Though often described as a lone-wolf terrorist, Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, was part of a larger right-wing culture of religious extremism in the United States that identified the secular agenda of the federal government as the enemy. In what became increasingly apparent during the 1990s, a tension between perceptions of secular activities on the part of the U.S. government and the religious principles of the loosely connected Christian Identity movement gave way to a spectacular act of terrorism in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

On April 19, 1995, Timothy James McVeigh (1968–2001) executed a plan to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing a total of 168 people and injuring an estimated 450 others. He parked a rented truck ...