DETROIT — Detroit-area faith leaders are encouraging churches, mosques, synagogues and other houses of worship to review their security plans as area faithful feel shaken after two attacks targeting Michigan churches in a little more than three months.

Even before Sunday's tragedy that left five people dead, including the suspected shooter, and eight injured, several religious leaders in the region said their communities have adopted security measures in recent years in response to violence and hateful rhetoric in the United States. Some now lock their doors during services, directing parishioners to one entrance when services begin. Several have armed security teams in place during services.

One local Protestant church is in the process of installing security cameras.

The Rev. Elbert Dulworth, pastor of St. Paul's United Methodist Church on Romeo Street in Rochester, Mich., said in the past, people “just walked in” to the church's building, which now locks its doors when its preschool is in session.

“This was the safe place,” Dulworth said. “It's the place that they could escape from the world, and to know that this part of the violence of our society is encroaching on the place that is safe is so hard for all of us ... (But) it's important that we keep our children and our people safe. So we've been doing that.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group, meanwhile, sent its "Best Practices for Mosque and Community Safety" booklet on Sunday to Islamic institutions nationally "as a reminder of safety precautions" after the Grand Blanc Township attack.

And the Archdiocese of Detroit has been in contact with its parishes and schools to remind them that their campus safety plans are "to be reviewed regularly with local law enforcement" and updated with additional measures as deemed necessary, said spokeswoman Holly Fournier. The Archdiocese has about 213 Catholic parishes and 81 schools in Southeast Michigan.

Dawud Walid, CAIR-MI's executive director, said that it's "a sheer tragedy" that innocent people lost their lives in a place of worship on Sunday. He said many Michigan mosques already have armed security during prayer times.

"The Muslim community has felt somewhat under siege for a number of years, but thank God, we have not had a situation of an armed gunman going to a mosque and committing such an atrocious attack here in the state of Michigan," Walid said.

Authorities are still trying to determine why 40-year-old Thomas "Jake" Sanford allegedly drove his truck into the side of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc Township Sunday morning and set it on fire, killing four people and wounding eight. He was shot and killed by law enforcement who arrived on the scene.

Asher Lopatin, the rabbi at Kehillat Etz Chayim in Oak Park and the director of community relations for the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor, said many synagogues have "camera towers" that watch over everyone who goes near the building, and all large synagogues have security guards during services.

But some leaders said it isn't as easy as simply locking their doors and having security teams in place.

Two leaders said they don't want to lock the doors to their churches because they also want to be welcoming — a challenge some university leaders have faced in the aftermath of mass shootings such as the one at Michigan State University in 2023.

Episcopal Diocese of Michigan Bishop Bonnie A. Perry said she doesn't want people to "not be able ... to come in."

"I want us to be safe, and I want us to be welcoming," Perry said.

Houses of worship use cameras

The mass shooting and fire at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on McCandlish Road in Grand Blanc Township happened a little less than four months after a thwarted attack at a church in Wayne in late June.

Identified as Brian Anthony Browning, a man dressed in tactical gear and armed with multiple weapons, including an AR-15, drove up to CrossPointe Community Church in Wayne, Mich., and started firing before he was run over and later fatally shot by a member of the church's security team. Browning's mother was a member of CrossPointe, and he had attended services there a few times before the attack.

A 2023 report by the A-Mark Foundation found that 59 violent attacks targeted congregants, staff and clergy at U.S. houses of worship between Jan. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2022, resulting in 79 deaths and 83 injuries.

Speaking at a Monday press conference in Grand Blanc Township, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said her heart was "breaking" at another mass shooting "in a place that is supposed to be defined by togetherness."

"These are places that we go to feel connected, to feel safe, to be together," Whitmer said. "But today, this place has been shattered by bullets and broken glass. ... We cannot keep living our lives like this."

The Grand Blanc Police Department said Tuesday they plan to increase patrols at churches in the aftermath of Sunday's tragic attack.

"During church service hours, our officers will be patrolling the parking lots of churches throughout the city to provide additional security and peace of mind," the department said in a Facebook post.

For Dulworth and his congregation at St. Paul's, it was the mass shootings at Oxford High School in 2021 and MSU in 2023 that really prompted the United Methodist church in Rochester to think about its security. Some members of his congregation were affected by the tragedies, he said.

"It's one after another of these types of mass shootings, not only in schools and in public … but in places of worship as well, that we're experiencing ― and the second in recent years here in the Michigan area as well," Dulworth said.

He said St. Paul's has been "continually" looking at its security measures, but the church completed a capital campaign pledge drive last spring. Some of that money will be spent on technology and security upgrades.

Dulworth said the new security cameras now are being installed on the outside of the church, which helps the staff better monitor who is coming and going from the facility. They used to only have intercom cameras.

The security system, which includes cameras and alarms, cost around $30,000, Dulworth said. St. Paul's is also planning to have its staff and volunteers do an updated active shooter training, he said.

The church also has a preschool, so it makes sure its doors are locked when preschool is in session. People have to come into the building through designated entrances.

Protocols for emergencies

Perry, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, said churches in the diocese have protocols in place for emergencies, including environmental, medical and behavioral emergencies. A shooting would count as a behavioral one.

