He then seems to want to argue that a terrorist killer is just as likely to be a Lutheran as a Muslim. This after he’s argued that the “Lutheran” killers weren’t really Lutheran. To put it in the vernacular, “huh”? Marty’s own argument is that these nominal “Lutherans” were not really Lutherans. But what point is there to extrapolate from that regarding Western views of Islamic terrorism? In his zeal to be politically correct, Marty loses whatever slim point he might have been making.

In the list of “Lutheran” serial killers and mass-murderers he cites, nobody has even alleged a religious motive for their actions. Their nominal “Lutheranism” was completely ancillary to their actions. (Breivik may arguably be an exception, but Marty himself actually dismisses this.) But can one say the same about Islamic terrorism? Of course not. As the French say, it is to laugh. Islam is not *ancillary* to Islamic terrorism. In fact, it’s essential.

Citing Lee Harvey Oswald’s and Sirhan Sirhan’s “Lutheranism” in regards to the murders they committed is like making a list of killers who regularly wore khakis. Undoubtedly many of them did, but so what? One has nothing to do with the other. To argue either that “a pox be on both their houses” or that any act of terrorism is just as likely to have been committed by a “Lutheran” as by a radical Muslim betrays a rather pitiful kind of moral relativism and sociological ignorance.

Why did Dr. Martin E. Marty answer that they were all Lutheran Christians?

Like ‘Church of England’ when most who give that definition for themselves only see the inside of a Church building when they get married, christened and buried (if then).

It is also like the labels ‘Catholic’ & ‘Protestant’ in Northern Ireland. Most of these people give themselves the label because of the family they are born into, but they are not Christian or practicing a Christian faith.