In a despicable act, someone burned down the First Pentecostal Church in Holly Springs, Mississippi.
The church had sued the city government over its stay-at-home order which banned in-person services, and pastor Jerry Waldrop reportedly clashed with city officials at a demonstration at a local Walmart. The city had shut down a Bible study group at the church and cited Waldrop for holding an Easter mass.
According to the Sheriff’s Department, the words “Bet you stay home now you hypokrits” were spray-painted on the ground at the scene of the fire, along with an A inside an atomic symbol, a logo for atheism.
To his credit, the President of American Atheists, Nick Fish, called the arson a “heinous act of destruction.”
Clearly, the motivation of the arsonist was to target the church for standing up to the government’s COVID-19 restrictions. In other words, the arsonist committed his/her crime out of support for these authoritarian policies and out of a desire to punish those who fight back against them. This places this act of arson in the very worst category of crimes: members of the majority aggressing against an unpopular minority. This should be treated as a hate crime, and the perpetrator should be punished to the fullest extent of the law.