Rubio Blasts Biden’s War on Christians

Since Joe Biden took office more than three years ago, one of the defining features of his administration has been its lawless weaponization of the justice system against Christian, pro-life, and Catholic communities—and its simultaneous unwillingness to prosecute acts of anti-Christian violence committed by left-wing activists.

Though the Biden administration’s pattern of bias against Catholics has generally failed to elicit attention from the national political class and corporate media, a recent letter to Biden from Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) could potentially catapult the issue into a central focus of the 2024 presidential campaign—and potentially bring Biden’s silence on the matter to an end.

“I write with regard to the dramatic increase in attacks on Catholic churches across America,” Rubio wrote to Biden in the March 5 correspondence. “These religiously motivated attacks seldom result in any consequences for offenders and are part of a larger trend of fanatical activists targeting religious institutions. I demand you speak out on the growing number of attacks on Catholic churches and make investigating, and fully prosecuting, these incidents an urgent priority for your administration.”

Rubio goes on to note that since the deadly Black Lives Matter riots began in May 2020, more than 400 Catholic churches in the United States have suffered from violent attacks. In his letter, Rubio cites a database launched by CatholicVote that has tracked every attack on a Catholic church since 2020.

Of the more than 400 attacks, 142 occurred in 2020 and 2021. An additional 143 attacks occurred in 2022 alone, triggered in part by the release of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June of that year. More than 100 attacks followed in 2023.

According to CatholicVote, at least “238 attacks have been perpetrated against Catholic churches since the draft Supreme Court opinion proposing to reverse Roe v. Wade was leaked in early May 2022, with many including graffiti with pro-abortion messages.” The attacks have affected churches in 42 states and the District of Columbia.

“These attacks are not random nor are they the result of a temporary lapse in judgment by perpetrators,” Rubio continued. “They are motivated by a deep and abiding animosity towards religious institutions and people of faith.”

Rubio goes on to list a series of examples of anti-Catholic violence, including a “woman setting fire to a statue of the Virgin Mary,” a person “beheading a statue of the baby Jesus,” a “priest being attacked with a machete,” a “249-year old church being set on fire and nearly fully destroyed,” and a “man crash[ing] a van into a Catholic church and then set[ting] it on fire with people inside.”

However, CatholicVote has found evidence of arrests relating to these attacks in only 25 percent of cases—signaling the Biden administration’s apparent disinterest in prosecuting violent criminals when those criminals go after Christians.

“It should be of highest priority for your administration to protect and defend any group from violence,” Rubio wrote. “Yet, your administration’s passivity causes people of faith across America to seriously doubt whether you are willing and able to defend Catholic churches and their parishioners.”

But despite the lack of consequences for these deliberate acts of anti-Catholic violence and vandalism, Rubio notes, Biden has nonetheless eagerly deployed his Justice Department against churchgoing, pro-life, and traditionally-minded religious Americans.

Earlier this year, the Biden DOJ invoked the FACE Act to convict six pro-life activists—who now face up to 11 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines—for peacefully singing hymns and praying in the hallway outside of a Nashville-area abortion clinic. In Fall 2022, Biden’s FBI also sent armed agents to raid the home of Mark Houck, a Catholic pro-life activist and father of seven who physically defended himself and his son from a heckling protester outside of an abortion clinic.

Meanwhile, the shocking extent of the Biden administration’s hostility toward people of faith was further revealed in a groundbreaking December report published by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, which outlines in detail the FBI’s breach of religious freedom against Catholics and other religious believers. Among other disturbing revelations, the report noted that the FBI “abused its counterterrorism tools to target Catholic Americans as potential domestic terrorists” when agency operatives in Richmond, Virginia, circulated a report designating so-called “radical-traditionalist Catholic[s]” as potential “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists.”

Though the FBI and Biden administration officials have repeatedly attempted to reassure the American people that these incidents are not indicative of anti-Catholic bias, many Catholics remain skeptical.

As Rubio observed in his letter to Biden, “The wave of attacks against Catholics suggest[s] that many activists would like countless Americans to abandon their genuine religious faith and submit to a godless, progressive pseudo-religion.”

He concluded: “You have a responsibility to protect Americans from harm. I demand you condemn the growing number of attacks on Catholic churches and make combatting these incidents an urgent priority for your administration by prosecuting each and every offender to the fullest extent of the law.”

Unfortunately, Catholics should not hold their breath waiting for Biden to take meaningful action to address the mounting epidemic of bias against Catholics and other Christian communities.

Rubio’s letter, however, could serve as a rallying cry for Christians to turn out and vote for leaders who are actually committed to protecting them from religious persecution.

Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.