Attacking churches is indecent and a crime. As the piece below reports, attacks against churches (at least 415 hostile acts targeting 383 churches across 43 states in 2024) are on the rise. People have the right to "worship" whatever bullshit they want to worship, and for someone who finds religious fervor extremist or outdated to the point of physically attacking churches or any other places of worship is criminal and barbaric.
Still, this rise in attacks against religious places is perhaps a reflection of the move by religious institutions - especially the evangelical barbarians - into the political sphere. In a country that prides itself on the separation of church and state enshrined in its constitution, Donald Trump's shoving of religion into the political conversation - should I rather say the "shouting match"? - is probably the cause of much of the hostility against religion.
Trump and his neanderthal Christian nationalists, with their bibles shoved in our faces, their stupid ten commandements displayed in every classroom, their calls to deny women the right to vote so that they can stay home, make babies and cook for their cheating adulterous republican husbands, their never ending saga of child sex abuse.... are turning churches and religious institutions into partisan political encampments. The societal violence that churches are trying to impose on the country does inevitably invite spontaneous retaliatory practices.
Churches and religious institutions should pack up and leave the political sphere, and return to their dusty old churches or their disgustingly tacky megachurches that look more like Woodstock gatherings of constipated frustrated imbeciles who fear this life and seek refuge in the fantasy of "eternal life" after death for which there has never ever been any evidence.
All religions are excrescences, or should I say hemorrhoidal warts, grafted onto our so-called human cultures because of one thing and one thing only: Our brains cannot conceive and accept death as the organic end of life. They must invent a story, a fantasy, a myth to calm the nerves of neurotic idiots suffering from acute thanatophobia. It's like we invented Santa Claus for children because they're too logical to accept an invisible, hence non-existent, God. Santa Claus is God for the little ones. When they grow up, we inform them that we've been lying to them and that there is no Santa Claus. But we have something better: Now that you've grown and have lost the innocence of your logical mind, you should accept that there is an invisible Santa Claus we call God. Same thing, same function: reward and punishment, but not on this earth. No presents under the tree, but everlasting life somewhere in the cosmos above the clouds with the billions of billions of billions of people that preceded us. From the very basic cultures to the very developed cultures, we all worship our "ancestors" under a variety of names.
We fear death. We hate death. So we invent undeath, resurrection, life as a spirit, eternal life... to give us some illusory permanence of our existence. But deep down, we all know - even the most religious among us - that religion is a drug, a sedative, a pain killer, a narcotic that makes us suspend our logical capacity to create for us a Hollywoodian movie featuring holy actors (prophets, saints...), heroes (Jesus, Mohammad, Buddha, Moses....) who sacrifice themselves for their people, special effects (miracles, resurrection from the death, flying winged horses, Valhalla, paradise, Eden ....), and their "self-declared representatives" on earth (clergymen, popes, mullahs, rabbis, monks, nuns, etc.).
That is why religions require one to have "faith", which is the active suspension of reason in favor of a purely imagined construct to make us feel better and endure the decades that biological life has given us. If you use your mind logically, you lose this faith. It's really that simple: You must choose between nice bullshit (religion) and the hardship of real life. Most people choose nice bullshit because, well, it is a nice escape. I told you, it's like a drug: It "trips" you into fantasy and makes you forget the unbearable but real reality. The bottom line is that it is not true. Those who seek the truth walk away from religion.
Just like the Taliban of Afghanistan, Trump has shoved the religious bullshit back into the political discourse in the US, turning it into a Christian Taliban country. Don't be fooled by the suits and the ties, as opposed to the beards and the turbans. The substance is all the same. Mullas and Reverends, Imams and Priests, are all disgruntled frustrated maniacs who hate their lives and, because they envy those who have freed themselves by using their logical brains, try to vent their seething anger at them by imposing "rules" on them. And the more angry they are, the stricter those rules. Beheadings and floggings, chopping off hands, and hangings reflect these "rules" in the Muslim world. Women's rights denied, gay people's rights denied, forcing children to recite biblical garbage, no sex before marriage, no masturbation, no condoms, so many "no"s for a church obsessed with our below-the-belt physiology.... reflect those "rules" in the Christian world. Granted, a big difference in the extent of the coercive garbage dumped on people's lives, but the mechanism is the same.
Remember that a couple of hundred years ago, there was no difference between Muslim and Christian garbage: The Inquisition by far surpassed the barbarity of anything we see in the Muslim world today. The genocide of indigenous peoples across the planet and the theft of their resources by Christian missionaires, settlers, and other conquistadores over several centuries, all done under the guise of bringing them to the "true faith" has nothing to be shy in the face of the barbarity of Muslim invasions that tried to conquer Europe in the West from Spain and in the East from Byzantium (today's Turkey).
