An increasing amount of hatred and violence is being directed toward churches and their congregations, and now it appears online services aren’t even safe
A virtual church service in North Carolina was disrupted on Sept. 27 by people posting racial slurs and pornographic images, reports WRAL.com.
Dr. Nicholas Glenn, minister at Sharpe Road Church of Christ in Greensboro, said that just about halfway through the Sunday morning service people began joining their Zoom broadcast and posting disgusting comments.
“There was a picture that was posted of a woman in a compromised position with an animal … ” said Glenn.
Members said other comments were from posters who were trying to be seen as white supremacists, calling members racial slurs, saying their lives don’t matter and telling them to go “pick cotton.”
Glenn said the messages came in for a few minutes from several different usernames before he was able to ban them from the chat.
“Only thing we could do was apologize for what happened,” Glenn said. “It was just sad that people would take the opportunity to disrupt that sacred time with the Lord and our church family.”
Glenn said once they entered the chat box the messages came rapidly, so he had to stop the broadcast. Over 100 people were watching this service and are feeling violated, he said.
“There’s a lot of hurt, some anger, and some frustration because it just seems like the same old story over and over again. You know, at some point you just get tired,” Glenn stated.
He also said Zoom responded to his complaint and told him it was able to trace the people who disrupted their service. They were denied further access to the platform, Zoom claims.
