Christian extremism: Taking 'holy war' literally

The Minnesota State Capitol opens for the public to pay their respects to Rep. Melissa Hortman, her husband Mark Hortman, and their dog Gilbert who were assassinated by Vance Boelter in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States on June 27, 2025. They had their caskets and their dogs ashes put in the Capitol rotunda. — Boelter had "fixations that drove him to extremes"

(Image credit: Chris Juhn / Anadolu / Getty Images)

Our country faces a serious violent threat from evangelical Christian "zealots," said Mona Charen in The Bulwark. Vance Boelter, a Minnesota Trump supporter who was charged last week with shooting two Democratic state legislators and their spouses, allegedly had a "kill list" of nearly 70 Democratic politicians, abortion providers, and pro-choice activists. Boelter was a self-declared minister who preached in the Democratic Republic of Congo that "the devil" had infiltrated American churches that tolerated abortion and LGBTQ rights. After his shooting spree, prosecutors say, he texted to his family, "Dad went to war last night." His belief in "holy war" didn't come from nowhere, said Jeff Sharlet in Religion Dispatches. Boelter attended the Christ for the Nations Institute, a Dallas-based evangelical Bible college that also produced preacher Dutch Sheets, a Christian nationalist who exhorted his 300,000 YouTube followers to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The college teaches its students that they are engaged in a "spiritual war" with secular culture. Boelter might have taken this message "all too literally," becoming a Christian jihadist.

Boelter had "fixations that drove him to extremes," said Andy Mannix in The Minnesota Star Tribune, but not all of them were religious. Court records describe him as a doomsday prepper who stashed "dozens of weapons at his rural home" to prepare for an imminent catastrophe. He was reportedly a devotee of the right-wing conspiracy website Infowars and first-person-shooter video games. After multiple failed business ventures, Boelter was also in "rising mental-health distress," said John Brummett in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. His religious activities alone shouldn't be used to implicate "other abortion zealots, Trump voters, or evangelical preachers."

Most of my fellow evangelicals are not violent, said David French in The New York Times, but Christian extremism in America has taken "a dark turn." Boelter was influenced by a movement called the New Apostolic Reformation, which has a "grandiose and even militant spiritualism" that's "leaking into other evangelical traditions." In many evangelical churches, "belonging to the Democratic Party is proof positive that you're under the influence of the devil, and when the Democrats win, that means Satan wins." When faith leaders irresponsibly "pour gasoline on the fires" of political division with talk of demonic infiltration and holy war, "it should surprise no one that some Christians will put down their Bibles, pick up their guns, and choose to kill."