Church Security Statistics (2026): Attack Trends, Hate Crime Data & Volunteer Screening Gaps
Church security statistics for 2026: 915 incidents at U.S. houses of worship in 2025, FBI hate crime data, volunteer screening gaps, and what church leaders should do.
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Houses of worship are among the most visible gathering places in America, and they are also among the most exposed. Churches rely heavily on volunteers, including greeters, ushers, childcare workers, and parking teams, and many of those volunteers serve before any formal check is completed. This report gathers the most current published figures on attacks, hate crimes, volunteer participation, and screening practice, and explains what they mean for a church's volunteer program. It is part of our church statistics hub.
Key takeaways
The threat environment: more incidents, more physical violence
The Faith-Based Information Sharing and Analysis Organization (FB-ISAO) reports that 915 incidents were reported at houses of worship in 2025, an 8.8% increase over 2024 (as summarized in a detailed summary of the FB-ISAO findings). The same summary says the total remained below the 2023 peak, but that incidents are increasingly physical and violent, and that more of them now take place outside the building than inside it.
A separate tally from Kearnan Consulting counted 415 hostile incidents in 2024, affecting 383 churches, and 1,384 acts of hostility against U.S. churches since January 2018. The gap between the two figures reflects different collection methods and years, which is why we present both rather than blending them.
Who is targeted: Protestant churches see the most attacks
By raw count, Protestant congregations are the most frequent target. In the FB-ISAO 2025 data, the distribution by faith looked like this:
Protestant churches make up most of the country's congregations, so the share of attacks alone does not show risk per building. The same analysis notes that faiths representing fewer than 10% of congregations absorbed 31% of attacks, a reminder that smaller and minority communities can face disproportionate exposure. Six incident types, including theft, vandalism, assault, arson, graffiti, and communicated threats, account for more than 80% of reported incidents.
Violence and lethality: rare, but severe when it happens
The Violence Project's House of Worship Homicides Database tracks 399 incidents from 2000 to 2025, with 512 lives lost and 213 people injured. In that dataset, 88% of incidents occurred at facilities open to the public, and the database records security systems present in only 13% of cases. Its leading recorded circumstances are domestic disputes (23%), escalations of a dispute (22%), and robbery (16%), which means many of these events are not the mass-casualty attacks that dominate headlines.
Researchers at CNA describe homicide at houses of worship as statistically rare compared with homicide overall, but highly lethal and disruptive when it occurs. Their work also flags that these incidents ripple well beyond the single event. The deadliest year in one dataset was 2017, when 47 people were killed at places of worship, 42 of them by firearms.
A separate shooting-focused tally from Omnilert, citing the Violence Project's database, puts the count at 246 shooting events and 402 victims from 2000 to 2025, with 307 people killed. Rural communities account for up to 22% of house of worship shootings, according to the same article, which is a useful reminder that small congregations are not exempt.
Federal hate crime data: religion is a major bias category
The FBI's 2024 hate crime statistics show religion as a significant motivation. According to a playbook that draws on the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting data, the FBI recorded 2,783 religion-based hate crime incidents in 2024, making religion the third most frequently targeted bias category after race/ethnicity and sexual orientation. Sources differ on the year-over-year change: one analysis reports a 5.1% increase over 2023, while the American Association of Institutions' review of the same data reports that single-bias religion incidents fell 5% from 2023 to 2024. We recommend checking the FBI Crime Data Explorer directly before citing a trend.
Where these incidents happen matters for church leaders. According to a tabulation of the FBI figures, 12.4% of religion-based hate crimes occurred in churches, synagogues, temples, or mosques, while 22.6% occurred in or near homes. Within the religion category, anti-Jewish incidents dominate: the Secure Community Network reports that 1,938 anti-Jewish hate crimes made up 69% of religiously motivated incidents in the 2024 report.
The volunteer base: 75.7 million people, and more hours per volunteer are shrinking
Churches run on volunteers, and the national data show how large that pool is. The AmeriCorps and U.S. Census Bureau survey found that more than 75.7 million people, or 28.3% of the population age 16 and up,
