Wisconsin police are focusing on the role of religion in Terry Ratzmann’s murderous attack on his own church, reports The New York Times. Let’s hope the police are doing a better job than the Times. “The Living Church of God,” writes Jodi Wilgoren, “an offshoot of a sect seen by some as a cult, the Worldwide Church of God, is a fringe group that advocates literal adherence to the Bible, observes a Saturday Sabbath, rejects the Holy Trinity concept and frequently focuses on a coming apocalypse.” What’s wrong with that sentence? Let’s start with “seen by some,” a phrase Wilgoren may have found useful in reporting conventional wisdom as fact on the campaign trail, where political insiders got to have fun guessing just who “some” was. Here, “some” matters quite a bit more. Who says it’s a cult? Ex-members? “Experts”? A clueless NYTimes reporter who think that fairly standard-issue “Jesus-only” religion is “fringe” in America? Much of the Living Church of God’s theology is odd; not much of it is unusual, except for the notion that church-members are the true Israelites. Even that’s not so weird — not a city in America lacks a congregation that believes the same. Of course, commonplace doesn’t make unremarkable. In another Revealer post, an ex-member and a current member are debating just what LCOG actually believes. But to us, there are two big questions that ought to be investigated. 1. What did Terry Ratzmann believe? 2. Why are LCOG members, whose theology not allows for, but insists on the literal presence of evil in the world, offering up a humanist explanation of “depression”?