The anti-religiosity in this country that is somehow in vogue and funny to make fun of anybody of faith to constantly be making fun of people who express religion, the late-night comedians, the unfunny people on TV shows — it’s always anti-religious. And remember, these people were gunned down in their place of worship, as were the people in South Carolina several years ago. And they were there because they’re people of faith, and it’s that faith that needs to bring us together. This is no time to be driving God out of the public square.

Conway didn’t directly say the shootings were about anti-religiosity, but some could conclude that based on her words.

Robert Bowers, the man charged with killing 11 people Saturday in a Pittsburgh synagogue, told authorities. “I just want to kill Jews” after his arrest. A social media account under his name had a history of hate-filled posts.

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And Dylann Roof was a 22-year-old self-described white supremacist who said he hoped his 2015 killing of nine parishioners at a historic black church in Charleston would incite a race war in America.

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Conway seemed to be using a talking point that is popular among many of the social conservatives who make up President Trump’s base: the idea that people of faith are hated in this country and that hate is stoked by the rhetoric of elites in Hollywood and the media, among other sources. The notion that that sentiment was the root of the Charleston and Pittsburgh shootings is inconsistent with what the people charged with the crimes have themselves acknowledged.

The view that people of faith are under siege is particularly closely held by a segment of white Christians, who used to be the dominant religious and ethnic group in the country but now account for fewer than half of American adults, according to a 2017 Public Religion Research Institute survey. And concerns about Christianity becoming less dominant in the United States were one of the causes of the “cultural anxiety” that led many Trump supporters to back the candidate who promised to return America to its cultural norms of yesteryear.

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O. Alan Noble, editor in chief of Christ and Pop Culture, has written about the evangelical persecution complex. He talked to The Fix about the impact of Conway’s words.

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“It does seem that she’s tapping into this very old Fox News talking point that evangelicals are being deeply persecuted, and it’s a great way of shifting the conversation from the fact that there’s this toxic divisive language coming from the leader of our country that the media is attacking middle America and their beliefs,” Noble said.

Noble, a professor and author, went on to say that Conway’s incorrect labeling of the reason behind these crimes will be effective with those who look to Fox News and the White House to make sense of our society instead of critically asking whether her assessment of the event is accurate.

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“It’s a way of processing the shootings and directing some anxiety and frustration toward a familiar target, which is the media,” he said.

And perhaps that is what Conway is hoping will be the case: that the main takeaway from these comments for Fox’s generally pro-Trump viewers is that they themselves are the victims — not the black and Jewish Americans who have seen an increase in hate crimes in recent years.

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Hate crimes spiked in 2016, according to the FBI. The agency said most of the incidents in that count were motivated by race or ethnicity and that those that were related to religion were specific in their focus — anti-Jewish bias.