After Minneapolis shooting, security firms see influx of interest from faith groups

When Nick Spencer heard about the shooting that took place last week at a Catholic church in Minneapolis, he, like millions of Americans, was heartbroken. But as the chief operations officer of the security firm Strategos International, he also prepared for what he knew would come next.

“Unfortunately, once an event occurs, there’s a huge inquiry that happens,” he said. “People want to know about resources: ‘What can we do to not be the next victim in this situation?’”

It’s a pattern that repeated across the country at businesses and groups that, like Spencer’s, help houses of worship develop emergency protocols and step up security, including armed guards, to protect against mass shooters and other threats. Long seen as unnecessary or even anathema by faith groups that oppose the presence of guns on principle, security firms say religious communities are increasingly requesting their services as the number of houses of worship impacted by mass shootings, while still rare, continues to rise.

Religion & Politics

Photos of the Week: Minneapolis church shooting memorial, India flooding

A group with the Catholic Women's Association and Action for Change in Cameroon sing a hymn at the memorial outside Annunciation Catholic Church, Sunday, Aug. 31, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Ellen Schmidt)

In Opinion

And finally, Haela Hunt-Hendrix transcends boundaries of faith, gender and metal as Liturgy front woman

Onstage with only a guitar, microphone and pedal board, Haela Hunt-Hendrix can sound angelic one moment and feral the next. Her solo set, drawing from songs from across her band Liturgy’s six-album catalog, shifts between delicate, hymnlike passages and bloodcurdling screams that leave audiences hushed in anticipation. The music is both hypnotic and jarring, seemingly determined to unsettle.

Hunt-Hendrix, 40, is best known as the front woman of Liturgy, the Brooklyn avant-garde black metal band that has divided listeners since its 2008 EP debut, “Immortal Life.” Over the past 15 years, the band has redefined what metal can sound like, blending its signature burst beats, a rhythm more flexible and repetitive than the genre’s standard blast beat, and howls with choral arrangements, classical influences and theological themes. The band’s minimalist aesthetic has remained, but theological and philosophical symbols have become more prominent in newer work.

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