By Theodore Shoebat

The Department of Homeland Security was warned that there would violence against churches just two weeks before the Texas church shooting. The acting secretary of the DHS received this warning that, in the words of ABC News, “that houses of worship and faith-based groups were in imminent danger of being targeted for violence”. The warning was sent on December 17th of 2019 to the acing Secretary Chad Wolf from the department’s Security Advisory Council. It observed that places of worship and religious communities continued to be open to “extremist violence”, siting numerous past examples such as the shootings at the synagogues in Pittsburgh and Poway, California. The report warned  that “these have underscored the vulnerability of faith-based organizations and the need to provide for the security of houses of worship and the communities they serve.” According to the same ABC News report:

The report by the DHS committee, whose members include leaders of different faiths, concluded that all religious groups are susceptible to being targeted for violence. The report cited a 2017 mass shooting at a Baptist church in Southerland Springs, Texas, that left 26 people dead, a 2012 shooting at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, that left six people dead, and a series of arson attacks and bombings earlier this year of mosques and churches in Minnesota, Utah and Louisiana.

“We call upon our leaders to guarantee freedom of thought and conscience,” the committee wrote in the report, “while at the same time uphold the freedoms enumerated in the Bill of Rights and the US Constitution to practice and propagate religion.”