Minnesota

Even presuming that the suspected murderer^[1] is in fact guilty, the assassinations this weekend in Minnesota were hardly the first time that someone has committed a heinous act of violence in the name of Christ. It's not like I came to the church unaware of the Klan, or the Crusades, or any number of other atrocities, large and small. This is just the first time that I am, allegedly, watching Christians murder people in Christ's name since I was batized.

There's always a sort of mortification when someone in whatever group you belong to does something heinous. A sense of "Oh God, don't you know how bad you're making us look?" A sense of "Oh Lord, don't let other people think I'm like that guy." SNL has made at least two sketches predicated on this precise concept.

Typically before this, though, any sort of identity I've shared with people accused of heinous crimes has been the result of immutable characteristics. I'm American by birth, Portuguese by birth, white by birth; I didn't pick any of that.

I did pick Christianity, though. I picked it a year and change ago when I started going to church, and I picked it really-for-real less than a week before the murders when I was baptized. I am Christian because I picked it

The man accused of two murders and two attempted murders is Christian, too. He is an ordained minister. He was a student at a Christian institution that advocates for "at least one violent prayer each day". He stands accused of making at least two children into orphans because he didn't like their mother's politics, despite the fact that his ministry's website boasts that he "sought out militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn't the answer."

There's no part of that that doesn't make me sick. It would have sickened me a year ago, too—the difference is that now, this alleged killer and I are motivated by the same faith. I act on my faith too: I don't do murder about it, but it's part of how I decide to act, to spend my time and my money.

I chose this. On purpose, after consideration, of my own free will, I chose this.

I came into Christianity knowing that its institutions had committed atrocities in the past and continued to commit atrocities the present. I came in knowing that right now, people use their faith in Christ as a weapon against vast swaths of humankind, including people like me, including me myself. I have less rights today than I did a decade ago; in some contexts, I am in more danger today that I was a decade ago; and all this was done in Jesus' name by His faithful servants.

I know this. I know. I chose Christ anyway.

I don't regret that. But that doesn't free me from the mortification of reading these articles, of learning more about this alleged killer and saying that I picked his faith, and I did it with full understanding of what that meant: that I knew people like the accused laid claim to it and still I wanted; that I was willing to stand under the same umbrella as this man of my own volition; that I looked at the damage done and said that this faith is worth it anyway.

It's a big thing to claim, and big claims are embarrassing, in the way that any sort of real sincerity always is. I'm going to make it anyway: I see, I know, and still I believe.