As Sc Fire Investigated, Stats Show Church Fires Not Unusual

By BRUCE SMITH and RAY HENRY, Associated Press, San Francisco Chronicle
Wed, 07/01/2015 - 3:55pm

GREELEYVILLE, S.C. (AP) — The Rev. John Taylor feared the worst when he learned his church was on fire, only days after a mass shooting at a black church in Charleston prompted Southern leaders to call for removing Confederate flags. The Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church was burned to the ground by the Ku Klux Klan in 1995, one of many arsons at black churches that prompted President Bill Clinton to create a federal task force that led to hundreds of arrests. Preliminary indications suggest the Mount Zion fire was not the result of arson, according to a federal official who spoke with The Associated Press Wednesday on condition of anonymity, for lack of authority to discuss the case publicly. More than a half-dozen fires at black churches have burned in the days since a white gunman was charged with murder in the shootings of nine black churchgoers in Charleston. According to the best available national statistics, if these have been the only church fires happening recently, this would be a relatively safe time. An average of 31 houses of worship burned every week from 2007 through 2011, according to a 2013 estimate by the National Fire Protection Association, which analyzed government data and survey results. Was someone looking to make a statement after President Barack Obama called for an honest accounting of America's racial history during his eulogy in Charleston on Friday? The Clinton task force found whites represented 63 percent of the people arrested for bombing or burning black churches in the late 1990s, but 37 percent were black.

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