Although the backlash to the overturning of Roe v. Wade appears to have subsided, vandals, arsonists, and worse targeted hundreds of churches in 2024, according to a new report.
Travis Weber, vice president for policy and government affairs at the Family Research Council, which released the report Monday, said most Americans would be surprised to hear that 383 churches suffered 415 attacks in 2024.
“We have a tendency in the West and in the United States to think of ourselves as safe and freedom-loving, tolerant, and protective of religious freedom, including religious freedom to practice Christianity,” he told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday. “So, I think the fact that we have hundreds of incidents—specifically, 415—in the year 2024 is very revealing.”
While these 415 attacks represented a decrease from the 2023 high of 485 attacks, it still included hundreds more incidents than in 2022 (198), 2021 (98), and previous years.
While the report notes that “not all crimes against churches are motivated by hatred for Christianity,” some incidents “seem to be targeting churches intentionally and with malicious intent.”
The Family Research Council used open-source documents, reports, and news articles to assess attacks against Christian churches. The 2024 report identified 284 acts of vandalism, 55 incidents of arson or other fires, 28 gun-related attacks, 14 bomb threats, and 47 other incidents, such as physical assault, disruption of church services, and general threats of harm.
In August, four churches in southern Ohio caught fire, and authorities suspected one person may have set all four fires. Authorities have yet to name a suspect. Also in August, a man allegedly killed the secretary of St. Mark AME Zion Church in Athens, Tennessee, before setting fire to the building, completely burning down the roof.
Other attackers disrupted services by entering churches with guns. These gun-related incidents increased from 12 in 2023 to 28 last year.
Although vandalism may not result in severe damage, some 2024 cases cost churches thousands of dollars. North Peoria Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma, faced $100,000 in damage after a vandal attacked five air conditioning units in April, after paying $40,000 for a new air conditioning unit in 2023.
Attacks proved most common in more populous states such as California (40), Pennsylvania (29), New York (25), Florida (25), and Texas (23). Some low-population states did not experience any reported attacks: Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
The motives behind most attacks remained mysterious, but the Family Research Council did identify a few of them.
Previous reports identified 59 pro-abortion attacks in 2022 and 11 in 2023, while only two incidents traced back to support for abortion in 2024. In April, a vandal spray-painted “F— U” and “My body, my choice” on St. Patrick’s Church in Portland, Oregon.
Incidents involving Satanism also decreased from 12 in 2023 to one in 2024.
Travis Weber, the Family Research Council vice president, told The Daily Signal he thinks some hostility may trace back to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-leaning nonprofit that puts groups like his on a “hate map” with chapters of the Ku Klux Klan.
The SPLC has long condemned the Family Research Council as an “anti-LGBTQ hate group,” claiming that it spreads misinformation to demonize people who identify as LGBTQ. Critics like the council accused the SPLC of only attacking conservative Christian nonprofits because they oppose same-sex marriage. The SPLC long claimed not to be “anti-Christian,” noting as evidence that it has not put Focus on the Family on the “hate map.” Yet, earlier this year, it added Focus on the Family to the map.
“This type of inflammatory, inaccurate, and erroneous characterization contributes to an increasingly polarized environment,” Weber said. “It is fair to consider that hostile activity directed against a peaceful place of worship is based on an erroneous and wrongful understanding.”
He said that “fomenting and perpetrating lies … certainly contributes to the risk of further activity like that.”
A terrorist targeted the Family Research Council for an attempted mass shooting in 2012, using the SPLC “hate map.” The SPLC condemned the attack, but has kept the council on the map ever since.
Despite accusations that the Family Research Council is driven by “anti-LGBTQ” hate,” the council’s report on church attacks condemns anti-LGBTQ attacks on churches.
The report notes that some vandals have stolen LGBTQ “Pride” flags from churches. It identified 33 anti-LGBTQ+ attacks on churches in 2024, down from the 2023 high of 42 attacks.
“We want to be fair to what the data is showing,” Weber told The Daily Signal. “That includes noting where there are activities directed against a church that is promoting a pro-LGBT viewpoint, which I would say is biblically inaccurate, but the solution is not to go and disrupt that church or attack it or steal its flag, but rather to proclaim the truth about what the Bible says about who we are, created in God’s image, male and female.”