Last week’s mass killing of six people at a church-run Christian school constitutes the deadliest act of violence against churches in 2023, which has nearly tripled this year compared to last year, a new report from the findings of the Family Research Council. The number of attacks against the church in 2022 has tripled in four years, a previous report found.
In total, attackers attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, compared to 24 actions in the same period last year, a 288% increase. The increasing tempo of anti-Christian attacks—which include arsons, bomb threats, vandalism, and blasphemy—has affected places of worship in 29 states. The motives behind such desecration stem from pro-abortion activism or controversies more than transgender ideology in seemingly senseless acts of destruction.
“America’s churches are increasingly experiencing intense anger and aggression, whether it’s from politics or other motivations,” said the report’s author—Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council —told The Washington Stand. “It helps in an environment of hatred of Christianity.”
Acts of anti-church aggression documented between January and March of this year include:
- 53 incidents of vandalism.
- 10 suspicious fires.
- Three incidents involving firearms.
- Three bomb threats—including a pipe bomb recovered outside the 127-year-old St. Dominic Catholic Church of Philadelphia.
“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents in the six years monitored by the FRC,” the report notes. The number of church attacks in 2023 has already exceeded “the total of 2018, where we identified only 50 incidents, or 2020, where we identified 54.”
Follow LifeNews on Parler for the latest pro-life news!
The month of January 2023 had more church attacks than any other month in the five years the Family Research Council has kept records, with 43 such events, according to data provided to The Washington Stand. “This steep increase is a cause for concern,” the update said.
Hostility to Christian views on hot political issues has erupted into violence and vandalism several times this year. In January, abortion activists painted the words “Women’s Bodies, Women’s Choice” over a pro-life banner hanging outside St. Stephen Catholic Church in Riverview, Florida.
Last month, transgender activists criticized Kentucky lawmakers who voted against their agenda by desecrating a historic church. Vandals sprayed the words “TRANS PWR” on St. Joseph Catholic Church in Louisville, Kentucky, on March 3—”the day after the Kentucky House of Representatives passed a bill that would protect children from the harmful practice of gender reassignment,” the report states. Undeterred state legislators child safety is enforced veto protections by Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear later that month.
Individuals who identify as transgender have also focused their anger on Christian facilities. In addition to the attack on 28-year-old Audrey Hale at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, a 27-year-old man who identified as a woman set a 117-year-old Portland Korean Church building on fire on Jan. 3. The suspect, whose legal name is Cameron Storer, said he heard voices “threatening to ‘cut’ Storer if Storer refused to burn down the church,” the new report said. of the Family Research Council.
Nashville police have not yet released Hale’s “manifesto,” reportedly due to an “ongoing investigation,” but officials said Hale’s views on transgender issues may have influenced his violent attack. . Storer apparently suffers from mental illness, which makes it difficult for those who identify as LGBTQ to far higher rates than usual, according to the Biden administration.
Sometimes, the same perpetrator strikes multiple times. Police say 40-year-old Peter Sirolli vandalized the three Roman Catholic churches in New Jersey that same morning, including burning a 10-foot-tall cross on the lawn of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Woodbury on Jan. 13.
The Family Research Council’s new update builds on a 84-page report released last December. In the original study, the Family Research Council verified 420 acts of hate against houses of worship between January 2018 and September 2022. The new addition brings the total to anti-Christian events in 2022 to the present. In the original report, the Family Research Council calculated 137 intentionally harmful incidents against churches that occurred last September. The last three months of 2022 brought an additional 54 such acts, bringing the total number of attacks against churches to 191 in 2022.
In total, the researchers recorded a total of 543 attacks on 517 separate churches between January 2018 and March 2023. Of the 517 separate churches attacked, 26 of the churches were victimized more than once, with three targeted three times each, according to the data provided. at The Washington Stand.
Between 2018 and 2023, American churches will suffer:
- 442 acts of vandalism.
- 71 cases of arson.
- 15 gun-related incidents.
- 14 bomb threats.
- 25 various acts of aggression against church facilities.
A total of 25 incidents fell into multiple categories, according to Family Research Council researchers.
The worst period of sustained attacks in those 39 months erupted last summer with the unprecedented, and still unsolved, leak of The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last May. After the media reported that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade and return the issue of abortion to democratic control, pro-abortion activists committed 86 attacks against Christian churches in May (24), June (28), and July (34).
Churches also suffered damage from Black Lives Matter riots, which erupted in the summer of 2020 over the killing of George Floyd. BLM rioters committed 11 acts of desecration of the church, researchers told The Washington Stand.
Despite the rapid pulse of anti-Christian crimes, some of which have been investigated as “hate crimes,” conservatives say the Biden administration has been too lenient in its response.
In January, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed H. Con. Res. 3, noting that abortion extremists like Jane’s Revenge have “destroyed, damaged, and wreaked havoc on over 100 pro-life facilitiesgroups, and churches” in 2022, but “the Biden administration has failed to act to respond to radical attacks on pro-life facilities, groups, and churches, or to protect the rights of pro-life organizations this.”
The Democratic-controlled Senate has no action taken on the bill.
“American leaders and citizens must condemn acts of hate against churches and affirm the right for all people to attend their houses of worship without feeling targeted or threatened,” said Del Turco at The Washington Stand.
LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is a senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
