Photo of the Minnesota state flag and capitol building
The horrific assassination of a Minnesota state legislator and her spouse — and the attempted assassination of another legislator and his wife — has been termed as “politically motivated.” More aptly, it should also be categorized as Christian nationalist-motivated terrorism.
Vance Luther Boelter, 57, who has been apprehended in the shootings, is an evangelical pastor. He gave sermons at an evangelical Christian church in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2023, including this sermon lamenting that many U.S. churches are pro-choice: “The churches are so messed up, they don’t know abortion is wrong in many churches.” Then, chillingly, he warned, “God is going to raise up an apostle and or prophet to correct their course.”
It appears Boelter has considered himself that “apostle.”
“Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump,” Associated Press reports. However, he apparently did not talk often with them about politics or his anti-abortion views.
Preaching at a church in the town of Matadi in the Congo, Boelter sermonized that “people don’t know what sex they are” because the devil “has gotten so far into their mind and their soul.”
He earned a master’s degree, and then, in 2016, a doctorate in leadership studies at the now-defunct Cardinal Stritch University, a Catholic institution in Milwaukee. He and his wife founded a nonprofit, Revoformation Ministries, during his time in Wisconsin.
Christianity Today reports that the website says he was ordained in 1993 and had attended Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas, a charismatic “Spirit-filled Bible School.” The web biography also claims he’d spent time in Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, where “he sought out militant Islamists in order to share the gospel and tell them that violence wasn’t the answer.”
Author and Christian nationalism observer Jeff Sharlet in his blog has a telling poster (available at the below link), which he photographed in 2024 in the lobby of Christ for the National Institute.“The religion of culture war, increasingly lurching toward something worse,” concludes Sharlet.
Like many extremist pastors and Christian nationalist advocates, Boelter also spoke about spiritual warfare. His apparent “hit list” not only contained Democratic public officials in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere who were notably pro-choice, but abortion providers and activists. Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, who, with her husband Mark, was killed, has been lauded for the key role she played in the passage of a law ensuring the right to contraception and abortion, to carrying a pregnancy to term and privacy over those personal reproductive decisions.
Executions and shootings of abortion physicians and staff have a long, sordid history in the United States, with 11 people killed outright and many others attacked or injured over the past three decades, most recently the fatal shooting of three people at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs in 2015. Dr. George Tiller in Wichita, Kan., was tragically killed by a religious fanatic. (Said Shelley Shannon, who had tried to kill him earlier: “As a Christian, I can’t turn my back on the ones who need our help the most: little babies who are being cruelly murdered. If you want to love your neighbor as yourself, do what you would want someone to do if you were the one they were going to kill.”)
As abortion commentator Jessica Valenti writes, “Since Donald Trump took office, the White House and GOP have systematically stripped providers and clinics of federal protections — while fueling dangerous anti-abortion myths and misinformation.” This includes pardoning two dozen violent extremists found guilty of violating the federal law prohibiting violence against abortion clinics, and announcing that the Justice Department won’t enforce that act barring “extraordinary circumstances.”
The extremist Christian nationalists and anti-abortion ideologues with their inflamed propaganda share the blame for this weekend’s violence against public officials. While Trump denounced the violence, his other statements and actions are fueling the anti-abortion religious crusade.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation sends condolences to the family of Melissa and Mark Hortman. It wishes for a speedy recovery to state Sen. John A. Hoffman and Yvette Hoffman, convalescing from a total of 15 gunshot wounds.
“We look forward to a national reckoning that will tamp down the hateful rhetoric by Christian extremists,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with more than 42,000 members nationwide. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
