Darroll Hargraves, in his Dec. 19 letter to the editor, challenged your readers to name a mass shooter who was taken to Sunday school and church as a baby and continued to attend with their family through their high school years and were active in church youth activities. Mr. Hargraves says his research did not find a single one.
Those criteria present a research challenge. For starters, I assume Mr. Hargraves is excluding the several self-proclaimed jihadists — e.g., Omar Mateen, who killed 49 — who, in the name of their religion, committed mass shootings in the United States. Also, biographical information about mass shooters is hard to come by. The press, to its credit, tries not to give mass shooters extra publicity by dwelling on the details of their upbringing.
Nevertheless, there have been any number of mass shooters who had a religious upbringing and a description of one should suffice. Charles Whitman was raised as a devout Catholic who went to Mass with his mother, served as an altar boy, went to parochial school and later became an Eagle Scout. Still, on Aug. 1, 1966, he shot 15 random strangers from the top of a tower at the University of Texas.
However, I take Mr. Hargraves’ real point to be that a religious upbringing produces better people. To put it mildly, that is a dubious claim. I will concede, however, that a religious upbringing produces religious people. And, as is true of people in general, many turn out to be very good, a few turn out to be very bad, and most end up in between.
The point is that you can be a good parent without being religious, and you can be religious without being a good parent.
— Herb Berkowitz
Anchorage
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