This is the best summary I could come up with:
Someone had graffitied Nazi swastikas on Stonebridge United Methodist Church in McKinney alongside the words “skin king,” a reference to the white supremacist skinhead movement, and the threat “not my best work yet…”
Smith, Stonebridge’s facility coordinator and a church member for over 24 years, worked with several other parishioners to clean the building as fast as possible before the Sunday morning service.
Jake Kurz, director of communications for the central division of the Anti-Defamation League, said the spike in crimes against religious groups in the U.S. is linked to a rise in polarization.
Unlike in the ‘50s and ‘60s, when Black churches were more often targeted by the Ku Klux Klan, Carroll Rivas says in recent years her organization is seeing white supremacist groups pivot to lone wolf violence in an attempt to avoid institutional accountability.
Terms like “skin king,” which was graffitied on the McKinney church, signal that a person is part of white supremacist communities and listening to their messaging, she said, even if a formal tie isn’t established.
The group concluded that “acts of hostility,” which ranged from arson to graffiti to protests during services, had increased significantly from January 2018 to September 2022, totaling 420 incidents.
I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Smith’s church isn’t the only one in North Texas that has recently suffered violence or vandalism. On July 23, Plano’s Community Unitarian Universalist Church was attacked by a firebomb that left the building’s front doors and foyer damaged. A few weeks earlier, the LGBTQ-affirming church had been trolled by anti-LGBTQ YouTubers who pretended to be gay and mocked the church’s beliefs. Plano police were investigating the case.
On July 15, Fort Worth police arrested a man who allegedly threatened to “shoot up” First Pilgrim Valley Baptist Church. At least two other churches in Fort Worth reported acts of vandalism over the past few years.
Gosh… I wonder- with gay abandon- what all these churches have in common?
