A man brings a gun into a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, horrifically executes worshipers, and the nation plunges into an orgy of recrimination over white racism that culminates in a campaign to banish the Confederate battle flag.  Another man brings a gun to a community college in Roseburg, Oregon, and horrifically demands that people state their religion, shooting those who called themselves Christians in the head.  Will the nation conduct a similar period of anger at those who denigrate Christianity?  Breathes there a soul so naïve as to believe the answer is yes?  

The culturally dominant left and its media are convinced on the one hand that racism is pervasive and motivates everything from hate crimes to microagressions, profoundly harming society.  But on the other hand, the same oligarchs of opinion deem Christianity a harmful remnant of a benighted past, standing in the way of sexual liberation and what they call “science.”  Thus, when an angry nut in 2012 invades the Family Research Council, which was targeted by the Southern Poverty Law Center as hate group, intent on killing people and mashing Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces, the incident is promptly forgotten, and few recriminations are made toward the multimillion-dollar SPLC for its role, other than from conservatives.

Authorities in Oregon have been very slow in releasing information about the shooter, so we do not know if he was truly a hater of Christianity or merely wanted to use it as way of ensuring his fame.  But as David French points out at National Review Online:

If the reports are correct, men and women declared their faith and died for it. That is the classic definition of a martyr, and may their families be comforted by the words of the Savior: “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.”

The community in Charleston reacted to the horror of the shooting there with admirable grace, calling for reconciliation, not revenge.  I am relatively certain that the same will be true in Roseburg, a largely blue-collar community under economic distress owing to the impact of environmentalism on its logging industry.  I am sure the martyrs in both communities would have it no other way.