Man Accused of Killing Minnesota Lawmaker Attended Religious School in Dallas
The man accused of assassinating a Minnesota lawmaker and wounding another has roots in Texas.
Vance Boelter attended a nondenominational religious school in Dallas, Christ For the Nations Institute, the school confirmed in a press release. On its website, the school details its religious beliefs, including that marriage is “between one man and one woman,” only two “distinct, complementary genders” exist, and life begins “at the time of conception in the mother’s womb.”
CFNI also describes a list of its prohibited “behaviors and lifestyles,” such as homosexuality, incest, premarital sex, pornography, and adultery, which it calls “sin, offensive, an abomination, and detestable to God.”
Boelter graduated in 1990 from CFNI with a degree in theology. Before that, he grew up in small-town Minnesota where, as a high school senior, he was named “Most Courteous” and “Most Friendly,” The Washington Post reported.
“We are absolutely aghast and horrified that a CFNI alumnus is the suspect,” the school said in a release. “This is not who we are. This is not what we teach. This is not what we model. We have been training Christian servant leaders for 55 years and they have been agents of good, not evil.”
Boelter is accused of killing Democratic Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband on June 14, in what authorities have called a “calculated plan to inflict fear and violence.” Boelter also allegedly shot Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, who both survived the attack, and had a “hit list” of Democratic lawmakers, Axios reported. Boelter was arrested and taken into custody on June 15, after a two-day manhunt.
His alma mater, CFNI, offers a three-year program in practical theology and ministry skills, and trains its students to become “world changers for God’s Kingdom work throughout the world,” according to its website. The school was founded in 1970 by preacher Gordon Lindsay, who believed every Christian should “pray one violent prayer a day.”
“By ‘violent prayer,’” CFNI wrote in its release, “he meant that a Christian’s prayer-life should be intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm.”
Boelter traveled abroad to Jerusalem and Gaza on missionary trips, seeking out “Islamic militants” to “share the gospel and tell them violence wasn’t the answer,” according to his biography on a now-defunct website.
In recent years, Boelter seemingly drifted to the far right, embracing extreme rhetoric about politics and abortion, Matthew Taylor, who studies Christian extremism at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies, told the Post.
