Faith-based institutions need to be welcoming and inclusive with their duty of care to provide a safe space for worship, even with constraints on safety and security budgets.
There is no hate more pernicious or more persistent than the vilification of people based on their ethnicity or faith, particularly when that hatred is used to justify violence. According to the most recent data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), approximately one in five bias crimes target persons because of their religion. Although houses of worship represent a relatively low percentage of active threat attacks (approximately four percent of events between 2000–2018, according to the FBI), any invasion of sacred spaces will be among the highest impact events any of us ever experiences.