Kansas, Bleeding Kansas

Yesterday, I was shocked and saddened by the murder of Dr. George Tiller in his church in Wichita. When I learned about this terrible murder, my reaction was my God, this is something that shouldn't happen in Kansas. We're not like this. We don't go into a church on a Sunday and kill people. That's not done in Kansas, that's not done in America, that shouldn't be done anywherte.

The murder of Dr. George Tiller was an act of domestic terrorism. Police have a suspect in custody. While the murder itself was sudden, the act of murder, which was done in the sanctuary of Tiller's Lutheran Church has had a long genesis. The more I thought about this murder, the more I realized that murder is not an isolated incident. Kansas has been through this before and all I have to do is think of the geography of my childhood to prove it.

I was born and raised in Kansas. I lived in the suburbs of Kansas City, Missouri, in that part of Kansas known as Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas earned it name for the years just prior to the start of the American Civil War. My house was on the Kansas side of State Line Road and was just a mile or so away from Loose Park in Kansas City, where the Battle of Westport was fought. The post office for our area was called Shawnee Mission after an Indian School by the same name. In 1865, Thomas Johnson, the director of that "school" was murdered by southern sympathizers for swearing an oath to the Union.

Every day I rode or drove to school along Johnson Dr. which was the start of Oregon and Santa Fe trails. Later, when I was in college, I lived a little town of Wamego Kansas which is not far from Wabaunsee, which is the site of the Beecher Bible church.

So Kansas has known the terrorism of John Brown, William Quantrill and Sen. David Atchison. In the last half of the 19th century, the divisive issue was slavery. Today is it fundamental Christian fanaticism and its many false dogmas, gun rights, anti-gay marriage, hatred of taxes, and abortion. Now it appears that idealogical descendents of Quantrill and Atchison are now attacking churches that disagree with their views regarding guns, god, taxes, and gays. Kansas has seen this trend as well.

In the early 1980s, my parents lived in Topeka Kansas. One day a neighborhood restaurant, called the Village Grill, was picketed by a group of religious fanatics who call themselves the Westboro Baptist Church, led by a self-ordained Baptist minister by the name of Fred Phelps. Phelps was picketing the restuarant because it either hired or served gays. Phelps' demonstrations escalated over the years and he later would picket any church that protested his tactics.

So in Kansas, religious fanatics learned that it was okay to use hate not just against minorities but also religious groups you didn't agree with. But the next atrocity came not in Kansas but in Tennessee. In July of 2008, an deranged loner by the name of James Adkisson stormed into Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two innocent people. Is there a connection between Fred Phelps picketing churches in Topeka that disagree with him, James Adkisson murdering Unitarian Universalists in Knoxville, and the man that killed Dr. George Tiller in Wichita? It's too early to tell, but I am not the only one who is worried by this trend.

Journalist Sara Robinson in her Blog Orcinus

The fact that this killing happened on the sixth anniversary of Eric Rudolph's capture bears this out. The date was chosen with a message in mind. It seems very likely that the venue was, too.

I've often said that fundamentalism begins the minute you decide you have the One True Right and Only Way -- and that you have a God-given duty to impose that way on the rest of the world. Because of this, fundamentalists have never been willing to recognize the legitimacy of other faiths. And certain factions on the far right have never had qualms about vandalizing mosques or synagogues in order to harass Muslims and Jews into political and social silence.

But they used to leave Christian churches pretty much alone. The fact that this shooting occurred in a church (again) suggests that this tactic is now being tried out on more closely related faith groups whose views don't comport with the fundamentalist party line. As Dave has often pointed out, bringing violence to houses of worship is usually an overtly eliminationist act. They are trying to terrify liberals by making us feel at risk and unsafe inside our own spiritual sanctuaries -- the very places we go to feel the most security and peace. This is terrorism, plain and simple -- Christian fundamentalist terrorism, committed by people Sam Smith has started referring to as "Jesus's Jihadis."

So Kansas is bleeding again. I'd like to think that as a Kansan "we're not like this." But as a short rummage through the landmarks of my youth have shown, we are. Will it grow into a wider conflict, I don't know.

Capitano Tedeschi

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