By Dan Gilgoff, CNN
WASHINGTON, D.c. (CNN) – For many conservative Christians, this week’s Family Research Council shooting that wounded a security guard and that the FBI is investigating as a possible act of domestic terrorism was hardly a one-off attack.
Rather, they say the incident is the latest evidence in what they allege is a growing war on religion from the left, an offensive they say extends from the Obama White House down to the liberal grass roots and even foreign governments.
“It’s easy to brush aside this incident as one act of a crazy man until you consider the past two weeks,” activist Dana Loesch wrote on the conservative site Breitbart.com in a piece titled “A literal war on religion?”
Like other conservatives and officials at the Family Research Council, Loesch tied the shooting to recent criticism of Chick-fil-A, the restaurant chain that recently came under attack for remarks its CEO made that appeared to oppose same-sex marriage. CEO Dan Cathy said he supported “the biblical definition of the family unit.”
Conservatives decried the outspoken opposition to Chick-fil-A — which included some high-profile American mayors saying the restaurant chain wasn’t welcome in their cities — as evidence of the purported war on religion and religious liberty.
The suspect in the Family Research Council attack, Floyd Lee Corkins II, was carrying 15 Chick-fil-A sandwiches in his backpack — along with a pistol and extra ammunition — and told a security guard, “I don’t like your politics,” before opening fire Wednesday, according to a criminal complaint filed by authorities.
“The Family Research Council is affiliated with Chick-Fil-A,” wrote Loesch, who is a CNN contributor, on Breitbart. “Chick-Fil-A came under fire due to the free speech of CEO Dan Cathy by militant anti-Christian and anti-free speech activists.”
The American Family Association, a conservative evangelical group, also tied Wednesday’s attack to what it said was a broader liberal offensive.
“This near-tragic incident marks an alarming turn in our cultural battle over values,” the group said in a statement Thursday. “The left’s war on religion and Christianity has now gone from symbolic to literal.”
For decades, conservatives have alleged a liberal war on religion, dating the effort to the 1963 Supreme Court decision that outlawed state-sanctioned school prayer.
Conservatives renewed their argument this year after an Obama administration rule that requires employees to be given free contraception coverage in health insurance plans, even if they work for a Catholic institution.
A recent campaign ad from presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney says that "President Obama used his healthcare plan to declare war on religion, forcing religious institutions to go against their faith."
In a press conference Thursday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pinned blame for the attack partly on the Southern Poverty Law Center, which had labeled the council a hate group over its pronunciations against homosexuality.
While saying the alleged gunman was ultimately responsible, Perkins said that he "was given a license to shoot an unarmed man by organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that have been reckless in labeling organizations hate groups because they disagree with them on public policy."
"The cornerstone of our society is freedom of speech and freedom of religion," Perkins said. "If we lose those, we lose our future."
In an interview with Fox News Channel, Perkins framed the incident as an attack on Christians everywhere.
"Terrorism is designed to intimidate, to drive people back and make them fearful," he said, adding that the incident was designed to scare "the Family Research Council and by extension family values supporters and Christians across the nation."
Liberal groups said efforts to paint the Family Research Council incident as an attack on religion were disingenuous.
"Religious Right groups have long equated any criticism of their positions or tactics as attacks on their freedom of speech and religion," the group People for the American Way said in a post Friday on its "Right Wing Watch" site. "Now they are taking it a step further to say that critics must stop calling out their hateful rhetoric and naming it as such. ...
"FRC was not labeled a hate group because of a simple policy disagreement, as FRC's backers would have you believe," the post continued. "The SPLC (Southern Poverty Law Center) cited very specific examples of FRC's wildly inflammatory anti-gay language."
But Erick Erickson, a conservative blogger and CNN contributor, framed this week's attack as part of a campaign against Christianity that extends past American shores.
"Christianity has become an acceptable target for an increasingly secular western world," he wrote in an e-mail message. "In much of Europe and Canada, preaching orthodox Christian tenets about gay lifestyles, etc. can see a preacher punished by the state.
"While the left routinely accuses mainstream Christian leaders of intolerance," he continued, "what many Christians see in turn is a secular media and society showing increasingly open hostility toward Christians for believing what secular society considers incorrect values."
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