The rising fear of American Christians Why are churches arming themselves?

While Ray might sound like a local eccentric, his push is in fact part of a wider trend in the US. This has seen increasing numbers of churches gathering armed security forces, variously described as “safety ministries” or at the more explicit end offering “Christian warrior training”.

Attacks on places of worship are nothing new, and are a very real consideration for even the most pacifist flock. Historically, they have been associated with hate crimes against black protestant congregations, primarily in the Deep South, as opposed to wealthy, predominately white Catholic congregations, such as Chesterfield. But as the proportion of Americans who identify as white Christian dwindles, they are feeling increasingly under threat.

This is borne out in a report on violence against churches in the US published earlier this year by the evangelical group the Family Research Council. It declares that “hostility against American churches is not only on the rise but also accelerating”. Identifying some 436 incidents against churches in 2023 — more than double the number in 2022, according to their records, and more than eight times the number in 2018 — it warned that these are “destructive and have the potential to intimidate a religious community”.

The fear is an understandable one. Unfortunately, though, the Family Research Council is far from an impartial or authoritative source. Controversially designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in 2010 for its hostility to LGBT issues, the Council conceded in its report that “the motivations for many of these incidents remain unknown”, however, it believes that “the rise in crimes against churches is taking place in a context in which American culture appears increasingly hostile to Christianity”.

Only, there is a wider political context: the so-called decline of white Christian America. This idea is often rehearsed within elements of the Right-wing media, with claims that immigration policies are changing the racial and religious makeup of the country.

In this vein, the Family Research Council report, though widely cited, does seem to be more political than scholarly. It does not list the methodology of its research, nor classify incidents. Perceived hostility and violence are considered one and the same. One example cited in the report is of a “Vote No” sign being pulled from the ground and thrown in a bin outside a Cincinatti Church, while fires with unknown causes are lumped in with established arson.

A more credible study by the nonpartisan A-Mark Foundation put the violence in better context. They identified 59 attacks targeting congregants, clergy, or staff at houses of worship of all faiths between January 2012 and December 2022. Shootings caused 74 of 79 deaths, while 40% of perpetrators suffered from mental illness.

Moreover, the A-Mark report found that when it comes to motivation for attacks on places of worship, Christians aren’t the main target. “Only 18% of attacks targeting Christian or Catholic places of worship were motivated by racial, ethnic, or religious hatred,” the authors said, while “attacks targeting Jewish (93%) and Muslim (83%) houses of worship were overwhelmingly motivated by antisemitic or Islamophobic hate”.

This is not to say that the fear felt by members of Ascension Catholic Church, or any other Christian congregation, is not real, but it is being stoked disproportionally by politicians and media figures — as well as by for-profit church security training and protection organisations.

The founder of one such company, Dwayne Harris of Full Armor Church Safety Solutions, told UnHerd that he launched the firm in 2017 as a response to “certain incidents that were occurring in the news” such as the Charleston church shooting. An ordained Pentecostal bishop and law enforcement officer, Harris says that the most common incidents at churches are lone actors in crisis, often due to mental health, however he believes that “cultural shifts and tendencies towards violence and disruption” in wider society have created a sense of fear that exacerbates these issues.

A competitor in the industry, Joe Puckett of the Church Security Academy, referred me to a recent video he posted on YouTube alerting US churchgoers to the threat of ISIS-K, a particularly active branch of the terrorist group believed to be responsible for recent attacks in Russia and Afghanistan. Puckett says that churches tend to come to him “afraid of their skill level and how they can defend themselves” against “the traditional lone wolf attack”. Increasingly, however, he says that “we’re afraid of some of these groups that are here” and that “it might be multiple people that are attacking us at one time”.

There is no evidence that ISIS-K, based in Central Asia, has any presence in the United States, however, the idea that terrorists are coming over an unsecure Southern border with Mexico is a common refrain on the Right and from Republican Party politicians, including Donald Trump.

Religious studies professor Matthew D. Taylor at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies believes that in certain Right-wing Christian circles, creating this climate of anxiety helps to justify retaliation. “Very rarely do people conceptualise themselves as violent aggressors”, he says. But the MAGA ecosystem, he explains, helps to rationalise taking-up arms as a defensive posture, because other groups are posing the greater threat.

Catholics and other denominations may be keying in on the trend, but Taylor says that is driven by a Charismatic-Pentecostal movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), increasingly influential within the Republican Party and counting Trump’s spiritual adviser, Paula White Cain, in its numbers.

“The NAR movement is spiritually accelerationist” Taylor says, claiming that “the current system is corrupted, false and demonic — and that their opponents are so totalitarian and tyrannical that they must be opposed”. Prominent Right-wing Christian influencers are helping to translate these political themes into spiritual terms, “claiming we need a great revival — which is intrinsically political and Right-wing in their theology — to reset American culture”.

The critical doctrine emerging from the NAR movement is the concept of “Spiritual Warfare”. Here, cosmic enemies are everywhere, helping to create a climate of fear and hostility, placing “true believers” on a permanent war-footing. From there, the idea of starting private militias helps fellow travellers to “disinvest in the system”, Taylor says, which risks creating suspicion for American democracy.

“When you start saying that we need to physically protect ourselves against our political opponents, and that they are a threat to our very existence, there’s no room for compromise” Taylor warns. “There’s no room for democratic negotiation if you claim the other side is out to destroy you. It’s violence all the way down.”

As America’s burning political climate collides with a mental health crisis and untrammelled access to guns, the idea of armed church militias is a dangerous thing. Places of worship are already high-profile targets for violence. But a greater risk for conflict, however, may be coming from inside the house. At a time when many conservative Christians feel that they are under siege by the secular, liberal world around them, taking up arms could feel like their only protection.

---

Elle Hardy is a freelance journalist who’s reported from North Korea and the former Soviet Union. She is the author of Beyond Belief: How Pentecostal Christianity Is Taking Over the World.

ellehardy