There Were 436 Attacks On Churches Last Year, Joe Biden Didn’t Prosecute A Single One

The Biden-Harris administration did not prosecute a single one of the hundreds of attacks against churches that took place last year under a 1994 law designed to protect houses of worship, a congressional hearing established on Wednesday, citing research from Family Research Council. Even as violence and vandalism against churches and pro-life centers skyrocketed over the last two years, 92% of Biden administration cases using that law targeted pro-life advocates.

Those facts emerged Wednesday during a House Judiciary hearing about the implementation of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, signed by President Bill Clinton in 1994. The FACE Act explicitly punishes anyone who “intentionally damages or destroys the property of a place of religious worship” in 18 U.S. Code §248(a)(3), imposing a $10,000 fine and a jail sentence of up to six months for a first conviction. Each subsequent conviction can add $25,000 in fines and up to 18 months in prison for nonviolent protests, or up to 10 years if the defendant is convicted of causing any bodily injury.

“Since the start of the Biden-Harris administration until May 2024, the DOJ had brought a total of 24 FACE Act prosecutions against 55 defendants, with only two of these cases concerning attacks on pregnancy resource centers. To this day, the FACE Act has never been used in defense of a church since it was passed in 1994,” said the subcommittee chairman Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). In all, 50 of the 55 defendants were pro-life, and the department obtained 34 convictions, according to data from the Biden Justice Department.

“Statues of Lady Justice show her wearing a blindfold, because it is not supposed to matter who is being judged, what they believe, or who they voted for. Unfortunately, over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has weaponized this act [through] disproportionately targeting pro-life Americans for FACE Act violations while simultaneously failing to protect pregnancy resource facilities, despite being the target of growing violence,” said Roy.

Although the law putatively covers churches, it has never been used to protect America’s first freedom as churches come increasingly under attack after the May 2022 leak of the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade.

“The Family Research Council identified 436 attacks on churches just in 2023,” testified Erin Hawley, senior counsel and vice president at the Alliance Defending Freedom. “Last year, Arielle Del Turco with the Family Research Council reported to this committee over 400 incidents of hostile acts directed at churches … including hundreds of acts of vandalism, dozens of arson attacks, and incidents involving guns or bomb threats.”

“There have been zero — zero — prosecutions under the FACE Act for that violence,” noted Hawley.

“Those who hate wisdom love death,” said Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wyo.), paraphrasing Proverbs 8:36. “And I think that’s what we’re dealing with here.”

Technically, the report — “Hostility Against Churches Is on the Rise in the United States | Analyzing Incidents from 2018-2023” by Del Turco — documented 436 church attacks during the first 11 months of 2023, a whopping 800% increase over six years.

FRC also documented 67 acts of violence or vandalism against pro-life pregnancy centers between the Dobbs decision leak and May 2023, 39 assaults against pro-life churches by October 2022, and 24 attacks on pro-life organizations by January 2023. Hawley cited some specific attacks:

On June 7, 2022, CompassCare’s office in Buffalo, New York, was firebombed and tagged with spray paint reading, “Jane was here.”
On June 10, 2022, the Gresham Pregnancy Resource Center in Gresham, Oregon was burned.
On June 25, 2022, Life Choices Free Pregnancy Services in Longmont, Colorado, was firebombed and spraypainted with the message, “if abortions aren’t safe, neither are you.”
Hawley cited numerous other hostile acts against pro-life women’s centers in her unabridged, written testimony.

Pregnancy resource centers make a “strange target,” since they’re giving away diapers and baby formula for free, noted Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Calif.).

At the hearing, Hawley and her fellow witnesses detailed ways “the Biden administration has weaponized the [FACE] Act to target pro-life individuals,” said Hawley. “The Biden DOJ has upped the ante, placing pro-life Americans in as much jeopardy as possible.” Steve Crampton, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, noted that the Biden administration has invoked the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 “for the first time in our nation’s history” to accuse pro-life advocates of engaging in a “conspiracy against rights.”

The act increases the jail sentence for a nonviolent first violation from six months to more than 10 years in prison.