Analysis by John Blake, CNN
Updated 9:16 AM EDT, Sat June 10, 2023
Bullet holes riddle the entryway of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs on December 10, 2007, the day after a gunman entered the building, killing two people and wounding three others.
Jeanne Assam had a gut feeling that something terrible was about to happen as she watched parishioners leave a Sunday worship service at a Colorado megachurch one snow-covered December day.
That morning, a gunman had escaped after killing two people at a missionary training center about 70 miles away. Assam had a premonition that the gunman would next target the Colorado Springs church where she volunteered as an unpaid security officer. Her feeling was so strong that she volunteered to work that day, even though she had planned to stay home.
At 12:55 pm., Assam heard someone in the church lobby say that something weird was going on in the parking lot. Someone had lit a smoke bomb. A rifle shot then rang out in the parking lot. Assam heard a panicky voice shout from the packed crowd in the church lobby, “Get down! He’s got a gun!”
“I could tell it was the crack of a high-powered rifle,” Assam said. “It [the gunfire] was just thundering out really loud, just booming. People were screaming and running.”
As people fled, Assam reached for a Beretta 92FS 9mm semi-automatic pistol tucked in her jeans and sprinted toward the gunshots. She found a hiding spot near the church church’s main hallway.
She peeked out from her hiding spot and spotted the source of the rifle shots. A man was carrying an assault rifle in his left hand and had a thick black glove on his right hand. He was wearing a bulletproof vest and a backpack, and was cursing aloud as he moved, firing his rifle.
Assam gripped her Beretta and said a silent prayer: “God be with me.”
She then stepped from her hiding spot and faced the gunman.
What happened next at the New Life Church in December 2007 would change the way many churches approached security. It would also foreshadow a disturbing trend that has only worsened in subsequent years: 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is now one of the most dangerous hours of the week in America, pastors and church security officials say.
And for religious leaders, this poses a dilemma.
The church has become a frontline for the nation’s social ills
The New Life shooting was a transformative event that convinced many churches to add armed security to their Sunday morning worship services. But the security issues facing houses of worship have worsened since then, religious leaders and security officials say.Church leaders say they are concerned about another array of threats that have become more common in a post-pandemic America where many people are on edge. Many of the contemporary issues afflicting the country — too many people carrying concealed weapons, domestic disputes that turn violent, people struggling with mental illnesses — are now spilling into Sunday morning worship services, pastors and security officials say.
Jake Stephens pays his respects outside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 19, 2015 -- two days after a mass shooting left nine dead during a Bible study meeting at the church.
Brian Snyder/Reuters
Churches have long been concerned about losing members as church attendance plummets across denominations. Now they have a new worry: protecting those members that remain.
“Everything that is happening in the culture spills over into the church,” says the Rev. Brady Boyd, senior pastor of New Life Church, the same church where Assam confronted a gunman 16 years ago. Boyd says it’s rare but not uncommon for uniformed officers to handcuff someone creating a disturbance – usually related to a domestic dispute – in his church.
“That’s actually why the church exists,” he says. “The church should be a place where we see cultural problems manifest. It shouldn’t surprise us that we’re seeing broken families show up in our building, we’re seeing mental health issues and people wrestling with post-Covid anxiety.”
A house of worship, though, is traditionally the last place someone would expect to see lethal violence. Churches are called sanctuaries for a reason. A sanctuary is defined as a place of refuge and safety “set apart from the profane, ordinary world.”
But church and security officials say houses of worship are placed in a uniquely dangerous position every Sunday morning. Congregations are traditionally unprotected and are expected to welcome “the stranger” no matter how dangerous they may look. Houses of faith are one of the few public communal spaces in the country that were created to embrace all comers, including broken or disturbed people on the fringes of society.
The New Life shooting in Colorado ushered in an era of mass shootings where even churches are no longer safe.
In 2015, a White supremacist gunman killed nine worshippers at a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Two years later, a gunman killed 26 worshippers at a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. In 2019, a gunman killed two people inside a Texas Church of Christ—including an armed parishioner working security—before he was shot to death by another member of the church’s security team. The entire shooting incident, from the time the gunman pulled a weapon to the time he was shot, lasted six seconds.
The First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, is turned into a memorial to honor the 26 people who died November 5, 2017 when a gunman opened fire at the church.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
And in May 2022 a gunman killed one person and wounded five others at a Presbyterian church in Orange County, California.
And then there are the less lethal acts of violence that don’t make the news. Those are hard to quantify, but a church security firm released a report in 2019 that estimated some 480 incidents of serious violence take place at communities of worship in the US each year. The report also said that two-thirds of the assailants had no affiliation with the congregation.