Counting the Crimes- It Isn't Religious

Last week Christianity Today posted some interesting numbers on hate crimes in the US in 2006. Hate crimes are of course crimes that are based on discrimination and extreme prejudice. I'll hold my comments until the end:

		% of total	% of religious
All hate crimes	7722
Anti-Religious	1462	18.9%
Anti-Jewish	967	12.5%	66.1%
Anti-Islam	153	2.0%	10.5%
Anti-Catholic	76	1.0%	5.2%
Anti-Protestant	59	0.8%	4.0%

From Christianity Today
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/january/7.18.html
Source: FBI

Well, let's see. Less than 1 out of 5 were based on religion. That is impressive! Yet 2 out of 3 of the religion based crimes were against Jews. That's depressing. 1 out of 10 were against Muslims; 1 out of 20 against Catholics and 1 out of 25 against Protestants. Those last three are relatively miniscule (2% or less) out of the whole total.

Christianity Today didn't print what the top hate crime categories were. So I went and looked it up:

• Racial Incidents were 4,000 of the total with most of those being anti-Black (2,640).

• Religion, as listed above, was second.

• Third was anti-sexual orientation with 1,195 incidents

So, in summary:

Total	7,722
Racial	4,000	52%
Anti-Black	2,640	34%
Religious	1,462	19%
Sexual Orientation	1,195	15%

And my point?

• In spite of what we may say, we still have a long way to go when it comes to racial harmony. Which will be something I talk about more next week when I talk about the wonderful and challenging and tear-jerker of a movie- The Great Debaters.

• And second, no matter how much some of us Christians may whine about our society being anti-religious, let's give thanks that it is truly not a major issue of persecution and violence.