By Karen Jacobs
ATLANTA (Reuters) – Rights groups on Friday urged U.S.
President George W. Bush to denounce church burnings and devote
more resources to curbing such attacks after a recent spate of
church fires in Alabama.
“The president has to say that it’s a national priority,
because then the resources will flow,” said Rose
Johnson-Mackey, program director for the National Coalition of
Burned Churches, a Charleston, South Carolina, group that helps
burned churches rebuild.
At a news conference in Atlanta, groups including the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference said national
attention to church burnings had waned since 1996, when
then-President Bill Clinton set up a task force devoted to
church fires that led to more arrests and prosecutions.
In 1996, 409 U.S. churches burned, the most during any year
tracked by the church coalition.
“Somewhere along the line, the resources that were
dedicated to stop church arsons in this country have been
scaled back,” said Dexter Wimbish, general counsel for the
Atlanta-based SCLC, which was co-founded by Martin Luther King
Jr.
“We send out a call again to rededicate resources,
reconvene the national church arson task force,” Wimbish said.
Speakers said the government’s response to recent burnings
of Alabama churches, in which scores of federal, state and
local officials are pursuing leads, should be a model for how
every U.S. church arson should be investigated.
Ten churches in southwest Alabama have been destroyed or
damaged since February 3. The FBI has said it was looking into
whether the blazes could be considered hate crimes under the
Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996.
“What you see in Alabama is a coordinated law enforcement
response,” Johnson-Mackey said. “What is happening there is
what should happen for every church that burns anywhere in the
United States.”
The coalition said its arson registry showed 1,507 churches
were burned in the United States from 1990 to 2000, with the
highest number of fires in Southern states such as Florida,
Alabama and South Carolina.
From 2000 to 2006, the group said it documented fires at
roughly 600 U.S. houses of worship.
The Rev. James Posey, pastor at Morning Star Missionary
Baptist Church in Boligee, Alabama, which burned to its
foundation on February 7, said his 30-member congregation hoped
to rebuild, even though it had no replacement insurance.
“It’s traumatic,” Posey said. “I’ve shed tears.”
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