“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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Christian theology ought to be an exercise in knowing God precisely as the God of salvation. But we have not confessed the God of salvation at all if we have not confessed God’s perfection and self-sufficiency apart from any considerations about salvation.

Calvin famously opens his Institutes with the observation that all true and sound wisdom consists in knowledge of God and knowledge of the self. But “which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern,” on account of how many bonds hold them together, and the way these two knowledges mutually presuppose each other. There seems to be no proper place to start. Calvin proposes this difficulty to his readers as if it is a puzzle to be solved, but he only does so as a rhetorical strategy to draw us into the circle of the exposition of Christian wisdom. In fact, as his ensuing discussion makes clear, it does not matter which subject is treated first, so long as the two come together in the decisive encounter between God and humanity which alone can give us theological insight into both. He invites us to consider the problem of how these two matters are related to each other just so he can engage our minds simultaneously in the contemplation of them both.
With slight adjustments, we can say that the same complex relationship obtains between the doctrine of the Trinity (as knowledge of God) and the Christian doctrine of salvation (which stands here as knowledge of self). The two arise together from the scriptural testimony, because the Bible consistently speaks of salvation and of God together.
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We must not live life as if this is not the situation we find ourselves in. We are surrounded by people who are under the wrath of God. Who are on the precipice of hell. And the reason that they are is because they desperately love their sin and do not want to give it up. It is silly then, or even better, it is blindingly asinine for the believer to be the one who is ashamed. 

Have you ever gone home after a long time out, looked in the mirror and found that you had something in your teeth?
I once came home after a full day out and found something green in my teeth. Immediately I began thinking about all my so-called friends who had to have seen this forest growing in my mouth and said nothing!
I mean the “friend” I had lunch with who was a witness to the catastrophe happening decided that he was more embarrassed to tell me I had a forest growing between my teeth than for me to have the forest in my teeth for the rest of the day!
All jokes aside this is the feeling I get when someone tells me that they’re afraid or embarrassed to share the Gospel!
You’re not the one with the problem! You’re the one with the solution to the problem!
A simple reading of scripture will show you just how “shameful” the condition of the unbeliever is.
Ephesians 2:1-3 describes a group of dead men who are making their way towards hell.
2 Timothy 2:26 describes people who are out of their senses, and like a dog on a leash being carried around by the Devil himself!
And we look at people who are in this terrible condition and we are the ones who act embarrassed! Obviously, Paul doesn’t point this out to us for mocking purposes, rather he does so to elicit compassion in our hearts. But it is remarkable that we can know this is their spiritual condition and yet, look at them and talk to them with shame in our hearts.
I think that 2 Timothy 2:25 and Romans 1:18 are sister verses. Obviously, they are written by the same person. But it is notable to me how they are perfect mirrors of each other. Because they both explain in slightly different terms the reason why people will not believe the Gospel.
2 Timothy 2:25 tells us what people are missing.
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