(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) A new Family Research Council [FRC] report found that last week’s mass murder of six people in a Christian school constitutes 2023’s deadliest act of violence against churches, which tripled so far in 2023.
According to the Washington Stand, assailants attacked churches 69 times in the first three months of 2023, which is a 288% increase, compared with 24 such acts during the same period last year. The anti-Christian assaults — which include arson, bomb threats, vandalism, and sacrilege — already affected churches in 29 states.
“American churches are increasingly bearing the brunt of anger and aggression, whether that’s from political or other motivations,” Arielle Del Turco, the report’s author and assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, said.
“This contributes to an environment of hostility toward Christianity.”
“If this rate continues, 2023 will have the highest number of incidents of the six years FRC has tracked,” Del Turco wrote in the report, adding that the number of church attacks in 2023 already exceeds the number of attacks in 2018.
According to FRC, January 2023 had more church attacks than any single month in the five years the organization has kept records.
The new FRC update bases its data on an 84-page report that was released last December. In that study, FRC verified 420 acts of hostility against churches between January 2018 and September 2022.
In all, FRC researchers documented 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 multiple times, with three churches being targeted three times each.
In total, FRC found out that, between 2018 and 2023, American churches have suffered 442 acts of vandalism, 71 cases of arson, 15 gun-related incidents, 14 bomb threats and 25 miscellaneous acts of aggression against church facilities.
According to FRC researchers, a total of 25 attacks on churches fell into multiple categories.
