On Sunday, September 28, 2025, a gunman drove a vehicle through the front doors of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan, opened fire on worshippers, and set the building ablaze with gasoline. The chapel was destroyed, and investigators warned that more victims might be found in the rubble. By evening, authorities confirmed four dead, at least two from gunshot wounds, and eight wounded, including one in critical condition. Counting the attacker, five people were killed.
Police identified the suspect as Thomas Jacob “Jake” Sanford, 40, of nearby Burton. A Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq, Sanford was killed in an exchange of gunfire with officers. Investigators discovered suspected improvised devices at the church and searched his residence for additional evidence. That evening, police also responded to bomb threats at other churches, which were later cleared.
President Trump called the massacre “yet another targeted attack on Christians in the United States of America.” His warning comes as violence against Christians is on the rise. A new Family Research Council report documents 1,384 hostile incidents against U.S. churches between 2018 and 2024, with numbers surging from 98 in 2021 to 198 in 2022, then spiking to 485 in 2023 and 415 in 2024. Although last year saw a slight decline, the total was still nearly equal to the findings from the group’s first five-year study.
The data, gathered from open-source reports of threats, vandalism, arson, and shootings, shows incidents jumped from 98 in 2021 to 198 in 2022, then spiked to 485 in 2023 and 415 in 2024. Although 2024 saw a slight dip, the total was still nearly equal to the entire tally from the group’s first five-year study.
Between January 2024 and September 2025, there has been a staggering number of shootings and violent attacks targeting Christians at schools and churches across the United States.
In January 2024, St. Augustine Catholic Church in San Francisco was attacked when 22-year-old Debari Charvel Augustine shot out several windows. Two elderly parishioners were inside but uninjured. On February 11, Genesse Moreno, 36, opened fire during Spanish-language services at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, wounding a man and critically injuring her 7-year-old son before being killed by two off-duty officers. She carried an AR-15 style rifle with a “Palestine” sticker and falsely claimed to have a bomb.
On April 6, Pastor Antwane “AD” Lenoir, 41, of Westview Baptist Church in Opa-locka, Florida, was stabbed to death by a homeless man he had been helping. Later that month, Natasha Marie O’Dell set fire to Seattle Laestadian Lutheran Church in Washington, destroying much of the building and causing $3.2 million in damage. She admitted she was angry at churches and had planned additional arson.
On December 16, a shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, left three dead, including the shooter, 15-year-old Natalie “Samantha” Rupnow, and six others injured. Notes found later linked the attack to Robin Westman, who carried out the Annunciation Catholic Church shooting in 2025.
The violence continued into 2025. On April 3, Zimnako Salah was convicted of hate crimes for bomb threats against Christian churches in Arizona. Weeks later, on April 28, Pastor William “Bill” Schonemann, 76, of New River Bible Chapel, was found murdered in his home. On April 28, 2025, Pastor William “Bill” Schonemann, 76, of New River Bible Chapel in Arizona, was murdered in his home in a crucifixion. His arms were pinned wide against the wall, and a crown of thorns that the killer had fashioned from branches in the woods was forced onto his head. Adam Sheafe, 51, confessed to the killing and said it was the first step in what he called “Operation First Commandment,” a plan to crucify 14 more pastors and priests across several states.
On June 22, Brian Browning attempted a mass shooting at CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Michigan, but was stopped before harming anyone. On August 27, Robin M. Westman, 23, opened fire during a school-wide Mass at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Two children, ages 8 and 10, were killed and 21 others injured, including 18 schoolchildren and three elderly parishioners. The FBI investigated the massacre as domestic terrorism and an anti-Catholic hate crime after Westman’s manifesto expressed hatred for the Catholic Church.
On September 10, Christian evangelist Charlie Kirk, 26, was assassinated while speaking at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah. Tyler James Robinson, who was motivated by liberal ideology and was in a gay relationship with a man transitioning to be a woman, shot him from a rooftop position and later surrendered. That same month, Pastor Felipe Ascencio of Templo Monte Horeb in Ramona, California, was fatally shot in his home. A suspect was taken into custody.
The month ended with the September 28 attack at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township, Michigan. The FBI described the massacre as targeted violence, while mainstream media refused to call it a hate crime or acknowledge it as part of a growing trend of violence against Christians.
A forgotten shooting from 2015 needs to be revisited: the October 1, 2015, attack at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon. Nine people were killed, including one professor and eight students, and nine others were wounded before the gunman died. Wikipedia and mainstream media still claim it is unclear whether this was an attack against Christians, yet multiple survivors reported that the gunman asked victims to stand and state their religion before shooting them.
According to witness Anastasia Boylan, when students admitted they were Christian, the shooter said, “Good, because you’re a Christian, you’re going to see God in just about one second,” before pulling the trigger.
This is the world we live in, where liberals insist that killing someone after asking if they are Christian is not evidence of anti-Christian violence. In the Michigan church shooting, media and social platforms focused on the attacker being a military veteran, hoping people would assume he was a conservative who hated Christians, rather than motivated by Islamic or leftist ideology. The same pattern appeared when media falsely suggested that the would-be assassin of President Trump and the man who killed Charlie Kirk were conservative Republicans.
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