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Recent church burnings raise larger issue
Feb. 14, 2006
A UMNS Report
By Kelly Martini*
Responding to the recent arsons of 10 Alabama churches, United Methodists are
joining the call to focus on broader issues of church burnings that are
continuing nationally.
All of the Alabama churches burned since Feb. 3 housed Baptist congregations.
Five of the churches have predominantly black congregations and five have
predominantly white membership.
The Women’s Division, United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, has long
worked on this issue through the National Coalition for Burned Churches.
Targeted church burnings are not unusual but have continued in recent years, the
division noted.
According to Rose Johnson-Mackey, program director for the National Coalition
for Burned Churches, the coalition has documented more than 1,700 arsons,
attempted arsons, bombings and suspicious church fires across the United States
from 1990 to 2000.
Within this same period, coalition records show about 88 cases were reported in
Alabama. More recent data reveals that from 2000 through 2006, more than 600
cases of church arsons have been documented.
Those figures are most likely low, Mackey said, because they represent
statistics that the coalition has been able to collect solely on its own without
any central depository for data collection. She believes the figures are much
higher.
What the figures demonstrate is that church burnings happen in the same areas of
the country and they’re not being stopped, she added. Small volunteer fire
departments and local police do not have the resources to properly investigate
church arsons, so the incidents are being overlooked or reported as if they are
minor.
The cluster of burned churches in Alabama is symptomatic of a larger problem to
which the nation must pay attention, according to Mackey and other leaders.
Church arsons, whether prosecuted as hate crimes or not, are intended to
terrorize entire communities, since often the soul of the people is housed in
their place of worship, Mackey said.
“We must move the nation to a new place on this issue, a place of commitment,”
she said. “The U.S. must commit to protect the right of congregations —
regardless of color, ethnicity or nationality — to worship in peace, free from
the threat of terrorism caused by arsons.”
In Alabama, United Methodists have been responding to the recent arsons by
offering space, donations and other support to their burned-out neighbors.
 Bishop Will Willimon, who leads the denomination’s North Alabama Annual
(regional) Conference, said in a Feb. 3 statement that United Methodists “join
in the grief of our Christian brothers and sisters at the damage to their church
buildings.” He said he asked the conference treasurer and staff to send a
donation from the conference to the affected congregations, and he urged United
Methodists to lift those churches in prayer.
Christians can focus on the recent church burnings by:
- Advocating for equitable dedication of
federal resources to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies so
that they can investigate church arsons of all burned churches, including
the ones that do not receive media attention.
- Focusing on churches that have been burned
but not received national media exposure; pushing local authorities to
report the fires to federal agencies; and sending the information to the
National Coalition for Burned Churches for registry and tracking (www.ncfbc.org
).
- Building upon the work of United Methodist
Women to track hate crimes and church burnings in their communities and to
provide data to such organizations as the Center for Democratic Renewal and
the Coalition for Burned Churches. Newspaper clippings of church burnings
and hate crimes can be mailed to the Women’s Division, Office of Racial
Justice, 475 Riverside Dr. #1503, New York, NY 10115.
- Creating a forum for church members to come
together and share stories and issues around church burnings.
United Methodist Women has been a partner with
the Charleston, S.C.,-based National Coalition for Burned Churches since 1997.
In the past several years, the organization has been involved in data collection
around hate crimes and church burnings. It also helped fund the resource “When
Hate Groups Comes to Town,” published by the Center for Democratic Renewal.
*Martini is executive secretary of communications for the Women’s Division,
United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or
newsdesk@umcom.org.
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