BLM targets Christians, Marxist mobs burn churches

FPI / July 20, 2020

America's churches have become engulfed in the rage of the Marxist Black Lives Matter mob.

Among the mob's targets this month were at least four Catholic Church-affiliated buildings and statues from Boston to Los Angeles which were set on fire or vandalized. One of the fires destroyed much of the 249-year-old San Gabriel Mission, once led by Father Junipero Serra.

“Given that there were four attacks on Catholic churches nationwide over a 48 hour period, from July 10 to July 12, suspicion, obviously, turns toward the left wing extremists who have been toppling statues of Saint Junipero Serra and attempting to remove a statue of Saint Louis,” Catholic Action League Executive Director C.J. Doyle told The Washington Times.

On July 12, a statue of the Virgin Mary at St. Stephen Parish in Chattanooga was found beheaded. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, Tennessee Republican, called it a “disturbing attack on Catholicism and religion.”

“Sadly, it is among a series of attacks on Catholic churches that have happened in recent days,” Fleischmann tweeted. “I hope that the perpetrators will be brought to justice, but I also pray that they will find their way to God as well.”

"It would be quite a stretch to blame churches for George Floyd’s death, police brutality or Confederate memorials, yet houses of worship and religious statues are coming under attack in the protest mayhem," Valerie Richardson noted in a July 15 report for The Washington Times.

Pastor Marc Little, chair of UrbanCURE, said that “we are witnessing a Marxist takeover supported by members of Congress” and “fighting a new religion disguised as racial justice.”

“What we’ve seen since the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis is the unveiling of what has been percolating against the church,” said Little. “Make no mistake: The body of Christ is the target of the Marxists, for it cannot succeed when morality stands in the way.”

Little slammed those “defacing murals and monuments of Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary while the former head of the DNC, [Howard] Dean, calls Christianity a religion of hate.”

The former Vermont governor drew both applause and condemnation for his July 11 tweet: “Unfortunately Christians don’t have much of a reputation for anything but hate these days thanks to Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell and other Trump friends.”

On June 20, Black Lives Matter protesters in Los Angeles tore down and spilled red paint on a statue of Serra, the Franciscan friar canonized by Pope Francis in 2015. A Father Serra statue was pulled down in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park that same weekend.

St. Louis police arrested a person accused of assault during a June 27 protest over the statue of King Louis IX, or Saint Louis, the city’s namesake and the only king of France to be canonized by the Catholic Church.

The leftist mob's assault on Christianity continued with a fire set to the plastic flowers held by the Virgin Mary at St. Peter’s Church in Dorchester, Massachusetts; the spray-painting of a Virgin Mary statue with the word “idol” at Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary in Queens, New York; and a vehicle crash into the Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Ocala, Florida.

In the Ocala incident, Steven Anthony Shields, 24, was charged with deliberately driving into the front doors, pouring gasoline inside the church and setting it on fire. Marion County sheriff’s deputies said he specifically targeted the Catholic church and that he had schizophrenia, according to the Ocala-News.

Eric Metaxas, a Christian author and radio host, said he doubted that the timing is coincidental.

“I think a lot of the nastiness that’s being directed at these statues, it really has to do with something deeper,” Metaxas said on Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “You saw this with the French Revolution. There was a hatred at the bottom of it of God, of any kind of authority, and these people are drunk with the idea that they can somehow be an authority themselves, they can seize power.”

In that case, why stop with Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee? “If you really want to cut to the chase, you forget about generals and things, you go right for God, you go right for the Virgin Mary, my goodness, you go for churches,” Metaxas said.

Richardson noted that the Black Lives Matter Global Network, founded in 2013 after the death of Trayvon Martin, says little about religion on its website, but it takes a number of positions that are at odds with traditional Christianity, including a call to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure” and “dismantle cisgender privilege.”

The Movement for Black Lives, which counts BLM as a partner, is avowedly “anti-capitalist.” BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors said in a 2015 interview that she and co-founder Alicia Garza are “trained Marxists.”

“We actually do have an ideological frame,” Cullors told Real News Network. “Myself and Alicia in particular are trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super-versed on sort of ideological theories.”

George Floyd, 46, had a criminal record but was active before moving to Minneapolis in Resurrection Houston, a ministry focused on Houston’s rough 3rd Ward, where he grew up. His funeral services in Minneapolis and Houston were held in Christian churches and featured sermons, Scripture readings and gospel music.

“Any Christian leader who doesn’t understand that this is a Marxist, violent organization — this has nothing to do anymore with George Floyd,” said Metaxas. “They’ve hijacked this, and they want to burn down everything that has been built by good people over centuries, most of whom, of course, were Christians.”

Free Press International