- AMERICAN THINKER - Raymond Ibrahim - MAY 4, 2023 -
Attacks on churches and Christian institutions on American soil are at an all-time high. The Mar. 27, 2023 killings in Nashville — where a woman claiming to be a man (AKA "transgender") stormed a private Christian school and murdered three children and three adults — is just the tip of the iceberg.
According to recent reports by the Family Research Council, "criminal acts against churches have been steadily on the rise for the past several years." While relying on limited open-source information — meaning that the actual number "of acts of hostility [against churches] is undoubtedly much higher" — the organization managed to verify "a total of 420 documented acts of hostility that occurred between January 2018 and September 2022" across the United States.
Some of these, while not lethal, were reminiscent of the Nashville shooting:
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Three gun-related incidents occurred on church property in the first three months of 2023, including the shooting at The Covenant School [in Tennessee]. In one incident, two adults and two juveniles shot 50 rounds from 9mm pistols at a Mennonite church building in Versailles, Missouri; the property damage was charged as a hate crime. In another incident, a late-night shooting took place in the parking lot of the Praise Temple Baptist Church in Shreveport, Louisiana, sending four individuals to the hospital.
Every year since 2021 has seen a steady increase in attacks on churches. As the report notes,
[i]n the first quarter of 2023 [Jan, Feb, and Mar], 69 incidents have already occurred. If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked, continuing the upward trend. ... Compared to the same [three month] timeframe in previous years, January through March of 2023 represents a significant increase in acts of hostility. In those same months, 2018 saw 15 acts of hostility against churches; 2019 saw 12; 2020 saw none [due to lockdowns]; 2021 saw 14; and 2022 saw 24.
In other words, there were more church attacks in the first quarter of this year than there were in the first quarters of the preceding five years combined.
Of the 69 attacks on churches to occur between January and March of 2023, the overwhelming majority, 53 (78%), consisted of vandalism and random property destruction. The rest included ten incidents of arson, three gun-related, and three bomb threats. Three of these attacks featured more than one of these categories.
While vandalism is the most innocuous of these crimes, it also best demonstrates their true motivation: hate. As the report notes,
Many of the acts of vandalism represented unexplained acts of destruction, such as an outdoor nativity scene being destroyed or rocks being thrown through a window.
Other acts of defacement and desecration featured the beheading of Christian statues, the burning of crosses, and the scrawling of Satanic symbols on churches.
Regarding the mindless damage caused by vandals on Valentine's Day to a Presbyterian church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a church worker said,