Muslims often complain about western colonialism, but they ignore their own colonial barbarity against the west and Europe.
What business did Muslims have in trying to conquer and colonize Europe? Nothing, except steal land, slaves and resources under the pretense of "spreading the message" and delivering the "true religion".
What business did Christians have in conquering and colonizing the rest of the world? Nothing, except steal land, enslave people and pilfer resources under the pretense of "spreading the message" and civilizing the colonized peoples.
From as far back as the Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians trying to conquer western regions, to the reprisals of the Greeks and the Romans imposing their empires on the east, the same violent mutual carnage continues to our time. The Muslims stole Christian lands in the eastern mediterranean, the Christians retaliated with the Crusades, the Muslims drove the Crusaders back out, until the new Crusaders - the Jewish Zionists - have belatedly been trying again, without much success.
Religion poisons everything, and God is not great, wrote the late Christopher Hitchens. May the words of this fourth horseman of the Apocalypse be heard in the deep cesspools of religious barbarity whenever they may be: in central Asia, in the Near East, in Africa, in South America and in the backwoods of north America.
In the United States, ultra-religious barbarians claim that they want to protect one religion, Christianity, from the diktat of government. But government has no religion, and by having no religion it protects all religions, as long as they shut up and stay in their stables eating hay all day long and leaving the rest of us alone.
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Hostility against churches a 'growing trend,' as study finds hundreds of attacks on U.S. churches in 2024
Hostility toward churches across the U.S. remains alarmingly high, according to a new study from a Christian organization that has tracked such incidents since 2018.
In its annual "Hostility Against Churches" report released Monday, the Family Research Council documented at least 415 hostile acts targeting 383 churches across 43 states in 2024.
While that figure reflects a decline from the 485 incidents tracked in 2023, it is still more than double the number of attacks reported in 2022, and nearly equal to the 420 total incidents the group discovered in its first report, which spanned a 57-month period.
The report relied on publicly available data and found a cumulative total of 1,384 acts of hostility against churches from January 2018 through December 2024. The group acknowledged that this figure is likely higher due to cases unreported to law enforcement or by the media.
Vandalism was the leading offense against churches (284), followed by arson (55), gun-related incidents (28), bomb threats (14), and other incidents of assault, threats or disruptions (47). On average, there were 35 attacks against U.S. churches each month in 2024.
The report highlighted several instances where churches were targeted by repeated vandalism or acts of arson that caused devastating financial losses. In southern Ohio, four churches in two adjacent counties were targeted by arson and completely destroyed.
Gun-related incidents were the only category to see a notable increase in 2024, more than doubling compared to the prior year. Pro-abortion-motivated incidents fell from 59 in 2022 — when some churches faced attacks due to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade — to just two in 2024.
Anti-LGBTQ-related acts also declined but remained relatively high at 33 cases, most commonly involving the theft of Pride flags.
The report's authors clarified that anti-Christian hostility wasn't always the motivating factor behind violence. But the report suggested that declining church attendance and cultural shifts away from Christianity may be contributing to an environment where attacks on churches are more tolerated.
U.S. church attendance fell from 42% to 30% over the past two decades, according to Gallup. Additionally, about 80 percent of adults in the U.S. think religion is losing its influence on American life.
"With Christianity seemingly losing influence and respect in American life and fewer people feeling emotionally or spiritually connected to churches, there may be less societal pressure to discourage would-be criminals from targeting churches," the FRC report said.
In February, President Donald Trump
issued an executive order titled "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias" that
created a task force to investigate and halt discrimination against
Christians by the federal government.
Donald Trump pretending to pray (He's probably picturing Stormy Daniels' boobs) as he issued an executive order titled "Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias" in February.
"The existence of such an order shows that even the federal government has taken notice of the growing trend of hostility against U.S. churches," the FRC report said.
The Trump administration's Office of Personnel Management also sent a memo to federal agencies in July enforcing religious protections for federal workers in the workplace.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, who served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom during President Trump’s first term, said in a statement to Fox News Digital:
"Religious freedom is seldom handed to the passive; it is claimed by those who exercise it even when a hostile culture says they may not. This report clearly shows religious freedom faces substantial threats here at home. The American woke Left has been intentional in spreading its hostility toward the Christian faith throughout every corner of America. We applaud the efforts of the Trump administration, but efforts must be taken at every level of government to protect and promote this fundamental human right. Christians must expect and demand more from their government leaders when it comes to prosecuting and preventing criminal acts targeting religious freedom."
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