who profess Christian motivations or goals. Christian terrorists justify their violent tactics through their interpretation of the Bible, in accordance with their own objectives and worldview. These interpretations are typically different from those of established Christian denominations.
  These terrorist acts can be committed against members of other Christian denominations, adherents of other religions, secular governments, groups, individuals or society. Christianity can also be used cynically by terrorists as a rhetorical device to achieve political or military goals.
  Christian terrorist groups include paramilitary organizations, cults and loose groups of people that might come together to attempt to terrorize other groups. Some groups also encourage terrorist acts by unaffiliated individuals. The paramilitary groups are typically tied to ethnic and political goals as well as religious ones and many of such groups have religious beliefs at odds with conventional Christianity.
context_section_description: Anders Behring Breivik was convicted for the 2011 Norway attacks, in which he killed eight people by detonating a van bomb amid Regjeringskvartalet in Oslo and then shot dead 69 participants at a Workers' Youth League (AUF) summer camp on the island of Utøya, leaving 77 dead. On the day of the attacks, Breivik electronically distributed a compendium of texts entitled 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, describing his militant ideology. In them, he lays out a worldview that encompasses opposition to Islam and blames feminism for causing Europe's "cultural suicide". The texts call Islam and "Cultural Marxism" enemies and advocate the deportation of all Muslims from Europe based on the model of the Beneš decrees, and they also claim that feminism and Islam exist in order to destroy Christian European culture. Breivik wrote that his main motive for the atrocities was to market his manifesto. Breivik contends that he is waging a Christian Crusade against multiculturalism and believes that the attacks were "necessary".
  His manifesto also states that its author is "100 percent Christian", but he is not "excessively religious". Nevertheless, he said he planned to pray to God for help during his attacks. Before the attacks, he stated an intention to attend Frogner Church in a final "Martyr's mass". In 2015, Breivik claimed to be an Odinist, but Breivik and others have previously linked his religious beliefs to Christianity during the attacks.
  Deputy police chief Roger Andresen initially told reporters that the information on Breivik's websites was "so to speak, Christian fundamentalist" and many mainstream media such as The New York Times have described him a Christian fundamentalist.
  Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder were a gay couple from Redding, California, who were murdered by Benjamin Matthew Williams and James Tyler Williams in 1999.  Neighbors said that the family was known for its fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and they also said that recordings of sermons and religious music were often heard from their house. The two perpetrators are believed to have had ties to the Christian Identity movement. They were also suspected of playing a role in 18 arson attacks on three synagogues.
  In 1996 three men who claimed to be Phineas priests—Charles Barbee, Robert Berry and Jay Merelle—were charged with two bank robberies and bombings at the banks, a Spokane newspaper, and a Planned Parenthood office in Washington state.  The men were anti-Semitic Christian Identity theorists who believed that God wanted them to carry out violent attacks and they also believed that such attacks would hasten the ascendancy of the Aryan race.
  In 2015, Robert Doggart, a 63-year-old mechanical engineer, was indicted for solicitation to commit a civil rights violation by intending to damage or destroy religious property after communicating that he intended to amass weapons to attack Islamberg, an Islamic hamlet and religious community in Delaware County, New York. Doggart, a member of several private militia groups, communicated to an FBI source in a phone call that he had an M4 carbine with "500 rounds of ammunition" that he intended to take to the Delaware County enclave, along with a handgun, molotov cocktails and a machete.  The FBI source recorded him saying "if it gets down to the machete, we will cut them to shreds". Doggart had previously travelled to a site in Dover, Tennessee, which had been described as a "jihadist training camp", in chain emails and found that the claims were wrong. In April, Doggart accepted a plea bargain and stated that he had "willfully and knowingly sent a message in interstate commerce containing a true threat" to injure someone. The plea bargain was struck down by a judge because it did not contain enough facts to constitute a true threat. Doggart, who describes himself as a Christian minister in the "Christian National (Congregational) Church" (apparently the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches). None of the charges against him are terrorism related, however, some groups have described 
caption: Vigil in Wellington, New Zealand, for the victims of the Christchurch mosque shootings in March 2019
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