Violent attacks against Christian churches remained significantly elevated in the final year of the Biden administration, the conservative Family Research Council reported this week.
The evangelical advocacy group counted 415 vandalisms, arsons, shootings, bomb threats, physical assaults and disruptions of church services in 2024.
That’s down slightly from the 485 attacks a year before, but much higher than the 187 recorded between 2018 and 2020 combined in the last three years of the first Trump administration.
Council President Tony Perkins, who served as chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom during Mr. Trump’s first term, blamed the increases on increasingly strident anti-religion rhetoric on the left.
“The American woke left has been intentional in spreading its hostility toward the Christian faith throughout every corner of America,” Mr. Perkins said in a statement. “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.”
Longtime Democratic Party strategist James Carville countered that it would be absurd to accuse then-President Biden of encouraging violence against right-leaning Christians.
“Joe Biden is a traditional Catholic,” said Mr. Carville, who is also Catholic. “I find it hard to believe that Joe Biden is a purveyor of incendiary language that causes somebody to burn a church.”
Published Monday, the group’s annual report tallied 50 criminal attacks on churches in 2018, 83 in 2019 and 54 in 2020 under Mr. Trump’s watch.
Incidents increased to 96 in 2021 during Mr. Biden’s first year in office, then nearly doubled to 191 in 2022.
During the latter year, the Supreme Court ruled in June to return jurisdiction over abortion to the states. That prompted an outburst of vandalism at Christian pro-life pregnancy resource centers.
The report also flagged a surge in LGBTQ-related attacks on churches in June 2023, as the total number of “hostile incidents” more than doubled to 485 that year.
Last year’s incidents remained elevated with 284 vandalisms, 55 arsons, 14 bomb threats and 47 “other” attacks.
While the number of gun-related incidents doubled from 12 in 2023 to 28 in 2024, the share of attacks motivated by abortion rights sentiments declined.
Overall, the report’s analysis of open-source documents, studies and media coverage found 1,384 attacks from 2018 to 2024.
“It is important to note that not all crimes against churches are motivated by hatred for Christianity,” the report said. “Some vandals appear to be motivated by financial gain through theft, while other culprits are teenagers engaging in a destructive pastime. However, there are still incidents that seem to be targeting churches intentionally and with malicious intent.”
Under the Biden administration, some religious groups accused federal officials of targeting pro-life Christian activists and traditionalist Catholics as part of a crackdown on domestic terrorism.
In a June 2021 fact sheet outlining its National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, the Biden White House flagged “racial, ethnic and religious hatred” as leading threats to national security.
The Biden Justice Department subsequently prosecuted nearly two dozen pro-life Christians for protesting outside abortion clinics.
The Family Research Council report noted that a February executive order from Mr. Trump singled out Catholics as a particular target of “anti-Christian bias” in recent years.
“Catholic churches and institutions have been aggressively targeted with hundreds of acts of hostility, violence and vandalism,” Mr. Trump wrote.
More than one in five Americans are members of the Catholic Church, the largest religious institution opposing abortion and transgender people.
Michael New, a professor of social research at The Catholic University of America, said attacks on Catholic institutions have become “much more common occurrences” for that reason.
He cited the May 2022 leak of an early draft of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling, the Biden Justice Department’s “unwillingness” to prosecute people who vandalized pro-life Catholic institutions and a backlash against Mr. Trump’s reelection on Nov. 5.
“Sadly, some political activists resort to violence after electoral setbacks,” said Mr. New, an abortion trends researcher who was not involved in Monday’s report. “Similarly, some activists engage in acts of violence if they do not feel they can make progress politically.”
The report counted 33 church attacks in December. That was up from 21 in September, 20 in October and 20 in November.
California led the nation last year with a total of 40 attacks. That was followed by Pennsylvania with 29, Florida and New York with 25 apiece, Texas with 23, and Tennessee and Ohio with 19.
According to the Family Research Council, a decline in Americans attending religious services or identifying with a specific faith has likely contributed to increased attacks.
The report highlighted Gallup polling that found 30% of U.S. adults regularly attended church services last year, down from 42% two decades earlier.
Evangelical minister Ed Vitagliano, executive vice president of the American Family Association, a Mississippi-based conservative group, said the findings confirm a growing link between secular liberalism and anti-Christian hostility.
“It is becoming clear that the radical left in America has grown increasingly hostile to Christianity,” said Mr. Vitagliano, who was not involved with the research.
