Jupiter, FL (September 30, 2008) - Dr. Christopher Strain, associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University’s Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, sees a defining moment in one of the most controversial events of the late twentieth century. His recently published second book, Burning the Faith: Church Arson in the American South (University Press of Florida), explores the wave of arsons that afflicted American churches throughout the 1990s, as well as the many disputes about their cause.

As Strain reveals, much of the debate about these incidents centered on their sheer frequency. “Churches have always been relatively easy targets for arsonists because they are usually unoccupied during the week and are often located at the end of lonely, dirt roads. Many skeptics claimed that these fires weren’t racially inspired even though there was a noticeable spike in the fires at black churches.”

Attempts to solve the mystery of these fires became increasingly controversial because of their resemblance to hate crimes that occurred during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. “There was a tremendous amount of racial strife below the surface of American life. By the early 1990s, people had become blind to much of this tension. But when the church arsons started to be reported, people began talking about these issues. The fires initiated a frank dialogue about race and the place of race in the United States that had rarely existed before.”

Strain notes that, contrary to popular belief, the church arsons of the 1990s were not just a southern phenomenon. They occurred all over the country, including in California. As interest in the fires grew, Strain was a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, pursuing a degree in history and American studies. The national news coverage about the arsons piqued Strain’s interest, so he began keeping newspaper clippings about the events. Around 2006, he decided to go back and look more closely at critical perspectives in order to determine what had actually happened, not in the arsons themselves, but in the national reaction to the fires.

While conducting his research, Christopher Strain engaged in a series of interviews and examined primary sources. In Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, he interviewed fire chiefs, law enforcement personnel, sheriffs, and police chiefs that were involved in investigating these fires. He also interviewed pastors, their families, and people in the community. Dr. Strain researched newspapers and media coverage that appeared on the Internet as well as engaging in some investigative journalism. Strain noted that, as the church fires were occurring, news reporting on the Internet was just coming into its own. “In certain ways, the American church arsons were the first major even where the Internet was a significant historical record. I hope that people are able to learn from this book and that community leaders, activists, policy makers, and other people are able to make use of it for the better.”

byline: Tamara Howard