When an arsonist targets a religious institution,the perpetrator wants it to serve as a symbol.
The Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Opelousas, Louisiana was set on fire along with two other nearby churches in the span of a week. Houses of worship are increasingly being targeted. By Marisa Iati Marisa Iati Email Bio Follow May 22 at 5:45 PM The first fire lit up the shingles of the rabbi’s home, forcing him and his family into their car for safety. Less than a week later, another blaze broke out there. Then it happened once more — this time at another rabbi’s residence, 13 miles away.
The blazes in Arlington and Needham, Mass., follow arsons at mosques in New Haven and Southern California, three predominantly black churches in Louisiana, and a mostly Hispanic Pentecostal church in Pennsylvania. For members of those houses of worship, the intended messages were clear: intimidation, hate and marginalization, said Jamie Aten, executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College.
The Massachusetts fires began the night of May 11, police said, when the rabbi of Chabad Center for Jewish Life of Arlington-Belmont and his family smelled smoke and heard the fire alarm. Needham police said the fire was being investigated as a “possible hate crime.” They said they did not know for sure whether it was connected to the blazes in Arlington.
“Because of the echo chambers that people are living in, whatever a person’s driving hate toward another group, there’s more opportunity for that to be amplified and intensified,” Aten said.Reported hate crimes in the United States increased 17 percent in 2017, according to the FBI, bringing the number of incidents to 7,175. Arsons made up a fraction of total hate crimes, with just 42 incidents that year. Hate crimes aimed at Jews, meanwhile, rose 37 percent.
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