The police strip suspended outside the home of the state representative Melissa Hortman on June 15 in Brooklyn Park, Minn. Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, were shot this month in what officials describe as a political assassination.
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The investigators still examine the possible motivations for the murder of a legislator of the state of Minnesota and her husband, and the shooting of another legislator and his wife. At a press conference on Monday, acting American lawyer Joseph H. Thompson described the outburst as a “rare” political assassination. A large part of the public speech focused on the question of whether the suspect, Vance Luther Boelter, comes political law or the Political left. But People near Boelter said he has not discussed politics.
Instead, some researchers who focus on the extreme right and anti-abortion violence say that it may be more insightful to examine the religious history of Boelter and opinions on abortion. Among the evidence that investigators examine are notebooks belonging to Boelter containing detailed notes on dozens of other alleged targets which included democratic officials and supporters of abortion rights. The researchers say that it is reasonable to consider the unleashing of Minnesota in the well-established model of anti-abortion violence which took place for many decades in the United States, and its links with conservative evangelical Christian movements.
“They … have this idea that you, as devout Christians, have to do something to stop (abortion) – not only to oppose it, but to eliminate it,” said Carol Mason, president of the humanities of the University of Kentucky. “And that dates back to a kind of” resistance without leader “that the militia movement appointed in the late 1980s, and that the anti-abortion movement had been practicing for a long time.”
Researchers who have examined Boelter’s apparent link with a rapidly growing evangelical Christianity component say he can shed light. This movement, called the new apostolic reform (NAR), frequently invokes the terminology and the imagery of war when they discuss political and spiritual enemies, including those who support the rights to abortion.
“It is reasonable to worry about the present that this movement that we call the new apostolic reform, begins the pump of anti-abortion and other types of violence in our society now,” said Fred Clarkson, main research analyst at Political Research Associates. “There has been an increase decided in rhetoric and the vision of violence in the United States of apostolic leaders for some time.”
Clarkson declared in the NAR circles, abortion is considered a “demonic enterprise” and that the institutions and individuals who allow or support it are considered enemies.
“The question is, when does rhetoric answer reality?” He said. “At what time individuals or perhaps organized groups, perhaps large groups, are starting to take measures against” enemies of God “and” demonic forces “?”
Boelter spoke of abortion, prophets and modern apostles
Close associates of Boelter, as well as the speeches he delivered during Christian rallies While living in Africa Two years ago, portray a man whose world vision was fundamentally shaped by his religious beliefs. He was deeply opposed to abortion and embarrassed the churches that do not share this point of view.
“Many churches in America have not listened to Jesus. They are divided. This small group here, this small group here, this small group here,” he said during one of these sermons, stopping frequently as a interpreter translates his words in French. “And the enemy, the devil, detaches and tears everything.
At another moment of the same sermon, Boelter spoke of his conviction that the various churches in the United States would one day be united.
“God will raise apostles and prophets in America to correct his church,” he said.
“No one speaks like that unless you are part of the NAR,” said Clarkson. “No one talks about God who sends apostles and prophets to correct the Church in America unless you are in a way influenced by Nar. This is solid proof.”
A fortune memorial for state representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman are seen at Minnesota State Capitol Building on June 16 in St. Paul, Minn.
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Clarkson also said that it should be noted that Boelter graduated from Christ for the Institute of Nations in Texas. Cfni is rooted in Pentecostalism and adheres to conservative lessons on gender, marriage and sexual identity. Clarkson said the Institute also promoted religious doctrines that were considered unusual at the time of its foundation in 1970.
“One of them was the idea that all Christian and doctrines of traditional Christianity – Catholicism and Pentecostism and even a large part of evangelism – were false,” he said. He was also distinct in his belief in modern prophets and apostles.
“And the apostles and the prophets have direct communications with God. He speaks with them. They speak with him,” said Clarkson. “It was therefore a pretty radical thing.”
Clarkson said that CFNI teachings have become the “tap root” in the NAR community today, which also maintains the modern prophets and apostles of the network.
The CFNI published a statement condemning violence to Minnesota.
“We are absolutely dismayed and horrified that a former student of the CFNI is the suspect,” said the declaration in part. “It is not who we are. It is not what we teach. This is not what we model.”
“ Papa went to war last night ” ‘
According to an affidavit of an investigator filed concerning the federal complaint against Boelter, he would have sent a group message to his wife and other family members in the hours that followed the outburst. He said: “Dad went to war last night … I don’t want to say more because I don’t want to involve anyone.”
The language invoking “war” and the “battles” are deeply rooted in the culture of NAR, in particular with regard to the discussion of social and political positions with which they disagree, said Clarkson. He said that it stems from the continuation of “domination” by NAR – a term which refers to the aspiration to take control of all aspects of society and to impose the biblical law of the Old Testament. The accent put by the movement on the Old Testament is significant, said Clarkson, because in this document, major figures are warriors. Although almost Two thirds of American adults describe themselves as ChristianNAR leaders frequently do their struggle for political domination in similar terms, while fighting against the currents of society in general.
“They do not see it as a metaphorical or something that occurs only in heaven, (or) in the” world of mind “in one way or another,” said Clarkson. “But rather, that will imply Christians of the good kind of power to create the Kingdom of God and take what they call” domination “over society.”
Although the NAR community is decentralized and doctrinally diversified, the personalities in the process of deploying dehumanizing and inflammatory rhetoric with regard to abortion. In a doctrinal publication Emitted on the subject, the apostle Nar Lou Engle articulated this position.
“We believe that abortion is a simple solution to a social problem, but what we do not know is that it really fuels the demonic domain over a whole culture,” he wrote. “… Sacrification of babies feeds the demonization of our nation. Without the mercy of God by interceding and acting to stop abortion, a day of calculation arrives in the United States”
Dehumanizing accounts on abortion are now common
While the stories which describe abortion as a “sacrifice of the ritual child” which allows the demons is coherent through the NAR, they are not limited to this movement.
“As a person who has studied the anti-abortion movement for a long time, you do not need to be part of a marginal Christian network for having seen and heard images and stories about the abortion in sacrifice of the demonic child,” said Mason, whose stock market has focused on the rise on the right since the 1960s and anti-abortion violence. “These images have been floating for a very, a very long time and they are now deployed, I think, in more and more higher places and volumes.”
Mason said that this was the result of decades of rhetorical changes which even incorporated anti -Semitic myths “blood defamation. “She says that this rhetoric has become a radicalized and anti-abortion ideology among many conservative Christians in the United States
“Abortion was considered to be a sin, as adultery or blasphemy. But over time, it has not only become a sin, it has become bad. And for some, it has become the worst evil,” she said. “Until people are convinced that abortion does not simply consist in putting an end to a pregnancy, but is in fact a large -scale genocidal industry intended to serve a evil global cabale whose mission is to erase Christian civilization.”
Mason said there was An obvious frustration feels in the extreme right That, since Dobbs Decision, abortion estimates have actually increased. The movement that had long seen the reversal Roe c. Wade As an important step towards the realization of the elimination of elective abortion was faced with a more complicated result. This has increased concerns about the climbing of rhetoric and the possibility that individual actors feel obliged to take matters into their own hands.
“This apocalyptic account says that we are in a battle between good Christian forces and bad demonic forces and that we have to do something now, for fear of treating the anger of God,” said Mason. “And so there is a feeling of urgency that comes with it.”