Tree of Life Congregation Synagogue in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, where a rightwing extremist entered and opened fire on congregants, killing 11, on October 27, 2018.

When Americans were confronted with a headline that has become all too familiar – another mass shooting – the news was fraught with unthinkable horror: Most of the victims were children, obediently sprinkled throughout the church pews at a Mass celebrating their first week back at school in Minnesota.

Mass shootings, it seems, take place everywhere – on college campuses, in public parks, at house parties, mobile home parks and warehouse stores. But the morning attack Aug. 27 at Minneapolis’ Annunciation Church seemed to plumb unusually heinous depths of cruelty, even as crimes driven by religious bias rise are rising.

“It hits so hard because children haven’t had a chance to live their full lives,” said Mathew Schmalz, a professor of religious studies at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. “It calls us all to think about how fragile life is, particularly in a day and age where random violence is so prevalent. It really breaks your heart.”

Two children, 8 and 10, were killed. Fourteen of the 17 injured were also children, two were left in critical condition.

“We are horrified and devastated by yet another school shooting,” said Amy Spitalnick, CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “This doesn’t need to keep happening. Our children, and all of us, deserve to live free from gun violence.”

A Voice of America report found that mass shootings at places of worship have grown in frequency since the mid-2000s – committed, it said, “by perpetrators with a history of racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Christianity and Islamophobia, with ties to white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups.”

Some of those attacks have been among the country’s most shocking: In 2015, a White supremacist shot and killed nine people gathered for Bible study at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; in 2017, an assailant killed 26 people at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs in rural Texas; and in 2018, a right-wing extremist killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in the deadliest antisemitic attack on U.S. soil.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the Minnesota attack is being investigated as "an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.''

The Annunciation Church attack breaks a boundary − namely, that children should be spared from society's typical ills.

“It goes against our shared perception or understanding of what ‘normal crime’ should look like,” said Christopher Scheitle, an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University in Morgantown.

Schmalz, of Holy Cross, said the incident tests Catholic Christian perspectives of a church as a place to contemplate the effects of violence, given the ever-present image of Jesus on the cross.

“You’re challenged within that context to respond to violence with forgiveness and love,” Schmalz said. “But that’s hard to do in a case like this, where you have innocent children targeted.”

According to the Voice of America report, religious hate accounted for just 1% of the mass shootings between 1966 and 2000. The share jumped to 9% of such crimes from 2000 to 2014, and 17% of those from 2018 to 2020.

By 2023, the Justice Department reported that religious bias accounted for nearly 22.7% of the 11,862 hate crimes tabulated by the FBI; last year, the share was 23.5%.

As houses of worship become the sites for such crimes and other sociocultural unrest, their traditional roles as places of refuge risk erosion.

“In spite of the fact that we call them sanctuaries, worshippers know danger can’t be kept at bay,” said Nancy Ammerman, a professor emerita of sociology of religion at Boston University.

Ammerman cited not only mass shootings such as the one at Charleston’s “Mother Emanuel” church but moves to allow law enforcement to enter religious spaces.

Additionally, she said, “religious communities that take unpopular public stands know their properties can be vandalized. There are many reasons religious spaces can become vulnerable.”

Some worry that such incidents may prompt more places of worship to reconsider their identities as open-door institutions, even as such measures may seem to contradict the welcoming environments they have historically aimed to offer.

“The sacred is often undermined by the presence of prominent security measures,” said Scheitle, of West Virginia.

Nonetheless, some faith leaders have felt compelled to respond to threatened or actual violence around the country.

“Religious denominations are really being pushed to decide how open these spaces are going to be when you have threats of random violence or an ICE raid,” Schmalz said. “Are churches really open spaces anymore? Or do they have to be protected from a society where there seem to be threats all around?”

They’re questions worth considering as times change, he said.

“People see churches as places of safety,” Schmalz said. “But it seems the notion of what is a safe space is disappearing within American society.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A shooter attacked children in prayer. Has America hit a new low?

Reporting by Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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