String of fires at black churches ignites fears of hate crimes.. Update: New church burning in SC...
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http://www.kansascity.com/news/article25747114.html
String of fires at black churches ignites fears of hate crimes
A string of fires last week at predominantly black churches in the South has attracted authorities’ attention and is raising concerns over whether racially motivated violence targeting religious property is ramping up.
From Sunday through Friday, fires destroyed or caused extensive damage to churches in Tennessee, Georgia, North and South Carolina and Florida. Three have been determined to be arsons, and the others remain under investigation.
“It’s something that needs to come to public light,” said Shawn Alexander, associate professor of African and African-American studies at the University of Kansas. “We should be concerned. It’s activity that is on the rise.
“These may not be isolated incidents. But even if they’re not connected, there’s a sentiment out there that we need to understand.”
African-American churches are pillars of the community, education centers and places of solace, he said.
“That’s why they’ve been targeted,” he said.
The recent fires, all occurring at night or before dawn, came just days after a gunman opened fire June 17 on a Bible study group at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., killing nine. The suspect charged in the shootings, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, appears to have white supremacist leanings and had posed in recent photographs with a Confederate battle flag.
The massacre prompted calls for the state of South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the capitol grounds in Columbia. Last week, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley urged lawmakers to pass legislation to do just that.
Four days after the shootings, someone set hay bales ablaze outside College Hill Seventh-Day Adventist, a predominantly black church in Knoxville, Tenn. A fire official said bags of dirt and hay bales were left burning outside the church door. The blaze also seriously damaged a church van. Police said the fire appeared to be an act of vandalism. It remains under investigation.
Two days later, on June 23, an early morning fire damaged ? ’s Power Church of Christ in Macon, Ga. Fire investigators said they believed the fire was intentionally set about 4 a.m. The blaze destroyed much of the building.
On June 24, last Wednesday, a fire severely damaged the Briar Creek Road Baptist Church in Charlotte, N.C. Authorities said the fire was deliberately set, and they are attempting to determine whether it was a hate crime. More than 75 firefighters responded to the blaze, which was reported shortly before 1 a.m. and caused more than a quarter million dollars of damage. Two firefighters received treatment for heat-related injuries.
On Friday, a fire broke out at Glover Grove Baptist Church in Warrenville, S.C. Fire crews responded about 3:30 a.m., but couldn’t save the building. The cause remains under investigation.
Two other fires last week are not believed to be arson, although it hasn’t been ruled out.
Authorities said a June 23 fire that destroyed Fruitland Presbyterian in Fruitland, Tenn., was likely caused by a lightning strike. And an early morning fire Friday that destroyed the Greater Miracle Temple Apostolic Holiness Church in Tallahassee, Fla. may have started when a tree limb fell on an electrical line.
Other arsons have been committed at black churches in recent months, including in November, when someone set fire to the children’s area of The Flood Christian Church in Ferguson, Mo. The church, which was regularly attended by Michael Brown Sr. — the father of the unarmed black teen shot to death last year by Officer Darren Wilson — was a total loss. The fire occurred during the violence that erupted when residents learned that Wilson would be not charged by a state grand jury.
A series of stories earlier this year included church fires as a form of domestic terrorism.
In 2008, hours after Barack Obama was elected president, three white men torched the newly constructed Macedonia Church of ? in Christ in Springfield, Mass., in protest, burning it to the ground. According to the Justice Department, the men had agreed “to retaliate against the election by burning the new church because the church members, congregation and Bishop were African-American.”
And in December 2010, a white man torched the Faith in Christ Church in Crane, Texas, in what prosecutors said was an attempt to gain credibility with the ? Brotherhood, a white supremacist prison gang. The man admitted that he was hoping to ? a disabled black man he thought lived at a shelter in the church.
Attacks on black churches were common during the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The most widely known was the 1963 Sunday morning bombing at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four girls. The activity picked up again in the South in the early 1990s, prompting President Clinton to form the National Church Arson Task Force in 1996 to investigate church arsons and ease the burden of local law enforcement.
That same year, Congress passed the Church Arson Prevention Act, making it easier to prosecute those who commit racially motivated arsons at churches.
Figures on arsons at African-American churches are difficult to come by. Federal agencies compile data on arsons against all religious institutions, but don’t break the churches down by race.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives referred The Star to the FBI’s annual hate crime statistics, which include data on hate crimes against religious institutions. Its 2013 report says religious institutions were the targets of nine arsons that were deemed hate crimes that year.
The National Fire Protection Association, a nonprofit trade organization, keeps detailed figures on church arsons but also doesn’t break the churches down by race. A report issued in 2013 says that from 2007 to 2011, there were an average 280 fires each year that were intentionally set on religious properties and at funeral parlors, resulting in three injuries and $28 million in damage. The report doesn’t address whether the fires were racially motivated.
Tracking church arsons isn’t as easy as it used to be, said Marty Ahrens, who analyzes data for the National Fire Protection Association.
A system implemented in 1999 changed the rules and coding procedures, making it more difficult to compare the old and new data, she said. And you can’t simply conduct a search for arsons at black churches.
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “Sometimes you get the info on whether it’s racially motivated; sometimes you don’t. One of the challenges is that jurisdiction A reports things one way and jurisdiction B does things a little bit different.”
Though people tend to assume that most arson at black churches is racially motivated, that’s not the case, Ahrens said.
“You have a fair number of, for want of a better term, stupid kids, there was one where the pastor had been embezzling, there’s a fair number of burglaries,” she said. “Churches have a lot of emotional weight, and so that may appeal to a certain type of person.”
Comments
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Mideast Hate or Plain ol' American Terrorism?
