Sharlet: CNN headlines the fact that Dennis Rader, the just-arrested, alleged “BTK” serial killer of Wichita, Kansas, conforms to that classic trope of American gothic horror, the “evil preacher”: “BTK suspect was dogcatcher, church leader.” Rader wasn’t a preacher, but he was the president of the local Christ Lutheran Church. The creepy vibe foregrounded by CNN has antecedents in stories such as Night of the Hunter and contemporary corollaries in the Catholic priest abuse scandal. There’s a narrative frisson whenever someone publicly coded as good and honest turns out to be secretly evil and devious. Fox News, however, for once eschews the sensationalism of archetype, so vigorously, in fact, that in its 772-word main report, 100 words longer and otherwise much scarier than CNN’s, it doesn’t mention Rader’s 30-year church affiliation(in a sidebar piece they mention that he was “active in his church,” but not that he served as its president). That’s probably just as bad for the story, but good for the church, which doesn’t deserve to be tarred by Rader’s crimes. Surely, such horrors are unrelated to the church’s teachings. Or are they? No, I’m not suggesting that the Gospel leads one to murder. Rather, that Rader’s life for the last 30 years has contained two powerful moral worldviews, seemingly at odds. Fox deals with that by ignoring Raders’ life in the church; CNN deals with it by using it to tie the news to the tradition of b-movie villains. I’ve written Rader via an email address for him listed on a cached version of the church’s website, asking him whether, if he concedes his guilt, his faith and his church life played a role in his crimes, either as a restraining force or, in some twisted fashion, a justifying force. I don’t expect an answer, of course, and I’m not going to request an interview through his lawyer. But if this story develops, as I suspect it will, into another entry in the evil preacher subgenre, I hope some reporter will investigate the role of faith, for better or worse, in the mind of the killer.