Published: Auugust 15, 2002
Roundtable Forum to be Held to Discuss the Burning and Bombings of America's Places of Worship as Acts of Domestic Terror: National Church Burning Registry Released
On Thursday, August 8th, the National Coalition for Burned Churches and Community Empowerment (NCBC) held a Roundtable Discussion on the Burnings and Bombings of America 's Places of Worship. The forum was held at the Charleston County Library, 68 Calhoun Street, Meeting Room B. The purpose of this gathering is to discuss the burnings and bombings of places of worship as acts of domestic terror and to develop effective public policy strategies to address this on going state and national problem. Several local, state and federal officials have been invited to participate in the discussion.
Established in October 1997, the National Coalition is a non profit multiracial, interdenominational coalition of victims/survivors whose places of worship have been burned or firebombed. In 1998, NCBC established a Church Burning Research Center to serve as a clearinghouse for the collection, documentation and analysis of church burning activity nationwide. Today, NCBC continues to conduct field investigations of burned churches, monitor activity state-to-state and examine emerging and existing trends. Our objective is to publish a timely, up to date and accurate registry of church burning and bombing incidents in three year time spans, and make that information more accessible to the public.
As part of the forum discussion, NCBC will release The Burnings and Bombings America 's Places of Worship: A National Registry. The registry was created to keep an accurate and up to date record of church arsons, bombings, attempted arsons, and suspicious or undetermined fires nationwide.
The Burnings and Bombings of America 's Places of Worship: A National Registry is published annually by NCBC as one method of documenting activity. Information contained in this registry is analyzed by month, year, state and race. Numbers are based only on available data reflecting less than 20% of church burning and bombing activity nationwide, due to the underreporting of data by many local fire departments. The results are as follows:
Over the three year period 1999 2001, the NCBC Church Burning Research Center has documented approximately 685 arsons, bombings, attempted arsons, suspicious or undetermined fires. Of that number there were 452 arsons, 36 bombings, and 51 incidents where there were attempts to commit arson that were unsuccessful. During this same period 146 fires were ruled suspicious or undetermined with no further action taken by law enforcement agencies to pursue investigative leads. The total number of incidents by year in all categories (arson, bombing, attempted arson, and suspicious or undetermined fires) are 1999 (254); 2000 (220); 2001 (211).
The NCBC Church Burning Research Center data revealed that arsons, bombings, attempted arsons, suspicious or undetermined fires by month continued nationwide at a rate of 40 80 per month. The months of March (80); February and June (61); January, and July (60) reflect the highest numbers during this reporting period.
Burnings and bombings of America's places of worship are highly concentrated in the south and southwest. The next significant geographic concentration of activity is in several mid western states, California and New York. The top ten states reporting the highest number of incidents during this reporting period are: Texas (125); Florida (52); Georgia (38); South Carolina (36); California (33); Mississippi (32); Louisiana (24); North Carolina (23); Illinois and Ohio (21). States reporting the highest incidents of bombing activity are Florida, Nevada, Texas, and California.
The NCBC church burning research center documents incidents at places of worship of different racial groups nationwide. Racial/ethnic/national origin congregations, including but not limited to African American (167), Caucasian (303), Multiracial (62), Hispanic (22), Muslim (9), and Jewish (24), have been impacted across the country.
According to Rev. Terrance G. Mackey Sr., President and executive director, "With every opportunity we will encourage the public to engage in dialogue about this issue. As a nation of people of good will, we must redirect our focus on this issue with a new sense of urgency. With new energy and new determination... we must send a clear message to the purveyors of hate who seek to destroy our centers of peace, hope and sanctuary, that in the United States of America it is not acceptable to terrorize communities and desecrate places of worship."
The outcome of the discussion will lead to the creation of a community based Church Burning Domestic Terrorism Task Force with representatives from the states with the highest concentrations of church burnings. The responsibility of the Task Forced will be to monitor and study the problem state by state, respond to the concerns of victims and make recommendations to President Bush, as well as other elected officials about ways to prevent future attacks against congregations. Roundtable discussions will be held in other cities across the nation in the coming months.
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