Matthew Gabriele at Modern Medieval highlights an interesting point about Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho---that Cho seems to have been strongly motivated by the Christian tradition.
Says Matthew, about Cho's Christian influence:
He likely thought himself, like Mark David Uhl, like those in Battlecry, like Paul Hill, like the Lord's Resistance Army, like the crusaders, to be a "soldier of Christ." Normative Christianity may not condone such action but perhaps it's time to stop burying our head in the sand, pretending that such ideas aren't still out there.
A summary article in the Roanoke Times offers support for this view:
During one session, Giovanni described having once eaten turtle soup. Students shared experiences of consuming other unusual animal fare. Cho's poem the next week lashed Giovanni and the class.
"He told us we were going to hell," said Marciniak-McGuire.
During Cho's short, tortured life, he knew that territory well.
Also, it sounds like much of Cho's writings, his manifesto, and videos evoke Christian God and Jesus themes, as Matthew discusses in this expanded version of a Roanoke Times article.
A Google search on "warriors for christ" returned about 18,000 hits. Cho could have been trying to implement this mixed Christian message, with tragic and deadly consequences.
Hopefully the upcoming report from the Virginia Tech Review Panel will shed some light on the mysteries of the Cho's massacre, but it is likely that many questions will remain unanswered.
My previous entries on this incident are "Black Monday at Virginia Tech" and "Virginia Tech: the face of a killer".