“While it is good to see the Biden administration acknowledge that these attacks are a problem, they must do more,” Perkins states. “The Biden Department of Justice has so far largely ignored these growing attacks on churches and that is creating an environment of lawlessness around the country.” “Christians must not live in fear. We must not be intimidated,” concludes Perkins. “We must continue to stand upon the truth of God and defending the freedom of all to live out their faith.”

A Christian leader has blasted the Biden administration for “creating an atmosphere of lawlessness” by ignoring attacks on churches and houses of worship nationwide, which have nearly tripled over the last four years, according to a startling new report.
These assaults ranged from deadly to defacing, covered every region of the country and denominational background, and often sprang from pro-abortion domestic terrorism or other forms of left-wing enmity against biblical morality.
Offenders committed at least 420 acts of hostility against 397 separate churches in the United States between January 2018 and September 2022. These cases include everything from arson and gun-related violence to vandalism and bomb threats, the copiously documented, 84-page report specifies.
The attacks show the comprehensive nature of anti-Christian violence. Assaults against churches occurred in 45 states and the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. Victimized congregations span the theological gamut from evangelical, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, mainline Protestant, non-denominational churches, Seventh-Day Adventist, to Unitarian-Universalists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (formerly known as Mormons). Assailants targeted parishes primarily attended by white, black, and Asian (specifically Korean and Taiwanese) Christians, as well as multiethnic congregations.
The report documents one homicide, numerous arsons, bomb threats (real and fake), and a pervasive desecration of holy items. Vandals regularly smashed crosses, statues, and headstones in cemeteries; vandalized carvings of the Ten Commandments; set fire to a Nativity scene; and smeared feces on a statue of the Virgin Mary. They tore up a Bible and desecrated an American flag in a Primitive Methodist church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Denver’s Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church suffered two drive-by shootings this August. Smashed windows and spray-painted doors became ubiquitous. The number of assaults peaked this May through July but has remained elevated compared to historical figures, which usually number in the single digits.
Each individual act of violence or vandalism could cause tens of thousands of dollars in damage to the local congregation.
The annual pace of hostilities against churches, the author warns, is only increasing. “The first nine months of 2022 saw more than double the number of reported acts of hostility against churches that occurred in the entirety of 2018,” notes Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council.
The spike in anti-Christian hate crimes cannot be dismissed as an anomaly of one report, since the FBI counted 240 anti-Christian hate crimes in 2021, up from 172 in 2018.
The report found these destructive, often-violent assaults against houses of worship are often precipitated by political upheaval, typically on the Left.
“Within the past few years especially, outpourings of political anger have sometimes correlated with vandalism and other acts against churches,” says Del Turco. “When faced with such blatant violence and disrespect against churches (and religion more broadly), our response must be to condemn these acts and reaffirm the right of all people to worship and live out their faith freely—including the freedom to live without fear that they will be the next target of such an attack.”
The report cites two major motivators: the still-unsolved leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade on May 2 and the “Black Lives Matter” riots over the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020. But radical pro-LGBTQ activism, support for COVID-19 church closures, secularism, Satanism, Islamic fundamentalism, and anti-Americanism also wrought havoc in parishes nationwide.
Abortion: By far the most destructive of these was liberal opposition to the Christian Church’s 2,000-year history of opposition to abortion, which reached a fever pitch after the Dobbs leak.
In the first nine months of 2022, pro-abortion extremists carried out at least 57 attacks against Christian houses of worship—an 1,140% increase over the past four years. Between 2018 and 2021, only five abortion-related attacks took place against churches, with zero in 2018.
Days after the Dobbs leak, vandals covered a Roman Catholic church and school in Armada, Michigan, with Satanic symbols and “messages calling for the death of Republicans.” The same week, protesters spray-painted pro-abortion messages on the doors of Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Houston, interrupted Mass in Los Angeles dressed as characters out of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and harassed a Franciscan friar at a Basilica in New York City.
Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, accused abortion radicals of waging “a kind of war on the advocates for life” on “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” in June.
Black Lives Matter/Canadian Schools ‘Mass Grave’ Hoax: The report found that 10 church attacks emanated from riots precipitated by the Black Lives Matter movement. This September, vandals wrote “Kill MAGA/Pigs,” BLM,” and “Antifa” on a Unitarian-Universalist building in California.
