C. E. Chambers

(This page was borrowed from http://www.verumserum.com.  A little background: “Verum Serum has garnered a significant amount of media attention from other blogs, talk radio, magazines, newspapers and television. At least three of our videos have gone from this blog to the Senate floor.”  Verum Serum is Latin for “truth.”)

John from Verum Serum responded to an article posted at Salon by Alex Pareene.  Pareene’s comments have been italicized and bolding was added.

VERUM SERUM

“Response to Alex Pareene on Anders Breivik’s Christianity”

By John on August 2, 2011 at 1:02 am

It has been more than a week since I wrote a post detailing excerpts of Anders Breivik’s manifesto that dealt with Christianity. After that, I wrote one follow up pointing out the serious flaws in the arguments made by Sally Quinn. Sally chose to ignore them, though I’m pretty sure she saw them.

The rest of the week I turned to the debt debate and other issues and managed to miss another post on this topic by Alex Pareene at Salon titled Note to Conservatives: Anders Breivik is a Christian. Let’s go through this:

Salon:  This, apparently, is the right-wing talking point du jour on the terror attacks of July 22: Anders Breivik, the perpetrator, was not a Christian.

That’s because, by his own admission, he wasn’t one.

Salon:  I thought, foolish me, that Breivik had repeatedly and forcefully argued that he was waging a war on behalf of European Christendom. I guess while I wasn’t paying attention, everyone decided to make up a new reality.

Yes, he did do that, proclaiming himself a latter-day Knight Templar. However, his idea of “Christendom” is a very secular affair having to do with holidays and certain traditions, not with faith, organized religion or the Bible.

Salon: Breivik chose to be baptized at age 15. He self-identified as “Christian” on his Facebook page. He thought “Christianity should recombine under the banner of a reconstituted and traditionalist Catholic Church” or, later, under a new (traditionalist) European Church.

All true, but in Scandinavia many people belong to the state church who are not Christians. As the Christian Science Monitor reported a few days ago, 3/4 of Swedes belong to the church but only 15% are believers….[Read more]