This pastor is praying while packing heat.
Baltimore Rev. Rodney Hudson said he now carries a gun on him at all times after a series of violent incidents say him attacked at the pulpit while giving a eulogy and mugged in his church’s parking lot.
“I carry and I don’t care who knows it,” Rev. Rodney Hudson told the Baltimore Sun.
“It’s sad to say — we all believe in God as our protector, but the other harsh reality is that there are so many people who have absolutely no respect for God and the church nowadays,” said Hudson, a pastor at Ames Memorial Church and the Metropolitan United Methodist Church.
Both churches can only afford to hire one security guard, so Hudson has made himself the second line of defense.
“If they get past him, I’m the second guard,” said Hudson, who was a US Army paratrooper. “The pastor almost has to be a security guard.”
Several high-profile attacks on churches and religious spaces have left religious leaders anxious. A gunman at a Catholic school in Minnesota in August killed two children while a mass shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan ended up with four people dead in September.
There were 415 “hostile incidents” targeting churches in 2024, up from just 55 in 2020, according to the Family Research Council, a Christian think tank.
“We are engaged in a spiritual battle,” Rev. Dr. Harold A Carter Jr, a pastor at Baltimore’s New Shiloh Baptist Church, told the Sun.
Though Carter believes a rise in addiction and homelessness is part of the problem, along with a growing political divide in the US, the values the church represents are what makes it an ideal target.
“People under stress tend to take out their frustrations on religious or faith-based institutions. They stand for something, unlike neighborhoods, community centers, or malls. It becomes simpler and easier to turn one’s frustrations and anger against the church,” Carter said.
“Spiritual warfare is a major variable in the equation.”
Ten years ago, Carter began implementing increased security measures for his congregation, including an armed guard for every church event.
More than half of US congregations have hired armed security forces, according to a 2023 survey by Lifeway Research.
The same study shows that the number of armed church-goers is increasing, with 54% of Protestant pastors reporting armed worshippers in their congregation, up 10% from 2019.
“Churches are not immune to violence, disputes, domestic disagreements, vandalism and burglary,” Scott McConnell, executive director of Lifeway Research, told the newspaper.
“While loving one another is a core Christian teaching, churchgoers still sin, and non-churchgoers are invited and welcomed. So real security risks exist whether a congregation wants to acknowledge them or not.”
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