We'll be back right after these messages. -
But let one muslim say somethin about murica it's on cnn, fox, msnbc everywhere. Sad I gotta hear this from my IC family
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America ain't gone do ? about this until they start burning ? churches.
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When the true and living ? is rejected in a land one only needs to look at HISTORY to see the end result. Outside of the nation of ISRAEL, no other nation on planet earth has ever received as much light as the United States of America. Therefore we can look at how ? judged Israel in order to see how ? will judge America. Amen.
"They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.
8They said in their hearts, Let us destroy them together: they have burned up all the synagogues of ? in the land.
9We see not our signs: there is no more any prophet: neither is there among us any that knoweth how long.
Psalm 74:7-9
(Soon verse 9 will be fulfilled, because there are still signs and the time is short)
Amen. -
Pastors might wanna start having the congregation meet them in the strip club... Seems to be safer there these days.
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Back when the Baltimore riots were happening and that old folks home that was under construction by the church got set on fire…
Something always seemed fishy about that to me..it happened on the opposite side of town where all the rioting was going on. I wouldn't be surprised if some white people did that under the cover of what was going on and people lumped it in with the riots. -
This ? and Israel... smh
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A string of fires last week at predominantly black churches in the South has attracted authorities’ attention and is raising concerns over whether racially motivated violence targeting religious property is ramping up.
lol @ still wondering if this is "ramping up"...... -
Israel has ties with Babylon..DoUwant2go2Heaven? wrote: »
How am im suppose 2 retreat 2 Israel, when they break bread with Babylon???
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Bulletproof Wallets wrote: »America ain't gone do ? about this until they start burning ? churches.
When this was happening in the 90s, Bill Clinton changed the laws so that Arson is now an automatic 10 years w/ no parole and if its a racial or a religious building its a Federal crime.
Ya'll ? ? me with this "we jealous of the ? " ? lol. Like you a little kid jealous of the new baby mommy got from the stork lol.
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That's the one thing I hate about ? man. So scared to actually mobilize and make a change.
*waits for the drop -
I wish there was a mechanism of retaliation. For example if a black church was burned down a black militia starts ? ? and white supreamcist groups. The leader of the council of conservative citizens is still alive. That man needs to die because he has blood in his hands after what happened in Charleston. In stead of killing each we could go Mossad style on these white supremacist group leaders.
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PapaDoc223 wrote: »I wish there was a mechanism of retaliation. For example if a black church was burned down a black militia starts ? ? and white supreamcist groups. The leader of the council of conservative citizens is still alive. That man needs to die because he has blood in his hands after what happened in Charleston. In stead of killing each we could go Mossad style on these white supremacist group leaders.
I just wish that would actually happen. I would definitely join the cause if approached or was advertised somewhere -
We need a Black Christian militia like how Al Kidah and ISIS got
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These white supremacist are not playing
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That's why we gotta fight fire with fire. Literally
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Israel has ties with Babylon..DoUwant2go2Heaven? wrote: »
How am im suppose 2 retreat 2 Israel, when they break bread with Babylon???
You go to Israel, more specifically Jerusalem, because that is what the prophets tell us to do. And if you read the prophets, you will know that ALL nations will turn their back on Israel, including BABYLON!
^See Zechariah 12:1-9
That is why ? will intervene in a super-natural way on the day of sudden destruction in order to defeat the Gog and Magog coalition that will try to wipe Israel off the map.
^You can reference Ezekiel 38-39
Now if you are a student, you would study. Amen. -
We need a Black Christian militia like how Al Kidah and ISIS got
Those who use the sword will die by the sword.
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Someone ban this troll
http://biblehub.com/luke/22-36.htm -
Ajackson17 wrote: »Someone ban this troll
http://biblehub.com/luke/22-36.htm
There is a difference between "living by the sword" and having one for protection. -
Smh. What we are currently witnessing is a race war between white supremacist & african americans, but the world is too distracted to read between the lines. Since we KNOW white supremacist have infiltrated the police, upper levels of government & media, they can disguise themselves and at the same time control the narrative. The american ppl are too distracted (? marriage, hip hop, YouTube clips) to see this. I can't believe black churches are burning and all we're seeing on BLACK award shows is ? ? 's celebrating ? marriage smh. Black ? 's get more attention than black churches??? ? is lost these days
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Judge_Judah wrote: »Ajackson17 wrote: »Someone ban this troll
http://biblehub.com/luke/22-36.htm
There is a difference between "living by the sword" and having one for protection.
This is for protection of our lives and our children's lives. -
blackamerica wrote: »Smh. What we are currently witnessing is a race war between white supremacist & african americans, but the world is too distracted to read between the lines. Since we KNOW white supremacist have infiltrated the police, upper levels of government & media, they can disguise themselves and at the same time control the narrative. The american ppl are too distracted (? marriage, hip hop, YouTube clips) to see this. I can't believe black churches are burning and all we're seeing on BLACK award shows is ? ? 's celebrating ? marriage smh. Black ? 's get more attention than black churches??? ? is lost these days
Luke 21...
Its just our turn to be involved in what our brothers abroad have been going through. The spell on this land couldn't last forever.... -
Ajackson17 wrote: »Judge_Judah wrote: »Ajackson17 wrote: »Someone ban this troll
http://biblehub.com/luke/22-36.htm
There is a difference between "living by the sword" and having one for protection.
This is for protection of our lives and our children's lives.
You protect your life and your children's lives by obeying ? . Any other way than obedience to ? will not work. Do you not see what is going on in the world? The evil is getting worse. There is no stopping what is coming to America. It's a done deal. Our only hope is trust in the Savior. And if you die in Him, you will still live! Hallelujah! But if you die without Him, you will hop out of 1 fire right into another fire. Please be wise my friend, stop listening to your own wisdom. You will fail if you trust in self and not ? . Amen.
