Churches used to be open all day and sometimes all night so that people could come in and pray. Then they began to lock them up so that no one would steal the silver or vandalize the premises. Now some congregations employ guards and security cameras to prevent attacks from happening during public worship.
One case that stands out was reported by The Washington Post. Earlier this month, Kevin Kelly was convicted of murder after he confessed to driving to People’s Church in Silver Spring, MD and waiting for his estranged wife to appear. He shot and killed her outside of the church while services were going on.
What happened that Sunday morning at People’s Church was just one in a string of fatal shootings at houses of worship across the country. The most high-profile incidents — a Kansas abortion doctor gunned down in May, an Illinois pastor shot mid-sermon in March, a Tennessee church attacked during a children’s play in 2008 — have begun to alter the way many churches operate.
Now wary congregations are sometimes employing a variety of measures to prevent such an attack from occurring in the future.
Congregations that once left their doors open all day now employ a variety of techniques to keep their worshipers safe during public worship. Methods include armed guards, off-duty police officers, surveillance cameras and even undercover plainclothes guards who mingle with the congregation.
A small cottage industry of faith-specialized security firms has sprung up almost overnight, offering nervous churches, synagogues and mosques vulnerability assessments, security systems and emergency planning. Many were already on alert for the kind of crimes that have plagued religious institutions for years: churches being burned, synagogues and mosques being desecrated.
A quick Google-search reveals dozens of firms who offer a variety of security services to churches, synagogues, and mosques.
But hiring guards and installing cameras cannot prevent a determined attacker from doing the worst. People’s Church had a security plan in place for its 3,000-member congregation. They employed a off-duty police officers hired who directed traffic and provided protection. As the Post said, “none of it stopped Kevin Kelly” from killing Patricia Simmons Kelly last February as she entered her church.
None of these news reports talk about how places of worship that have been shaken by violence cope with the spiritual and psychological aftermath of deadly violence in holy places. Besides the very human desire to be safe, there is little theological reflection of what it means to have to worship behind the kinds of barriers that these measure imply.