Religious attacks

We do count on our newspapers to present us with the facts and we expect opinion columnists to offer facts that accurately support their opinions.

It was therefore with bafflement that I read “The War on Religion” by your columnist Jonathan Madison. On March 19, he decried the massacre of Muslim worshippers in New Zealand and went on to discuss the ancient persecution of Christians and a rise in Christian church attacks in the U.S. and abroad. He then listed eighteen examples of attacks at Christian churches in America.

A Google search of these incidents reveals that none of the attacks were motivated by hatred of religion. They were provoked primarily by domestic disputes, disgruntled former church members, or disgruntled employees. One involved the murder of an abortion doctor by an anti-government extremist. Another was a racially motivated massacre in a black church.

Examples of actual religious hate crimes in America are easy to find. Mr. Madison might have consulted the 2017 FBI report on religious hate crimes which reveals that 58.1 percent were anti-Jewish and 18.7 percent were anti-Islamic, the rest being scattered among other denominations.

The one thing that most of these deplorable incidents had in common was not animosity to religion, but the untreated mental illness of the perpetrators and the easy access to weapons.

Adella Harris

San Mateo