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If Christendom is to be restored, it will require men who model themselves on the knights of the Round Table: men of faith bound in loyalty, prepared for war, and dedicated to a common cause. Perhaps the standard set by Arthur and his knights is too high for men of a world such as ours. But maybe some are willing to take up the task and to recapture what glory of old Christendom is still possible for us in this age.

Heroes of Christendom Surpass Bronze Age Legends
Ever since the publication of the infamous Bronze Age Mindset, conservatives of various stripes have entered into a seemingly endless conflict over what to make of its erratic prose and challenging content. A number of conservatives, especially those of a more religious inclination, have denounced the book and its author as anti-Christian and fascistic. Yet, there can be no doubt that Bronze Age Pervert holds great purchase among younger conservatives. Further, even a growing number of strongly religious conservatives embrace the text as an empowering exhortation, finding little conflict between BAP’s message and their faith. Can it be that the king of frog Twitter may actually have something to teach conservative Christians?
In order to answer that question, we have to understand what the “Bronze Age mindset” is according to Bronze Age Pervert. Luckily the pseudonymous author tells us explicitly in the third part of his book. According to BAP, there are two principles that set the mindset of the ancients apart. The first was that the secret desire of every Greek was to be worshiped as a god among men. The second was that, for the classical man, life was characterized by the competition of life against life; force against force. The Greek conceived of nature as a manifestation of an inner fire, seeking to gather and discharge power, as Heraclitus described. Every particular being was understood as a manifestation of this universal power, and each being sought the expression of its inner force and differentiation, as a consequence. Hence, the classical man would train and beautify his body in the gymnasium with the aim of attaining eternal fame among men through victory in war. In BAP’s view, it is this vision of life that led to the greatness of classical antiquity, which stands in stark contrast to the spiritual poverty and effusive ugliness of postmodern society, described by BAP as an “iron prison.”
Despite what BAP’s critics argue, there is a great deal of overlap between his worldview and the Christian tradition, particularly the medieval chivalric tradition. Unfortunately, those aspects of Bronze Age Mindset that resonate with Christianity have been obscured by Christianity’s modern pharisaic expositors seeking to reduce Christianity to a mere set of moral axioms. Let us explore this exhortation, section by section, and see for ourselves what a Christian might have to learn from Bronze Age Mindset.
Inner Fire and Physical Beauty
The first part, “The Flame of Life,” serves as an elaboration on the metaphysics of BAP’s Heraclitean vitalist philosophy. BAP argues that the nature of life is not merely a struggle for survival, as Darwinists claim. He argues that there are two kinds of life: “yeast life,” which reproduces aimlessly, and “higher life” which seeks to develop itself upward through greater complexity. “Higher life means many fancy and mysterious things too of course but at its most basic it has to do with differentiation and structure. Yeast is an ‘amorphous blob’ that expands, whereas a higher organism has different parts with different functions, different organs, different systems within itself.” Life at its best is as Nietzsche describes: the development and expression of power. Life is best, in other words, not when it exists for the sake of being—but when it aims at something greater. “Life has a thing inside it that reaches beyond itself… if you don’t reach beyond yourself you are dead!”
The Christian can certainly find agreement in many of these points. After all, the Christian life is about perfection of the soul and spreading the message of the gospel so that others might do the same. All Christians are called to be transformed by God’s love in order that they are able to put their life on the line for God and neighbor. We are always to be reaching beyond ourselves until the end of our lives when we are judged by Christ according to our works.
For BAP, human life can go the path of yeast or the path of higher life, and typically it takes to the former. Human life becomes yeast-like under conditions of pressure, such as slavery or in overcrowded filthy cities. To illustrate the point, BAP gives the famous example of the “longhouse,” which is the prehistoric default communal setting of humanity, where the young were browbeaten by “the old and sclerotic” and “matriarchs.” Under such conditions, human life “devolves… aesthetically, morally, intellectually, physically.” The alternative is the “life of the immortal gods who live in pure mountain air,” symbolized by the “aesthetic physique,” which is a physical manifestation of “energy is marshaled to the production of higher order.” He concludes that “Those who forget the body to pursue a ‘perfect mind’ or ‘perfect soul;’ have no idea where to even start. Only physical beauty is the foundation for a true higher culture of the mind and spirit as well.” Since any given organism, including the human, is its physical body, life on the ascent must begin for BAP with the development and the perfection of the body.
