ARMY OF GOD
The battle cry of the Army of God,“Death to the New World Order,” has become a death sentence for abortion clinics and their staffs. The Army of God is an extremist religious group that was organized about 1962 and has declared its objective to be the waging of total war on “the ungodly communist regime in New York” and the “legislative, bureaucratic lackeys in Washington.” With the battle cry “Death to the New World Order,” the Army of God targets homosexuals, abortion clinics, and all those who “preside over the death of children and issue policies of ungodly perversions that are destroying the American people.” In the early 1980s, while a women’s clinic in Granite City, Illinois, was being mobbed by fundamentalist protesters, Dr. Hector Zevallos, the clinic operator, and his wife, Rosalee, were kidnapped by members of the Army of God. After being held for eight days in an abandoned ammunition bunker, the captives were released when Zevallos gave his pledge that he would perform no more abortions. Don Benny Anderson and two other members of the Army of God, Matthew and Wayne Moore, were later convicted of the kidnapping. Anderson’s explanation that God had told him to wage war against abortion centers did nothing to convince the judge to cut him any slack, and he received a thirty-year prison term for the kidnapping and an additional thirty years when it was learned that he had torched two Florida abortion clinics.
In 1984 the Army of God took credit for the firebombing of a women’s clinic in Norfolk, Virginia, and another outside of Washington, D.C. The year 1984 became the “Year of Fear and Pain” as militant abortion activists torched twenty-five women’s clinics throughout the United States. At least seven firebombings were orchestrated by Rev. Michael Bray of Bowie, Maryland, who is often referred to as the “chaplain” of the movement. At the site of a Norfolk bombing, Bray left a note giving the Army of God credit for the act. In the 1980s the Army of God generally took care that no one should be harmed in their bombings of women’s clinics, but as the 1990s dawned, Bray began to advocate the murder of abortion doctors as part of a theocratic revolution to bring about biblical laws. Rachelle “Shelley” Shannon, a.k.a. Shaggy West, an Oregon fundamentalist, prowled the western states launching butyric acid and arson attacks on women’s clinics. She proclaimed that she was doing God’s will when she shot and seriously wounded Wichita, Kansas, clinic doctor George Tiller in 1993. Investigating police officers found a copy of The Army of God Manual buried in her backyard. Shannon is currently in prison for attempted murder and arson. On January 16, 1997, a women’s clinic in Atlanta was firebombed. On February 21 a gay nightclub was torched in the same city. After the second bombing, a crude letter was sent to the Reuters news agency, giving the Army of God the credit and warning that any persons involved in abortion would “become victims of retribution” and that “sodomites” would always be one of the group’s targets. On October 23, 1998, James Kopp, a.k.a. Atomic Dog, murdered Dr. Barnett Slepian, a well-known abortion doctor in upstate New York. Hailed by his fellow Army of God members as a holy man who executed a wicked serial killer and saved the lives of innocent children, Kopp confessed to the murder but swore that he did not intend to kill Dr. Slepian. Kopp claimed that he had picked Slepian’s name at random from a list of abortion providers and intended only to wound him. Kopp was on the run for more than two years and placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List until he was apprehended in Dinan, France, in March 2001. Vicki Saporta of the National Abortion Federation has called Michael Bray “one of the most well-known domestic terrorists.” Bray went to prison for his participation in the bombings of ten mid-Atlantic abortion clinics in the 1980s and served two years of a sixyear sentence after being convicted of conspiracy and explosives charges. Bray is the author of A Time to Kill: A Study Concerning the Use of Force and Abortion , an “ethical treatise on the use of force in defense of the child in the womb.”
In 1997 a Web site sponsored by David Leach,whose newsletter Prayer & Action Weekly News supports the proviolence abortion network,serialized Rescue Platoon ,a futuristic novel that dramatizes the Army of God as emerging victorious after a bloodbath of epic and biblical proportions. That is the same ending that the real-life Army of God envisions.
Sources
- “Anti-Abortion Extremists: The Army of God and Justifiable Homicide.” https://www.prochoice.org/about_ abortion/violence/army_god.html.
- Army of God Web site. https://www.armyofgod.com.
- Berkowitz,Bill. “Army of God’s Rev. Bray Praises the Beheading of Gay Men.” (From gaytoday.com.) https://www.streetpreach.com/Bray/aogrev.htm.
- Clarkson,Frederick. “Anti-Abortion Violence: Two Decades of Arson,Bombs,and Murder.” Southern Poverty Law Center . https://www.splcenter.org/ intel/Intelreport/article.jsp?aid=411&printable=1.
- Haught,James A. “The Army of God: More Religious Killers?” Secular Humanist Bulletin ,fall 1997. https://www.holysmoke.org/haught/army/html.
Taken from :Conspiracies and Secret Societies : The Complete Dossier – Written by Brad Steiger and Sherry Steiger
Copyright 2006 by Visible Ink Press®
