wfn.org | PASTORS PUSH ISSUE OF BURNED BLACK CHURCHES IN WASHINGTON

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TITLE:PASTORS PUSH ISSUE OF BURNED BLACK 
June 26, 1996
Episcopal News Service
James Solheim, Director
(212) 922-5385
ens@ecunet.org

96-1496
PASTORS PUSH ISSUE OF BURNED BLACK CHURCHES IN WASHINGTON MEETING

BY NAN COBBEY
           (ENS) Thirty-eight pastors of burned black churches gathered in
Washington D.C. last month to wake up their nation.
           They told stories of loss and intimidation, of terrorism plaguing
their communities. They spoke of anger and frustration at the
ways investigations are being conducted.
           Accompanied by advocates from a coalition of religious and justice
organizations, including Diane Porter, the Episcopal Church's
senior executive for program, the pastors met with Attorney General Janet
Reno, Deval Patrick, her assistant for civil rights, and Treasury
Secretary Robert Rubin, who oversees the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and
Firearms (ATF). The ATF and the FBI have been investigating
the church burnings.
           The pastors also met the media. Journalists from major city
newspapers, news magazines and television networks squeezed into
the briefing room at the National Press Club to hear them. Within hours their
reports of fear, death threats and broken-hearted
congregations were being carried to viewers and readers across the country.

NUMBER OF BURNED CHURCHES VARIES
           The reported number of churches damaged or destroyed by fire
varies, but any of the totals represents a scandalous situation, the
pastors said. At the very least, more than three dozen black churches have
been burned or firebombed since 1995, and most organizations
put the figure even higher. 
           Porter, who led an eight-member investigating team from the
National Council of Churches of Christ (NCC) that traveled through
Alabama this spring, attended the meetings with Reno and Rubin. Most moving
for her, she said, "was seeing these pastors who were
unhappy with how they had been treated by their government sitting down with
people at the highest levels and being heard."
           Porter added, "I know that Secretary Rubin clearly got the message,
and we were able to sensitize people in the FBI and ATF."
Porter said she hopes that new sensitivity will spread to local agents as
well.

VICTIMS TARGETED IN INVESTIGATIONS
           In private meetings with Reno and Rubin, many of the pastors said
they couldn't believe the congregations of white churches or
synagogues would be treated the way they were by investigators, with insulting
questions, harsh interrogations of church members,
subpoenaed records, and demands for polygraph tests. One pastor said his
17-year-old daughter was called out of her high school classroom
for questions that drove her to tears.
           More than 200 members of Inner City Baptist Church in Knoxville,
Tennessee, have been questioned, according to the Rev.
Reggie White, assistant pastor. "It has gone too far," said White, a defensive
lineman for the Green Bay Packers.

SUSPICION RESTS ON WHITE SUPREMACISTS
           "We are clearly asking ... demanding, that the ATF and the FBI turn
these investigations squarely in the direction of white-
supremacist groups," said the Rev. Mac Charles Jones, NCC associate director
for racial justice and pastor of St. Stephen's Baptist Church
in Kansas City, Missouri. "We know that in every single state there are
operative white-supremacist groups."
           The report released by the Atlanta-based Center for Democratic
Renewal documents 147 such groups in the states where most of
the burnings have occurred.
           Jones brought up another concern of the investigating team: the
federal agents' seeming willingness to expect black churches to
provide their own security.
           "We cannot place the onus of protection and prevention on these
churches ... If you do that you create a war," said Jones. "What
that means is I'm going to sit out in front of my church with a gun ... Given
the climate in this country it will be a tinderbox. This country
will explode."
           The Rev. Terence Mackey, pastor of Mount Zion AME Church in
Greeleyville, South Carolina, the church President Bill Clinton
visited in June, reinforced that warning.
           If the burnings continue, he said, "The time is going to come when
lives start being lost ... [Church members] are going to want
to protect what they love and black folks love their preachers. They are going
to protect their pastors no matter what the cost."
           "We want law-enforcement folk to figure out the strategies of how
they are going to protect our churches," said Jones. "It's our
money that is paying their salaries. We have a right to make that demand. If
it means National Guard, so be it. If it means declaring a state
of emergency, so be it. It has to be done."

CHURCHES BURNED FOR LAND?
           The CDR's report describes what it calls "questionable
investigations" and suggests that many of the arsons may have been
motivated by a desire to acquire valuable church land. Some of the churches in
small towns or rural areas have been in the same place on
the same land for years. As towns have grown up around them, the land has
become valuable to local residents.         
           "Some church members feel that the arsons are a deliberate attempt
to frighten church families into moving from the land and
selling off their heritage," says the report.
           Before Mount Zion AME in Greeleyville burned in 1995, church
leaders had been approached by individuals in the community
interested in the sale or swap of their land. Falling Meadows Baptist Church
in West Point, Miss., received repeated offers for its site--
prime land directly across from a public school on a major highway--before it
burned on March 10.

GRACE UNDER FIRE
           Despite their loss and grief, the pastors gathered in Washington
showed an amazing grace. The Rev. Daniel Donaldson, for
instance, stood before his colleagues and a balcony full of TV cameras and
said on behalf of all the congregations: "They hurt. It's a hurt
that reaches deep down within your soul." Yet he also spoke of forgiveness for
those who hate. "If they cannot see us with a forgiving
spirit, where in the world will they find it?"
           Reggie White appealed to the nation, especially prominent black
athletes and entertainers: "I make an appeal to the Bill Cosbys of
the world, to the Michael Jordans ... the Oprah Winfreys ... the Denzel
Washingtons: Your community is being terrorized and your
community needs you.
           "I make an appeal to the churches all across America, the wealthy
churches, both black and white ... to the Christian
[broadcasting] stations: Call out to the country, have telethons and raise
money to rebuild these churches. 
           White added, "I make an appeal, finally, to America, to people of
all ethnic backgrounds: America, don't tolerate this."

--NAN COBBEY IS FEATURES EDITOR FOR EPISCOPAL LIFE, THE NATIONAL NEWSPAPER OF
THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH.