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Note #7682 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

Tinder mercies
03230
May 9, 2003

Tinder mercies

Presbyterian church scorched but undaunted after arson attack

by John Filiatreau

LOUISVILLE - The dreaded call came at the suitably alarming hour of 1 a.m. 
	
An alarm-company dispatcher told the Rev. Malcolm Laing that his First
Presbyterian Church was on fire.
	
Say hello to every pastor's nightmare.
	
Laing and his wife dashed to their 65-year-old church, where several
companies of firefighters - one from a station next-door to the church - were
corraling a smoky blaze centered in the office of associate pastor Janelle
Tibbetts. 
	
"We're just horrified," Jennifer Laing told reporters at the scene. "It just
sickens us all." 
	
Laing had feared for First church's newly renovated sanctuary, dedicated five
months ago. He whispered a prayer of thanks that it hadn't been seriously
damaged.
	
The news was not so good for Rev. Tibbetts, a 2000 graduate of Columbia
Seminary who is in charge of youth and family ministries at the 200-member
church on Balboa Boulevard. She lost her treasured theology library and a
host of other personal items (all insured but largely irreplaceable).
	
"Luckily it was pretty well confined to my office," she said later. "But my
office was completely gutted. ... Oddly, the one thing that was relatively
unscathed was a sample pack for our Vacation Bible School. I'm taking that as
a sign that God doesn't want the VBS canceled." 
	
No one was injured or killed. The building sustained an estimated $100,000
worth of damage. If its roof must be replaced, as expected, the toll will go
higher. 
	
Arson investigators and their fire-sniffing dogs soon deduced that someone
had set the fire, using gasoline or another "accelerant" and what
investigators called a "primitive ignition device."
	
The blaze proved to be the first of a series of arson fires in places of
worship in the San Fernando Valley, a section of metropolitan Los Angeles.
	
On April 28, a blaze was set in the vestibule of a Baha'i community center on
Genesta Avenue, one block away from First Presbyterian, causing more than
$10,000 in damage. The next day a fire of suspicious origin damaged the roof
of a predominantly Iranian synagogue on Ventura Boulevard. Then, just after
dawn on May 7, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through a stained-glass window
at Valley Beth Shalom, a synagogue also on Ventura Boulevard; the ensuing
fire was put out by the facility's sprinkler system.
	
No one has been hurt in any of the fires.
	
Local officials this week classified the spate of four arson fires in 11 days
as hate crimes and offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to
arrests. 
	
"These are acts of terrorism," said Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn. "They're
acts of hatred. And they tear at the very fabric of our community."
	
Hahn said the fires are "more than just crimes," adding: "People have come
here because maybe they faced persecution in other countries for practicing
their faith. So this is something we can't tolerate here."
	
The arson cases were assigned to Los Angeles' House of Worship Task Force, a
local/federal group formed in 1996 after attacks on several places of
worship. They will be assisted by 65 detectives from the antiterrorism unit
of the Encino Police Department.
	
Earlier this week, Tibbetts said, "We haven't seen so many police officers on
patrol since ... Ever."
	
Fire Chief William Bamattre said he suspects that the fires, all within a
mile or two of each other, were the work of one person.
	
Tibbetts said First church, a redevelopment congregation, hadn't received any
threats or had any trouble in recent months.
	
"That's one of the odd things; we didn't have anything," she said. "We didn't
know at first whether this was aimed at me specifically, or the church, or
the denomination. We didn't know what to think. ... At first, we thought it
was an isolated incident."
	
She said an event of this kind inevitably has a chilling effect.
	
"We have people coming in, asking for help, and we have an obligation to show
them hospitality," she said. "But after something like this happens,
everything is suspect. It's hard to not suspect everything and everybody. You
don't know how to stay true to hospitality and still protect yourself."
	
Tibbetts told reporters earlier in the week: "It just seems surreal that
someone would pick all of these different places of faith and do something
like this. It could be someone who's just angry at God in any form, or
religion in any form. There's just no way of knowing."
	
Tibbetts said other Presbyterian churches in the Los Angeles area have come
forward with offers of prayer and monetary support for First church, which
was founded in the 1940s in a barn owned by the actor Edward Everett Horton.
	
She said she has been buoyed by the support of her own congregation. "We
pastors think we have to be the strong folks," she said, "but it's incredible
how this congregation has ministered to me."

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