False Alarm

The National Council of Churches, the nation’s largest ecumenical agency, has claimed that a recent trend of black church tires was a “national disaster” orchestrated by “white-supremacist groups.” Through press conferences and the media coverage that followed the Council’s meeting with President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno, its incendiary charges of racism have spread like wild-fire, fueled locally by church arsons in Greenville, Garland and Sanger.

The hysteria has been revealed as hype, a crisis made with smoke and mirrors.

“We have not seen any racially motivated arsons in the Dallas area,” says Steve Steele, spokesman for the Dallas Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

In Greenville, the ATF charged an 18-year-old African-American who confessed to arson of the church as well as vacant houses. In Garland, the party responsible was a spurned lover and a member of the church whose pastor advised him to concede his romantic relationship. And in Sanger, it turns out the blaze was set as a cover-up for a burglary.

The recent burning of a black church in Wichita Falls threatI ens to rekindle (he NCC-inspired racism charges and hate-crime cries that were politically in vogue last year.

The NCC has been like the little boy who not only cries wolf but also goes so far as to blame the townspeople for the wolfs carniverous chomp.

Referring to numbers supplied by the Center for Democratic Renewal, a group once known as “Klanwatch,” NCC officials reported 75 arsons and vandalism attacks against black and multiracial churches from January 1995 through July 1996. The Council claimed this figure is more than double the number of attacks than in the previous five years combined.

But according to the National Fire Protection Association, an estimated 600 churches burn down every year. Because one fifth of the nation’s churches have predominantly black congregations, probability and percentages dictate 120 black church arsons each year.

The racism charges have tapped into the wealthy reservoir of charity and guilt in America. The NCC has raised more than $10 million to rebuild the churches, the leftovers allotted for “program advocacy.”

“The NCC has exaggerated this phenomenon in order to get support for a political agenda that has nothing to do with racism.” says Diane Knippers, president of the Institute on Religion & Democracy, a conservative, Washington-based watchdog group.