Although arson is blamed for at least three fires in June at several predominantly black churches in Southern states, investigators say a blaze that destroyed Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina was not deliberately set. Churchgoers had feared the worst because the church in Greeleyville, S.C., was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan in 1995. The latest fire broke out on June 29 during a night of frequent storms and lightning strikes. Federal investigators are looking into some of the cases as possible hate crimes. The timing of recent fires in Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina and South Carolina, coming in the wake of the shooting at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston on June 17, could be a cause for concern, said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. They may be retaliation for the backlash against the Confederate flag that followed the shootings, he said.
Churches Burning
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
In this episode of Inside the Vatican, Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell discuss the 2025 Jubilee Year, beginning on Christmas Eve 2024 and ending in January 2026.
Pope Francis prayed that the Jubilee Year may become “a season of hope” and reconciliation in a world at war and suffering humanitarian crises as he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve.
‘If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!’
Inspired by his friend and mentor Henri Nouwen, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., invites listeners in his Christmas Eve homily to approach the manger with renewed awe and openness.