Report: Attacks on churches have skyrocketed in recent years — and the trend is accelerating
Attacks on churches in the U.S. have skyrocketed in recent years, and the trend appears to be fast accelerating, according to a new report from the Family Research Council.
The report, authored by Arielle Del Turco, director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the FRC, noted that between 2018 and 2023, there were at least 915 acts of hostility against American churches. These depraved actions have ranged from vandalism and arson to gun-related incidents and bomb threats.
The states that reportedly accounted for the greatest number of church-related hostilities in the six-year period were California, with 91 incidents; Texas, with 62 incidents; New York, with 58 incidents; and Florida, with 47.
Things appear to be getting much worse.
Between January and November 2023, there were reportedly at least 436 such attacks — eight times as many as there were in 2018 — such that 2023 ended up being the worst of all six years reviewed by the FRC.
The FRC observed 315 incidents of vandalism last year; 75 arson attacks or attempts; 10 gun-related occurrences; and 20 bomb threats.
Among the various documented instances of vandalism in 2023 was the January 2023 smashing of stained glass windows at Holy Nation Church of Memphis, Tennessee; the June shredding of Bibles and hymnals at the historically black Fowler United Methodist Church of Annapolis, Maryland; and the July inversion of crosses at Most Holy Trinity Catholic Church in El Paso, Texas, which was also slapped with satanic imagery.
In terms of arson, attacks ranged from small to massively destructive fires. The Easter Sunday fire set to Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for example, resulted in substantial damage as well the removal of the church's steeple.
Del Turco noted that "although the motivations for many of these acts of hostility remain unknown, the effect is unmistakable: religious intimidation."
The beheading of a statue of religious significance may, for example, leave congregants "disturbed and upset." Other acts of hostility may alternatively "cause congregants or church leaders to feel unsafe," thereby interrupting the normal work of the church, according the report.
"They send the message that churches are not wanted in the community or respected in general. Our culture is demonstrating a growing disdain for Christianity and core Christian beliefs, and acts of hostility against churches could be a physical manifestation of that," continued Turco. "Regardless of the motivations of these crimes, everyone should treat churches and all houses of worship with respect and affirm the importance of religious freedom for all Americans."
The report posits that the increase in hostility against churches may point to a "larger societal problem of marginalizing core Christian beliefs, including those that touch on hot-button political issues related to human dignity and sexuality."
While frequently targets for radicals on account of their congregants' fidelity to tradition, churches also appear to be a reflexive scapegoat for leftists and other extremists.
Radicals in the U.S. seized upon the 2020 death of George Floyd as an excuse to lash out at their perceived foes, which turned out in many cases to be Christians and their places of worship. Leftists did likewise in 2022 in the lead-up to and wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, attacking churches and pro-life pregnancy centers alike.
This reflex appears elsewhere in the West. For instance, in Canada, at least 68 churches were razed, desecrated, or vandalized in 2021 after activists, the northern nation's liberal media, and political elites hyped the mass graves hoax.
The hoax, fully embraced by the Trudeau regime, alleged that mass graves had been discovered at the sites of former Indian residential schools that had been administered by Christian groups. The claims, which were dubious to begin with, were subsequently debunked, but not before radicals torched Catholic and Anglican churches across the country.
Tony Perkins, president of the FRC and a former chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said of the findings in the report, "There is a common connection between the growing religious persecution abroad and the rapidly increasing hostility toward churches here at home: our government's policies."
"The indifference abroad to the fundamental freedom of religion is rivaled only by the increasing antagonism toward the moral absolutes taught by Bible-believing churches here in the U.S.," continued Perkins, "which is fomenting this environment of hostility toward churches."
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Florida mother gets raucous standing ovation after calling for 'mass exodus' from public schools
A Florida mother is making headlines after calling for a "mass exodus" from the public school system, according to a Fox News report.
What are the details?
Quisha King, who works with Moms for Liberty, received a standing ovation for her fiery remarks, which she delivered during a Thursday panel event at the Family Research Council's annual Pray Vote Stand Summit.
The panel, "Fighting Indoctrination on a National Scale," saw King admit to a previous obsession with race.
"Right after the 2016 election, I started to pay more attention to politics and God spoke to my heart and told me that my skin color had become an idol in my life," she said. "And that was life-changing, because it was so true. I saw everything through being black, and that was an offense to God, and I had to examine everything that I was doing."
King added that she had a rude wake-up call when her daughter came home from her first week of eighth grade and revealed that she was asked "what pronoun she wanted to be identified by."
"I'm like, ' What is going on? This is crazy!' And so I was like, OK, just pay attention," she continued. "I emailed the teacher; she never emailed me back. I was like, well, you know, just pay attention to what's going on."
King said that she filed away the incident for future reference, but conditions at the school began snowballing after the bizarre kickoff to the new year.
"They were supposed to be discussing books, and the books apparently had some racial themes in them well," King continued. "[The teacher] never got to the literature of the books or the academic portion. She just started sectioning the kids in the way that she talked to them by their physical characteristics. ... 'Oh, I'm sorry, as an African-American child, how do you feel about this? So as an Asian child, how do you feel about that?' And so on. And we had a board of education meeting in Florida to ban critical race theory, and I spoke up against it because I knew it was happening, and they were trying to tell us that this was not in schools. And I'm like, no, it is!"
King added that CRT is racist at its core for promoting the message that "America is intrinsically racist."
"Everything about it is anti-biblical, it is anti-American, and it's just a flat-out lie," she insisted. "It's just not true. You cannot have a country that has been moving towards racial reconciliation literally from its beginnings, if you really really dig into the history, and say that America is intrinsically racist. Those two things just don't go together."
King also warned that CRT and its poisonous tendrils have gradually began seeping into aspects of life while remaining largely undetected.
"I don't think parents realize just how pervasive it is. I know in Duval County, I found critical race theory workshops and events as far back as 2011," she said. "So I think understanding that they are not kidding, this is not going away, the enemy has no chill and is advancing forward as fast — we can see."
She concluded by addressing Attorney General Merrick Garland's recent order authorizing federal officials to work on the local level in order to monitor the "disturbing spike" of what is perceived to be trouble-making parents during heated school board meetings.
"I mean, you're at home trying to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for your kids, and the FBI could be knocking at your door because you might have said the wrong thing at a school board meeting," she said. "These people — they're serious. They want to silence us and shut us down. I really think at this point, the only thing to do is have a mass exodus from the public school system. That's it."
Attendees burst into a lengthy round of applause, which soon turned into a standing ovation.
Pray,Vote, Stand Summitwww.youtube.com
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