A small blue pin handed out at an Oklahoma City church two years ago has become the symbol of a nationwide interfaith movement that drew more than 2 million participants this year. Stand Up Sunday began at St. Luke's Methodist Church in Oklahoma City in 2024 and has since spread to congregations stretching from New England to Texas, uniting Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian, Hindu, African Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, evangelical and nondenominational communities under a single cause: standing against religious hate.
The movement traces back to Senior Pastor Dr. Robert E. Long, who launched the first Stand Up Sunday at St. Luke's Methodist Church on August 18, 2024, after hearing an interview with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft about religious hate crimes against Jewish Americans. Long requested his own Blue Square pin immediately after learning that Jewish people suffer a disproportionate share of religious hate crimes in the U.S., according to the church. Since then, St. Luke's congregation alone has distributed over 6,000 Blue Square pins to members and the broader community.
As reported by The Journal Record, Long said Stand Up Sunday grew from his own congregation into a nationwide movement reaching more than 2 million people, telling the outlet that faith communities standing together made the movement possible. Last year's event, held in September 2025, drew 1.5 million congregants across more than 100 houses of worship in more than 30 states — a scale the Journal Record reports has now grown even further this year, with participating services this time focused on the rise of antisemitism and attacks on religious communities nationwide.
From a Single Pin to a National Symbol
The Blue Square symbol driving the movement traces to Robert Kraft, who established the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism in June 2019 with a $20 million personal pledge after receiving Israel's Genesis Prize in Jerusalem, according to the Genesis Prize Foundation. The organization launched the Blue Square symbol in March 2023 and officially rebranded as the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate in October 2025 alongside a $10 million national media campaign. Kraft designed the blue square specifically as a non-confrontational way to mobilize the roughly half of Americans who remain unengaged in countering bigotry.
Per the Journal Record, Adam Katz, president of the Blue Square Alliance Against Hate, said leaders from all faiths sent a message that bigotry and intolerance have no place in society by coming together behind the blue square. The alliance co-leads Stand Up Sunday alongside the Appeal of Conscience Foundation, an interfaith coalition founded in 1965 by Rabbi Arthur Schneier, a Holocaust survivor and senior rabbi at Manhattan's Park East Synagogue, according to the Appeal of Conscience Foundation.
St. Patrick's Cathedral Among This Year's Sites
Stand Up Sunday services on October 18 drew participation from a striking range of houses of worship, including St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in New York City, and BAPS Swaminarayan Akshardham in Robbinsville, New Jersey, per the Journal Record. At St. Patrick's Cathedral, Bishop Edmund Whalen welcomed Karen Schneier Dresbach, Rabbi Joseph Potasnik and Bawa Jain for the service, the outlet reported. The cathedral, which serves as the seat of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York and receives over 5 million visitors annually, was previously the target of a 2019 security scare when a man was arrested while attempting to bring gasoline, butane and lighters into the church, according to a PR Newswire release on the event.
Attendees at participating services received the alliance's blue square symbol as a sign of solidarity against hate, the Journal Record reported. Organizers point to data showing religion-based hate crimes in the U.S. rose 136% between 2015 and 2024, with antisemitic incidents rising nearly 900% over the same period, according to the outlet. FBI data for 2025 showed a record number of hate crimes against Jewish people, who accounted for 63% of religion-based hate crimes that year, per the Journal Record's reporting.
Federal Data Shows a Persistent Pattern
Those figures build on a trend already visible in the FBI's 2024 Hate Crime Report, which recorded 1,938 single-bias hate crimes against Jewish people nationwide — a 5.8% increase from 2023, according to the Secure Community Network. Anti-Jewish incidents accounted for 69% of all religiously motivated hate crimes reported to law enforcement that year, the network noted. Separately, the Anti-Defamation League reported a record 9,354 antisemitic incidents across the country in 2024, a 344% increase over five years, as reported by the Baltimore Jewish Times.
Reaching Beyond the Pews
The Blue Square Alliance's work has also extended into higher education. In April 2026, the alliance partnered with the United Negro College Fund, Hillel International and the NFL to launch Unity Week across college campuses, an effort focused on building Black-Jewish student allyship and combating hatred at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other institutions, according to the United Negro College Fund.
