• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer
  • HOME
  • ABOUT CHINA
    • NEWS
    • TESTIMONIES
    • OP-EDS
    • FEATURED
    • GLOSSARY
    • CHINA PERSECUTION MAP
  • FROM THE WORLD
    • NEWS GLOBAL
    • TESTIMONIES GLOBAL
    • OP-EDS GLOBAL
    • FEATURED GLOBAL
  • INTERVIEWS
  • DOCUMENTS AND TRANSLATIONS
    • DOCUMENTS
    • THE TAI JI MEN CASE
    • TRANSLATIONS
    • EVENTS
  • ABOUT
  • EDITORIAL BOARD
  • TOPICS

Bitter Winter

A magazine on religious liberty and human rights

three friends of winter
Home / From the World / News Global

Christian Churches Vandalized Again Across United States

01/21/2022PierLuigi Zoccatelli |

The incidents are just too numerous to explain all of them away with mental health issues of the perpetrators

by PierLuigi Zoccatelli

TV News show christian churches vandalized

Attacks against Christian churches continue in different states of the U.S., and are now becoming somewhat endemic, as a look at some recent incidents demonstrate.

On December 28, 2021, somebody fired shots from outside into the interior of Everlasting Life Holiness Church in Prichard, Alabama, killing a 65-year-old woman who was inside the church.

In Hillsborough, New Jersey, the police reported on January 2 that the Catholic church of Mary Mother of God had been attacked three times in the past month of December.

On January 4, 2022, a man who had entered a church in downtown Buffalo, New York, and started shouting at the pastor and threatening to kill those in attendance was arraigned on one count of making a terrorist threat.

Also on January 4, a man was arrested, accusing of having set fire to a nativity scene located in front of Hopeland Church, an evangelical church in Vandalia, Ohio. It remains unclear whether the same person was also responsible for another attack to the church’s parsonage, where property was destroyed on January 2. The man was indicted on January 14.

And again on January 4, unidentified perpetrators vandalized the historical Flowertown Baptist Church in Summerville, South Carolina, that they had entered by breaking several windows with a fire extinguisher.

On January 9, St. Phillips Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was evacuated after a bomb threat. The same happened the same day at Burns United Methodist Church in Des Moines, Iowa. Police is investigating the incident as a hate crime.

The woman accused of the attack against Denver’s Catholic cathedral. Source: Office of Denver’s District Attorney.
The woman accused of the attack against Denver’s Catholic cathedral. Source: Office of Denver’s District Attorney.

On January 13, a woman who had vandalized the Catholic Cathedral Basilica of the Immaculate Conception in Denver, Colorado, was arrested on hate crime charges. She had sprayed graffiti with anti-Christian messages on the external walls of the cathedral and on statues outside it.

Aso on January 13, a man appeared before a court in Smithville, Tennessee, after he spray-painted a local church, and left a threatening message, stating “[It would] be a real shame to lose your church because of terrorists.”

On January 16, police arrested a man who had entered St. Timothy Catholic Church in San Antonio, Texas, armed with a gun and tried to interrupt the Mass, together with another man who was waiting for him in a van outside the church.

As Bitter Winter commented in previous cases of “epidemics” of attacks against Christian churches in Europe and North America, it is well possible that some of the incidents can be ascribed to the mental health problems of the perpetrators. However, they are too numerous to be explained only through mental health issues, and a larger climate of hostility to Christianity prevailing in segments of North American culture justifies the police officers and the courts that treat these as hate crimes.

Tagged With: Catholics, Christian Churches

Related articles

  • European Court of Human Rights: “Christians Converts Are Persecuted in Pakistan”

    European Court of Human Rights: “Christians Converts Are Persecuted in Pakistan”

  • MP Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola: What Their Legal Victory Really Means

    MP Räsänen and Bishop Pohjola: What Their Legal Victory Really Means

  • Supporting Persecuted Christians in Nigeria: An Interview with Croatian MP Marijana Petir

    Supporting Persecuted Christians in Nigeria: An Interview with Croatian MP Marijana Petir

  • Iran: “Christians Are Constantly Watched as Spies”

    Iran: “Christians Are Constantly Watched as Spies”

Keep Reading

  • Canada’s Indian Residential Schools: Apologies Yes, Burning Churches No
    Canada’s Indian Residential Schools: Apologies Yes, Burning Churches No

    Yes, Christian churches should apologize for what happened in Indian Residential Schools. No, destroying places of worship is not an acceptable reaction.

  • A Bitter Winter Reporter Visits the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.
    A Bitter Winter Reporter Visits the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C.

    An outstanding testimony to the most printed, translated, and read book of all human history also demonstrates the vital need for religious liberty.

  • London Has Now the First Shrine for Persecuted Christians in Europe
    London Has Now the First Shrine for Persecuted Christians in Europe

    An initiative of Father Benedict Kiely, it reminds the world that Christians are the most persecuted minority internationally.

  • U.S.: Performing Abortion, Gender Transitions Not Mandatory for Christian Doctors
    U.S.: Performing Abortion, Gender Transitions Not Mandatory for Christian Doctors

    A Texas federal district court permanently enjoined enforcing anti-discrimination provisions to compel health care providers to act against their conscience.

Primary Sidebar

Support Bitter Winter

Learn More

Follow us

Newsletter

Most Read

  • There Are Christian Uyghurs, Too: New Organization Launched in London by Ruth Ingram
  • Hui Muslims Clash with Police Over Mosque’s “Sinicization” by Ma Guangyao
  • Russia: Lunatic Theory that Yellowstone Volcano Caused the War in Ukraine Gains Momentum by Massimo Introvigne
  • Xi Jinping: Beijing’ National Art Museum Is Not Socialist Enough by Hu Zimo
  • Occupied Ukraine: Anti-Cult “Experts” Target Moscow Patriarchate Dissident Priest by Massimo Introvigne
  • Chinese Agents Tried to Bribe U.S. Tax Officer in Anti-Falun-Gong Plot by Massimo Introvigne
  • Hong-Kong-Style National Security Law Comes to Macau by Gladys Kwok

CHINA PERSECUTION MAP -SEARCH NEWS BY REGION

clickable geographical map of china, with regions

Footer

EDITORIAL BOARD

Editor-in-Chief

MASSIMO INTROVIGNE

Director-in-Charge

MARCO RESPINTI

ADDRESS

CESNUR

Via Confienza 19,

10121 Turin, Italy,

Phone: 39-011-541950

E-MAIL

We welcome submission of unpublished contributions, news, and photographs. Each submission implies the authorization for us to edit and publish texts and photographs. We reserve the right to decide which submissions are suitable for publication. Please, write to INFO@BITTERWINTER.ORG Thank you.

Newsletter

LINKS

orlir-logo hrwf-logo cesnur-logo

Copyright © 2023 · Bitter Winter · PRIVACY POLICY· COOKIE POLICY