I woke up this past Sunday to the news that another church in my denomination had been vandalized with hate speech. I felt nauseous, I felt angry, and I felt sad. “Not again,” I muttered to myself as I took the train out from Penn Station to travel to serve my own congregation in New Jersey, “why do we have to go through this again?”

Church. House of worship. Body of God. Synagogue. Temple. Basilica. Cathedral. Mosque. Chapel. Cloister. Hermitage. Masjid. Meetinghouse. Pagoda. Shrine. Sanctuary.

Each culture, each tradition, each religion, and perhaps each person, has their own language to describe the space where they commune with the divine. There is an infinity of words in the world that are used to put language to the spaces where people gather to come together to worship and engage with the mystery of the universe that surrounds them. Each of these words is different. Each of these spaces is different. And yet they are bound together by a common thread.

In every manifestation of these holy spaces there is an aspirational promise of safety, love, and hope. That promise is the power of sacred sites and houses of worship. At their best, churches and their kin serve as a reminder of tradition and a visionary faith for what is possible in the future.

In 2017 many religious traditions in the United States began to publically speak out about their dream for the future in new and exciting ways. Throughout the year many denominations took powerful stances of public witness in response to what they experienced as a rising tide of hate and extremism in the public square. For example, the United Church of Christ took unprecedented action to affirm immigrant rights and prominent Jewish communities made bold declarations about confronting anti-semitism and assisting refugees. My own tradition, Unitarian Universalism, unequivocally voted to declare our support of the Black Lives Matter movement and increasingly moved to support anti-racism work in our congregations and beyond. The list goes on with certain Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Catholic, Islamic, and other groups also courageously going public with their message of fellowship, non-violence, community, and equality for all.

In proclaiming their support of these movements and ideals many churches representing these traditions hung up banners and signs proclaiming their values.

Unfortunately, this public proclamation of values by houses of worship instigated an equal and opposite pushback by individuals and groups who oppose those values. Sometimes this opposition came as criticism by neighbors of these churches who decried churches becoming a politicized space. Other times this opposition came as violent vandalism to church buildings.

In November, 2017 a man was arrested in Morris County, New Jersey for the vandalism of five predominantly black churches. Earlier in the year multiple Synagogues throughout the country had swastikas carved into their doors. In the first few weeks of 2018 we have seen a spree of fires set and graffiti sprayed at several historic churches in Pasadena, California. Statistics show that church vandalism is on the rise in the United States. And it seems that those churches that are the most vocal about combatting hate, extremism, and white supremacist groups are the most at risk.

According to Journal & Courier, a subsidiary of the USA Today Network, the Unitarian Universalist Church in West Lafayette Indiana was vandalized early Sunday morning. At the congregation, which has served as a community hub over the past year to house groups combatting racism and homophobia, two large hand-written banners were affixed to the church fencing. One banner, using a homophobic slur and threatening violence, read “Die F — — — s, Orlando just like Los Vegas.” The other banner also used a number of aggressive slurs for racial minorities, gays, lesbians, and transgender people.

Though the language used on the signs was garbled the message of intimidation was clear: I am opposed to your values and I am willing to damage your church in order to silence you.

When the West Lafayette congregation gathered for worship this past Sunday and church leadership revealed the content of the signs that had been posted the congregation had a choice to make. They could have easily sat in silence or called the service off and fled. Instead, the congregation at West Lafayette responded to the hateful signs by spontaneously singing “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” a civil rights spiritual whose chorus is “Ain’t gonna let nobody/Turn me ‘round/I’m gonna keep on walkin’/Keep on talkin’/Marchin’ into freedom land.” Instead of silence that the vandal had attempted to intimidate them into the congregation chose to fill the entire chapel with song.

The desecration of holy sites and the fear of defilement of houses of worship has long been used to intimidate, control, and silence religious peoples who speak out against hate. Unfortunately, in 2018 America we live in a time and place where the threat of violence to our sanctuaries is real, especially if we choose to worship in a sanctuary space that publicly denounces extremism and white supremacist groups. So long as churches publicly bear witness to their values they will be targets of vandalism and violence. So long as the peaceful speak loudly the hateful will always strive to silence them.

Since Sunday I have realized that the answer to the question of “why do we have to go through this again?” is simply because we are people of faith who are willing to live our faith and values out into the world. We believe that one day a beloved community can exist on this earth in peace and love and we believe that love will one day drive out hate if we keep singing loud enough for long enough. If we believe this then we do not have a choice; we must keep singing and we must keep advocating for peace and justice at the top of our lungs. This is what is means to have faith and live it in the 21st century.

What the West Lafayette congregation reminds us in choosing to sing in the face of fear, and what so many of our vandalized houses of worship remind us whenever they respond to violation with love and strength, is that the promise of our churches is alive and well in the world. And they remind us that no matter how many hateful signs are posted or how many stained glass windows are broken the safety, love, and hope that is the promise of our churches will persist so long as we continue to fight for it.