She said the protocols for behavioral emergencies depend on how large the church is, its floor plan and other factors.

"I've little, tiny places out in the country ― they don't have security cameras. So … it's going to be principle-driven and contextually specific," she said of the protocols.

Perry said the churches with security cameras tend to be churches that "have more money."

CAIR-MI's Walid said his organization encourages the use of surveillance cameras. If "any strange behavior" occurs around congregations, he recommended letting CAIR know immediately and contacting law enforcement.

Walid said that in a lot of attacks against houses of worship of various faiths, the perpetrators do "some sort of surveillance and/or intelligence gathering" before the attack.

Other security measures

Walid said he called the leadership of the Grand Blanc Islamic Center Monday morning. He said the congregation already has security measures, and they will remain in place. Walid noted that they have "not received any threats."

"Given the volatile political rhetoric … that's been going in our country in recent years, most mosques in the state of Michigan have armed security or some sort of security measures … during prayer times to guard against something like what just took place at the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter Day Saints," he said.

Walid recommended that houses of worship make contact and form relationships with their local police departments or sheriff's offices. He said in many cases, police departments step up patrols around mosques during times of worship, including in the month of Ramadan.

When asked if it's necessary to have armed security, Walid said it "depends on the locality of where the houses of worship are."

"But generally speaking, it's better to have armed security, especially in this particular time where there is anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric that is seep(ing) into the language environment of our country," he said.

Armed security personnel

Mosques aren't the only houses of worship with armed security.

Bishop Corletta Vaughn of Holy Ghost Cathedral in Detroit said that at every Sunday service and event at the church, there are armed security personnel who are church members. There also are hospitality people at each event ― volunteers who greet people coming into the church.

At a certain time during the Sunday service, they lock the front doors and redirect traffic to the side doors. This allows there to be one main entrance "that we can really watch," Vaughn said.

The locking of the doors and the security detail ― along with cameras on the outside of the building ― were measures adopted after the shooting at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 that killed nine people.

Vaughn said people aren't expecting church to "be a dangerous place," so they are "not as on guard" and are friendlier. She said there is now "a little bit more of a tightening up" of who comes into the building, and there is more observation than before.

"We would welcome you, and you would come in and, you know, we would just love on you," Vaughn described how things were before. "But now, it's a little different."

For southeast Michigan's Catholic community, which has about 900,000 members, every Catholic parish and school in the archdiocese has a campus safety plan in place, "developed in partnership with local law enforcement," said Fournier, the archdiocese spokeswoman.

"These plans are tailored to fit the specific needs of each community but may include common safety measures such as having staff and volunteers undergo training on emergency protocols and making local law enforcement aware of community events," she said.

Not wanting to lock the doors

The Rev. Mark Fisher said that before he became the pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in Farmington Hills five years ago, the church had started locking its doors at the beginning of its 10 a.m. worship service. The church adopted that measure in response to the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018 that killed 11 worshippers.

Fisher said the locking of the doors at 10 a.m. meant that "no one could get in." He said he had "a big problem" with that.

"We changed that policy so ... the door is simply always open," Fisher said. "We're not going to shut down. We're just not going to do that, in that respect."

He said St. John Lutheran Church has ushers in the lobby area who are "aware" of who's coming in, but the church hasn't "done much else" in terms of security.

Fisher said the question for him is "how much do we let fear rule what we do versus common sense?"

"And it becomes tricky," he added.

But Fisher said he takes the issue seriously, and the leadership of his church will probably revisit the topic because of the Grand Blanc attack and because "it's so close." The school in the building does have security measures in place.

The Episcopal Diocese's Perry said "locking doors and isolating ourselves" would not have stopped what happened in Grand Blanc, since the suspected gunman rammed his truck into the building and had explosive devices, along with an assault rifle.

She said, particularly among young people, "but across the spectrum," the rate of isolation, anxiety and depression has "skyrocketed." That makes connecting with parishioners even more important, she said.

"More than anything, instead of isolating and hiding, we need to be in the midst of our communities of faith, in the midst of our own just neighborhoods," Perry said. "We need to be connecting with people."

'Really in this together'

Lopatin, the rabbi, said he thinks there is enough security in place at synagogues, but the Jewish community is "always reevaluating and thinking of things."

He said he and his community "really want" to help churches and other places of worship have more security. The Jewish community has reached out to Black churches and the Catholic community about security, Lopatin said. They also want to help different faith communities get grants for security efforts, he said.

"We're really in this together ― you know, defending against hatred and discrimination," Lopatin said.

Lopatin said his synagogue, Kehillat Etz Chayim, has security guards during times of prayer, and the doors are locked at certain times, though there is always someone available to let people in.

"It's very sad," he said, the synagogue has to be careful who comes into the place of worship.

"You want to welcome everybody, but you really have to be careful," Lopatin said. "And we've had several cases where, both Christian and Jewish places of worship, people have come in that should not have been allowed in."

He said it's "really hard."

"Because we always want to be welcoming places ― we're eager for that ― but we just have to keep an eye on things," Lopatin said.

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