Christianity and violence

A while ago I wrote about a violent drug gang in Mexico using John Eldredge's form of American fundamentalist Christianity as inspiration. Naturally, Eldredge disavows any responsibility for the impact of his views on Mexican drug terror, but here's an article that quotes extensively from Eldredge and shows how violent his language really is.

Of course, one can certainly point out that Eldredge's theology, or those who commit violence or terror in the name of the sort of faith that he advocates, in no way represents Christianity as a whole--just as one can point out that Muslim terrorists in no way represent Islam as a whole. That is really the point, isn't it? We shouldn't be stigmatizing any religion based on its extremist elements. The problem seems to be that terrorism by certain religions gets lots of media play while Christian terrorism gets little attention. Maybe it is time to recognize that any religion, especially a major world religion with sufficient critical mass to produce its own diversity of thought, can have its extremists or violent elements; and it is a mistake to paint a picture of any religion with too broad a brush.