(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) As conservatives sounded the alarm over rising anti-Semitism, another threat quietly spread across America: increasing attacks on Christians and Catholics.
The Family Research Council found that, since 2018, attacks targeting Christian and Catholic churches have surged by 730%, according to its latest Hostility Against Churches report.
Fox News first reported on the report:
Attacks on Catholic and Christian churches have risen by 730% since 2018.
This must end.
pic.twitter.com/lqiq3ElpLw— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 28, 2025
Although the report was released on Aug. 11, its findings gained renewed attention following a mass shooting at a Catholic church carried out by a self-identifying transgender individual.
The suspect, Robin Westman, was born male as Robert Westman. He changed his name by 2020, at the age of 17, with his mother’s approval.
Westman opened fire at the Annunciation Church on Wednesday morning, killing two children, ages 8 and 11, and injuring 18 others.
Westman was the second trans-identifying individual to carry out a mass shooting at a Christian institution. In 2023, Aiden Hale, a transgender man born Audrey Elizabeth Hake, killed three nine-year-old children and three adults at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. This was the deadliest school shooting in the state’s history.
The FRC counted 415 hostile acts against 383 churches across 43 states in 2024 alone. The group warned that the actual number may be much higher, as many incidents are overlooked by the media.
The 2024 total was more than double of the incidents found in 2022, though slightly lower than the 485 incidents recorded in 2023. FRC’s initial report, surveying 56 months, found a total of 420 incidents.
These alarming figures come as conservatives continue to decry the rise in attacks targeting religious groups.
Media coverage, however, has focused on the surge in anti-Semitic violence, intensified by the Hamas invasion of southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. This was the deadliest assault on Jews since the Holocaust.
