The shooter in Buffalo on Saturday, 2:30 pm, did not show up at the scene of the crime by accident. He had used census data to locate his target: a grocery store in a predominantly African-American community.
He left no doubt as to his motive. In a long screed -- a "manifesto" -- he complained about the falling "white birth rate," even using demographic statistics culled from any one of a myriad of sources on grievance internet sites. He referred repeatedly to a conspiracy theory about the white race being displaced through intermarriage, immigration, and violence. It is a deeply anti-Semitic theory, as – like Tsar Nicholas II’s “Protocols of the Elders of Zion" – it fantasized that powerful and rich Jewish men were behind the conspiracy of “replacement.”
And so this 18-year-old was going to do something about it, armed with an assault rifle, body armor, even tactical headgear. His assault rifle was modified with a kit he purchased on the internet. He scrawled, with a permanent marker, racial slurs all over the gun.
He got in his car, driving three and a half hours and over 200 miles, from Conklin New York to Buffalo. He tried live-stream his brand of “racial justice” on Twitch.
Ten people were murdered (including an 82-year-old widow) for the sake of white nationalist ideology -- an ideology that stokes itself into a frenzy about changing demographics -- that whites will no longer be dominant; that the American version of Protestantism will no longer have the influence it once had; that socialism is somehow replacing libertarian capitalism.
Ideology is not merely one "option" out of many possible opinions, a "freedom of choice." Ideology is not just intellectual laziness (which it is). Ideology supplants Christian theology -- it drives out faith and belief and charity.
Ideology rips apart community. Ideology always turns extreme.
Ideology turns human persons into inhumane agents of wrath and destruction.
I say this because the “replacement” manifesto of a murderous 18-year-old is exactly the sort of screed I received in an email I received some years ago. The benighted author lived in the DC area and was employed somewhere in the federal government -- he told me in "intelligence," which I found hard to believe, given its oxymoronic character.
He was trying to get me -- an Orthodox priest -- and other conservative clergy to sign on to a letter to "the Bible-believing church leadership" – begging them to demand of the US government protection of "the white Christian establishment."
This man, too, deployed statistics and was wringing his hands over the "diminishment of American white Christianity."
I replied simply and concisely. I told him there was nothing Christian about his concern about “white Christianity.” He could say this as a radical ideologue, but he could not spout “replacement theory” as a Christian.
There is no such thing as “white Christianity.” The minute these words are uttered, that language might be white but it is certainly not “Christian”: “In Christ,” St Paul said, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free” (Galatians 3.28). And, neither white nor black. Race – as demographically defined by loudmouth TV pundits today – is a modernist construct and has nothing to do with faith.
I told him that Christianity need not be so cowardly, that it had nothing to fear about any demographic change. That Christianity was robust enough to walk into any secularism, any sort of liberal democracy. I told him, too, that he hadn't a clue as to what socialism was (especially as he was conflating that with communism -- an all too common and uneducated error that too many politicians leverage).
And lastly, I told him that his white nationalist thinking makes racist violence likely, if not certain.
Well, here we are.
If I were writing to him today, I'd say that at least one of the bullets of Buffalo yesterday had his name on it.
But years ago, when I wrote him back, I told him to never contact me again. That is, until he had repented of his wickedness in sackcloth and ashes.
Today, it is grievous that my own Orthodox community seems to attract many who hold to this "replacement theory" ideology. This is part of a larger trend in American Orthodoxy in particular, along with American Christianity in general, of a lurch toward rightwing authoritarian ideology.
It should be impossible to believe in a feetwashing and crucified Jesus in one part of the heart, and to embrace racist authoritarian ideology in another part.
To do so is to fail to discern the Body of Christ, St Paul says, and "That is why many of you are weak and ill, and some have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 11.30).
In Orthodoxy and elsewhere in Christianity, in America and in the world, we have to work hard and bravely for the Holy Apostolic Tradition -- and thus we have to denounce replacement theory, QAnon theory, stolen election theory, and all sloppy extremist-driven conflations of socialism with communism, conservatism with rightwingism. We have to stand up for Jesus and denounce authoritarians, and their ideological fifth columns.
Why is this so? Why has ideology taken the place of theology and belief in so much of American Christianity?
Because Tucker Carlson (and his ilk) have more influence than your congregation's preacher, or your Sunday School teacher, or your neighborhood Bible Study leader.
Or, more likely, the Bible has less to do with too many preachers and Sunday School teachers and Bible Study leaders say than what they've heard on extremist TV.
People would rather hear "do you want to get mad?" stuff on cable rather than theology from the pulpit. People would rather hear evangelists spit and crow about pedophiles in the deep state, and not the red-print of the Gospels.
While we've long complained of leftwing radical ideologues, we've closed our eyes to eyes to the steady and "nativist" march of rightwing ideology and its punditries. Perhaps these talking heads looked too much like us for us to notice.
So. Every single real Christian preacher has a sacred responsibility to resist extremism in their congregation and community.
Every single Christian leader and teacher is called by the Holy Spirit to proclaim the truly-traditional Gospel of peace, rationality, and justice. True Christology. True Trinitarian faith.
And every single Christian has heard the truth that every human face is the Face of Christ: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me.”
Demographics and ideology hide this Face.
Because when a shooter shoots, he shoots Christ.
Pray that we don't end up being complicit.
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