[lbo-talk] Has Fed Govt. rebuilt churches?

[John Thornton]

There are always church fires and IIRC about half of all church fires 
are arson. However most arsons are suspected of being insurance fraud.
There has however been a noticeable increase in Black owned churches 
being burned by arsonists where no insurance fraud is suspected.
IIRC I read this about 10 years ago. The rate of Black churches in the 
south being deliberately burning increased more than two and one-half 
times their previous annual average.
Several years ago the FBI looked into the matter to see if there was a 
large scale organized effort to do this but concluded there was none.
A federal loan guarantee program went into effect in the 1990's to deal 
with this issue when it first started.

John Thornton

Chris Doss wrote:
> Black churches being deliberately burned recently? You mean arson? I never heard of this.
>
> --- On Fri, 2/13/09, John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
>   
>> From: John Thornton <jthorn65 at sbcglobal.net>
>> Subject: [lbo-talk] Has Fed Govt. rebuilt churches?
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Friday, February 13, 2009, 12:42 PM
>> Can anyone here tell me if the Federal Govt. has provided
>> funds to rebuild churches that were burned down?
>> I know there was some discussion that rebuilding churches
>> destroyed by Katrina might be allowable if they served as an
>> areas only community center but I'm unsure whether this
>> was ever done.
>> What I was curious about was whether, because of the
>> several years long increase in black churches being
>> deliberately burned, has the federal Govt. paid to have any
>> of them rebuilt?
>> I don't seem to be able to find a definitive answer but
>> admittedly I haven't exhausted myself looking.
>>
>> John Thornton