The tension here lay therefore in the exaltation of the body over the soul. A Christian certainly cannot abide by deifying the body at the expense of the soul. However, the body does play a central role in Christian theology. After all, God Himself took on a physical human body in which he lived, died, resurrected and ascended to heaven. All of mankind is also expected to be resurrected at the end of time in order to enter the New Jerusalem or into eternal punishment for all of eternity. We are creatures intended to possess a physical body and we are incomplete without one.
Consequently, it would make sense that training the body is relevant to the perfection of the spirit. Austerity through fasting and abstinence has always been common practice for Christians seeking to direct instincts and emotions toward their proper end. In this sense, Christianity is decidedly against the gluttony characteristic of the contemporary American approach to food. Further, training the body to increase physical power, and consequently beauty, is in no way alien to Christianity. The medieval knight, for instance, would have found physical training an essential aspect of his lifestyle in order to prepare for combat, since a strong body would have been necessary to defend the innocent in battle and gain honors thereby. The knight also beautified himself with ornate sets of armor and weaponry. In the medieval world, strength and beauty were to be put in the service of loving self-sacrifice. Although there is something to be said for potential excess or vanity, strength and beauty directed toward noble ends can only ever be a good thing.
However, love of beauty in itself does not exhaust the issue, since for BAP what is most important is the beauty of the body itself. Although Christianity is not anti-body or against physical beauty, as previously acknowledged, the Christian tradition does not seem to exalt the body in the same way as the classics have. Where in antiquity the young handsome quick-footed Achilles was considered to be the ideal human type, Christians have tended instead to idolize the monkish priestly type, like St Francis of Assisi for whom bodily beauty is unimportant, and in some cases considered a hindrance.
A major aspect of BAM’s appeal is the sexiness of his aesthetics, to put it bluntly. As it turns out, men want to be physically powerful adventurers and warriors, and women are attracted to men who embody that type of ethos. For Christianity to survive and appeal to men in the modern day, it must move beyond the preaching and navel gazing of the priest, and provide an ideal with some vitality in it. Emulation of priests and monks has certainly had some appeal, as evidenced by the tendencies of many modern traditionalists and integralists. Further, there is nothing wrong with priests as such, but merely their exaltation as a model for all men. It’s not priestly moralizing that establishes (and re-establishes) civilization. Instead, that is the prerogative of the noble warrior or knight who wrests territory from the hands of the enemy and secures it against threats internal and external. It is Lancelot that ought to serve as a model for Christians today. Endlessly preaching about the need for a rejection of modernity in favor of communitarian escapism comes off as stuffy and weak. Calling men forth to friendship and adventure with concrete benefits makes for a much more attractive message.
C.S. Lewis acknowledged this specific point in his essay “The Necessity of Chivalry.” Lewis argues that in order for Christian civilization to thrive, it must produce men like Lancelot of the Arthurian mythos. He describes Lancelot as “a man of blood and iron, a man familiar with the sight of smashed faces and the ragged stumps of lopped-of limbs; he is also a demure, almost a maidenlike, guest in hall, a gentle, modest, unobtrusive man. He is not a compromise or happy mean between ferocity and meekness; he is fierce to the nth and meek to the nth.” He argues that the knight is the middle ages’ unique contribution to mankind, as the middle ground between the ignorant brute and the effeminate man of culture. Unfortunately, it would appear many traditionalists today fall into the latter camp, advocating forms of escapism and self-comforting admonitions of their enemies, rather than actively taking up the fight. If only Christians would have heeded Lewis in his exhortation to emulate the chivalric ideal.
For the knight to do his work, he must develop a powerful physique that strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies and inspires those squires under his tutelage. However, he will not fall victim to the vulgar body obsession of many modern bodybuilders and fitness influencers. His beautiful body should not be abused for the sake of vanity or licentiousness, nor is a well-developed body alone sufficient for the knightly vocation. Rather it ought to reflect a more beautiful soul and serve as an instrument of God’s will.
Human Biological Hierarchy
Elaborating further on the significance of the body, BAP argues in the second and third parts that there are politically important biological differences between the sexes and among ethnic groups. He argues fervently that there are insurmountable biological and behavioral differences between men and women that have severe political consequences if ignored. Although women have a penchant for positive characteristics, such as farseeing intuition and childlike carelessness, BAP considers giving women authority to rule over men to be a fatal mistake. In BAP’s view, rule by women results in the stifling of freedom and life’s proper development.
