Violence Against Houses of Worship

Notice I refer to violence against “houses of worship” rather than “churches” and that is by design.  It appears that all houses of worship, regardless of religion, are targeted for violence in an escalating fashion in the past several years and this should concern anyone who attends any kind of church or other house of worship no matter the religion. 

Keith Graves of the Christian Warrior YouTube channel, which I strongly encourage you to watch if you attend any religious gatherings, Christian or otherwise, recently broke down statistics regarding violence perpetrated against houses of worship.  Interestingly, Catholic churches, Synagogues, and mosques, are over-represented in property crimes compared to protestant churches.  Yet, for actual murders on premises, it appears the great majority in the past year occurred at protestant churches.  Interesting and seemingly inexplicable. 

However, when you think about these numbers, things start to make sense.  Vandalism and arson directed against minority religions is, sadly, not hard to believe.  There are many in society who simply hate religion.  An example from last year comes to mind, when a man tried to vandalize a synagogue, yet could not because he could not get through the gate, so went to the other end of town and burned a mosque instead.  Go figure.  Does he hate Jews and Muslims equally, or does he just hate religion in general?  I’m guessing the latter. 

Pertaining to the higher rate of murder at protestant churches, here we may be able to explain this by the several mass killer attacks directed against such churches that occurred last year, curtesy of violent leftist extremists of varying ilk, including women and trans people, and nothing represents “the west,” or “the patriarchy,” or whatever else these lunatic fools happen to hate, more than the protestant church, seen by these monsters as the oppressor. 

And, after all such social deviance is accounted for, many people will disregard the single greatest contributor to violence against houses of worship.  Ready, here goes: 

There are millions of people who are regular attendees of religious congregations, and these people know many other people, some of which are unhinged and violent.  When the unhinged, violent person wants to find the regular attendee of said congregation to do them harm, well, 10am every Sunday, they know where to find that person.  And, some of these violent people might show up to do violence against the targeted individual, and hurting other like-minded people who are of the same belief system as the target will be bonus points.

Honestly, its that simple, and this is the social factor that drives most church violence. 

So how should you, as the prepared citizen, deal with attending your house of worship?  Consider it to have all the usual vulnerabilities of any other crowded event, but of even greater threat level since it is a consistently scheduled gathering that proves ideal for finding people known to be part of that congregation.   

If you are fortunate enough to be in a church that is switched on enough to have a security team, consider joining the team and doing your part to ensure the safety of the congregation.  If you don’t join the team, be sure you at least know those people on the team well, because if something does happen and you need to use force, you want the security team to know you so as not to mistake you for the threat.  And, that leads me to the next point:

Even if your church has a security team, the safety of your family and yourself is ultimately your responsibility.  You might be fortunate enough to have competent meat eaters on your security team, but likely not.  Some guy with his carry permit, who fired an extra 100 rounds when attending the security team training class, is not going to be a Delta Force operator.  Sort out the legalities of your state, as some prohibit guns in church by state law, but most do not, and it might simply be a policy in place by the church itself with no force of law.  Figure it out.

Consider your seating locations within the church, or synagogue, or temple, or mosque, or whatever.  Obviously, these different forms of worship often have different seating arrangements.  A Catholic Church is likely to have heavy wooden benches, a synagogue may have only chairs, a mosque will have no furniture.  This changes the security assessment. 

Being positioned where you can interdict a threat coming through the back door, yet not have to shoot past a crowd of innocents, is a sound decision. This has always led me to prefer the very back of the room, positioned all the way at one flank or the other.  Awareness is paramount, and you want to check out everyone who enters. 

If a suspicious looking person enters, track where they go to sit and keep an eye on them.  If they walk straight up to the podium in an unusual manner, bear in mind that violence specific towards the priest/imam/rabbi or whatever, is common.  If a killer enters and begins an immediate attack, be prepared to perform some surgical shooting, as there will be no safe backstops.  Neutralize the threat and re-holster to avoid friendly fire towards yourself. 

This is the world we live in.  Don’t act according to the way things aught to be, but act according to the way things are.  Houses of worship are targets for violence, so plan accordingly. 

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