US Episcopal churches vandalised with hate speech

Posted on: November 15, 2016 1:39 PM

St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, was one of a number vandalised with hate speech. In addition to this swasticka – originally a symbol of good fortune before it was co-opted by the Nazis as an anti-Semitic symbol and later by white nationalists in the United States – the words “Fag Church” and “Heil Trump” were daubed on the church’s exterior walls.

Photo Credit: Episcopal News Service

Related Categories: Crime, Reconciliation, USA

[Episcopal News Service, by Lynette Wilson] Episcopalians in Indiana and Maryland awoke Sunday morning to hate messages scrawled on their churches’ properties. But rather than despair, they responded with a message of love and welcome.

“I was disheartened at first to see the words on the wall but my second reaction was we must be doing something right,” said the Revd Kelsey Hutto, priest-in-charge, of St David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana, a small community of fewer than 3,000 people some 50 miles south of Indianapolis.

“I’ve been using Presiding Bishop Curry’s statement that ‘sometimes doing the right thing is not always the popular thing,’ and we are living into that, and proud of that, and we believe that facing hate with love is the right way to go about our call as Christians.”