This should not be controversial to the Christian, since scripture itself attests to the same reality. Various passages from Old Testament wisdom literature contain warnings for men against the wiles of women who lead men to ruin when men submit to women. “Give not your strength to women, your ways to those who destroy kings” (Proverbs 31:3). Additionally, the prophet Isaiah associates rule by women with waywardness, as he says, “My people—children are their oppressors and women rule over them. O my people, your leaders mislead you, and confuse the course of your paths.” (Isaiah 3:12).
The New Testament is in some ways even more explicit than the Old. For instance, Saint Paul writes in both first Corinthians and Ephesians that men ought to be the head of their wives and families just as Christ is the head of the church. “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word” (Ephesians 5:22-26). In the traditional Christian view, wives submit to their husbands and husbands sacrifice themselves for their wives, just like Christ. It’s also very telling that Christ Himself appointed only men as apostles to lead his church. This fact has been used as a justification not only to support the general assertion that men should occupy leadership positions but also the more particular practice of ordaining exclusively male priests, as maintained by both the Catholic and Orthodox churches. In any case, the polarity of male and female has always been accepted by Christians and is explicitly preached in scripture.
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Written by David R. Upham |
Thursday, June 15, 2023
 In Dobbs, the Court once again has looked back to our tradition, our laws, our Constitution, and found therein a reserved right of the states to protect prenatal life. Dobbs is in full harmony with Loving. Like Loving, Dobbs is a recovery and vindication of our republic—a great victory for constitutional truth, justice, and the American way.

Our national Supreme Court has set aside the so-called “right” to abortion established in Roe v. Wade (1973) in favor of the states’ reserved authority to protect prenatal life. The Court’s decision proceeded from this syllogism:
(1) The Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment protects only the rights enumerated in the Constitution or otherwise “deeply rooted” in our “Nation’s history and traditions”;
(2) the right to abortion is not such a right;
(3) therefore, contra Roe, the Amendment does not secure any right to abortion.
According to the dissent and many commentators, the Court’s reasoning threatens various unenumerated and innovative rights. Indeed, Justice Thomas, in his concurrence, specifically questioned the putative constitutional rights of contraception, nonmarital sexual activity, and same-sex “marriage.” These putative rights do, indeed, seem foreign to our Constitution and were only recently acknowledged by some of our laws.
The dissenters, however, mentioned the right of interracial marriage, first endorsed by the Supreme Court in Loving v. Virginia (1967). According to Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the right of interracial marriage, like the abortion right, is not deeply rooted in our traditions. Indeed, laws banning such marriage once prevailed as widely as anti-abortion laws did; therefore, just as the new right of interracial marriage was vindicated in Loving, so was the new right of abortion six years later in Roe: “The Fourteenth Amendment’s ratifiers did not think it gave black and white people a right to marry each other. To the contrary, contemporaneous practice deemed that act quite as unprotected as abortion.” By this account, Loving, like Roe, was evolutionary, and anti-traditional.
But the Dobbs dissenters are wrong, egregiously so. Their opinion reflects a widespread and serious misunderstanding of our nation’s history.
The right of American citizens to intermarry, regardless of race, is, indeed, deeply rooted in our traditions of freedom and citizenship, and is, for this reason, consistent with the original intent and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. To be sure, bans on interracial marriage, of course, were once widespread in some parts of our county.
But such laws were never our American tradition. They were not original but innovative. It was not until 1691, nearly a century after Jamestown, that Virginia became the first colony to ban such marriages. Moreover, these laws were never universal. At Independence, only about half the states retained such laws—and nearly all were south of the Mason-Dixon line.
When our political ancestors first migrated to America, they brought with them the English common law—a general customary law recognized in England at the time. This original law recognized three principles.
First, that law secured extensive liberty, including a broad freedom to marry. The ease with which the common law allowed marriages gave rise to what we still call “common law marriage”: a marriage that happens simply by the unofficiated and even unwitnessed private agreement to live as husband and wife. The “consent of the parties is all that is required,” as James Kent later explained. Under this law, racial barriers to marriage were unknown.
Second, the law recognized broad birthright membership: All persons born under English jurisdiction were English subjects. Here too, the law recognized no racial discrimination.
Third, that law incorporated or reflected the complementary principles of legal “due process” and “equal protection,” both of which aimed to secure, to all persons, the rights of life, liberty, and property against lawless violence. Here too, these principles involved no racial discrimination whatsoever.
This protection extended to all living human beings—even before birth.
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