Statistics show church fires not unusual

Associated Press

GREELEYVILLE, S.C.

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.

“Of course we thought about it. We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t,” he said, standing in the hot sun outside the church’s charred shell Wednesday. But Taylor also recalled the fierce lightning storm that blew through town about the time the fire began Tuesday night. “I really thought it probably was a lightning strike is what I thought.”

Preliminary indications suggest the Mount Zion fire was not the result of arson, according to a federal official who spoke with The Associated Press on 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. Investigators have determined that several were intentionally set, but have yet to announce any evidence of racial motives.

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.

Among these, arson was relatively rare: Just 16 percent of the estimated blazes at religious structures were intentionally set during the five-year period ending in 2011. That means arsonists set fire to roughly five each week.

Taylor, who is in his ninth year as the pastor of Mount Zion, said when he heard of the fire, he immediately recalled the blaze two decades ago, for which two KKK members served long prison sentences. Clinton himself came to dedicate the rebuilt church that burned down Tuesday night.

Speculation has run rampant on social media.

No one keeps an up-to-date tally of every church fire in the United States, making exact comparisons impossible. But 84 percent of these fires happen for reasons other than arson.