The (now former) pastor of Blue Ridge Baptist Church in Belton, South Carolina has been charged with setting fire to his own church:
[T]hey have “no idea” what the motive could have been.
Daniels reported the fire at 9:20 a.m., before anyone else had arrived at the church, Gibson said.
The church had been painted with gang-like graffiti a few months ago, and about half of the congregation — 25 or so people, mostly elderly women — left the congregation after that, said deacon Bill Davenport.
He said he was surprised and disappointed that his pastor was arrested. “What little I knew about him, he was a good preacher,” Davenport said. “He was getting better every service.”
Daniels had been the pastor there for about a year, and it was his first preaching job, Davenport said. Daniels also was a teacher at a Christian school, Davenport said.
Daniels was being held in the Anderson County Detention Center on a $25,000 surety bond, according to Cpl. Chris Burton at the jail.
I can’t imagine why he would have done that, unless he was hoping to get money from the insurance company.
Frustration, maybe? It sounds like the church was dying, having lost half of it’s (already small) membership.
Burn it to the ground and start again.
Follow the money. The televangelists do.
he was making a burnt offering unto the lord?
The minister at a church I used to go to ripped out some of the woodwork above the pulpit because a visiting preacher told him it was masonic imagery and the church would never grow while it was there. It was a pity, it was interesting gothic carving in an otherwise bland building, and they replaced it with a tacky plywood sign.
It’s a far cry from burning the church to the ground, but maybe he was acting under the influence of
the voices in his head, uh, God. It’s possible he would consider that the place had been desecrated, and the community would not prosper until it had been purified.One of the biggest dangers of religious faith is that when people finally realize that their entire belief structure is full of shit and lose their faith, many go through a transition period where they’re rather angry and dangerous. Having reality crush your world view is a highly traumatic experience, which is why people develop such extreme defense measures against admitting reality. It’s also why people shouldn’t start avoiding reality in the first place.
My guess is that that’s what happened here. Frankly, I’m surprised we don’t get more stories about pastors who lose their faith resorting to arson against their churches. It’s a very human reaction.
Could be a financial motive – especially if he was finding it difficult to come up with the money to repair the church. Or if he wanted to move the church to some other part of town because of the vandalism. Torch the church, collect the insurance money, and then build a brand new church somewhere else – that would be a fairly standard insurance fraud scheme.
Bring the community together by creating an imaginary outside threat?
What a moron…
Arson has to be one of the easiest crimes to get away with…
*facepalm*
He obviously wasn’t a real Christian. Real Christians don’t do that.
To me, the easiest explanation is simply that the man was batshit crazy. There’s a lot of that going around both inside and outside religious circles.
My guess would be that he planned to blame “atheist terrorists”, claim oppression and the faith being under attack, and leverage that to draw new followers.
Check the comments on that news article — even granting a reasonable credibility discount, it sounds like the guy has a History.
This reminds me of the episode of The Simpsons where Ralph Wiggum has the imaginary leprechaun friend.
Moral of the story: don’t have imaginary friends.
My guess is either “God told him” or he finally realized all his life & work was most likely bull.
Perhaps he realised that there isn’t any historical evidence whatsoever for the existence of Jesus? Outside of the New Testament (writtten c. 150 to 200 AD, six or seven generations after 1AD by the life expectancy at the time), he’s not mentioned in any historical texts at all (well, one, but it was proven fake centuries ago).
One of the commenters on the news story said that he knew the pastor and that he was a crack-head (hearsay, I admit!) But it sounds to me like he doesn’t have very good coping skills (if he did in fact turn to drugs earlier in his life).
Cold hard fact about religion: it won’t necessarily help you cope with your problems any better than drugs. Religious ecstasy is just one more drug! Duh.
Here’s an idea. All Church leaders should set fire to their church as an act of faith. Surely god would not let ALL of them burn down. If they have faith, why not try it?
I am waiting for his confession the court verdict.
True story. My dad is a retired pentecostal minister. When I was a kid he transferred to a different church where he inherited a Children’s Ministry Pastor. Before we came, a fire broke out at night in the Sunday School building and ‘miraculously’ this assistant pastor was johnny on the spot to call the fire department and save the day. Praise the Lord!
The assistant moved on to another church and caught another night time fire just in time. He moved on and did the same in a third church. As far as I know nobody ever turned him in. My parents didn’t.
He was obviously troubled. In our circle, however, if confronted at all he was more apt to have the demon of fire starting cast out of him.
My guess is that he was trying to play into the “persecuted majority” meme. Martyrdom being such a sweet gig and all.
Could be.
If you read between the lines there it sounds like he wasn’t particularly good at his job either; Preachers who are good at what they do have on days and off days, but this guy “…was getting better every service.” It’s also pretty weird that a deacon doesn’t know the preacher well or have all that much contact with him in a congregation of 25. “”What little I knew about him…” and “What dealings I had with him, I liked him…”
Granted I’ve never been a Baptist, so perhaps things are different there, but that would be very strange in the churches that I used to belong to.
Not even if they “love” you? And hug you? And cuddle you? And name you George?
Even better is the episode where the whole town joins the Movementarians and Reverend Lovejoy is pouring gas in the church and says “I never thought I’d be doing this again”.
LOL…
Not meaty enough.
Which always made me wonder: what would God need with a burnt offering? What’s killing a goat or a sheep really doing for the All-Father, creator of the frakkin’ Univers? Of course, I somehow short-circuited my own brain when it came to “giving God” money (seriously, the fuck is HE gonna do with MY hard-earned cash?) and (usually grudgingly) gave nearly ten percent of my paycheck to the church.
…which irresistibly reminds me of the line from (the otherwise forgettable) Star Trek V: “Excuse me, but why does God need a fucking starship?”
It’s the same reason he wants you to fast, abstain from sex, flagellate yourself, and tithe: it proves you want him to stick around and it strokes his ego.
god wants a specific type of fire – or else.
“In verses 1 and 2 of Lev. 10, an angry Yahweh (what else is new?) burns the fuck out of two priests for offering “strange fire.” What was strange about it or why Yahweh didn’t like it is not explained, so we’ll have to wait ’til we get to Heaven to ask God what the fuck He had in mind.
Maybe God simply didn’t care for the incense that was used in this particular ritual. “What the hell are you doin’?! You used Opium No. 5 in this fire! You know I like Black Love and Strawberry Fields! Fuck, next time you better at least use Patchouli! Die for your sin, motherfuckers! I am I Am! I am the Lord thy God Almighty! Burning the wrong fucking incense upon my holy fires is not permitted. You’re outta here!” And poof!, the priests go up in smoke.”
I always wondered if that abominable snowman character was supposed to be based on Lennie from Of Mice and Men, since he was always wanting to stroke soft things, and would squeeze them so hard he would kill them. Plus, he always wanted to name them George.
Even if they “love” you, and hug you, and cuddle you, and name you George, they will still crush you to death in the end.
I agree! Losing my faith was a scary process and I felt fear and anger on a regular basis. It was scary to say that I know what I don’t believe, but I have no idea what I DO believe. I had to rebuild my reasons for things: morals, meaning, and even reasons for living. I read a ton and hoped that I’d find reasonable answers somewhere (and I think I did!)
You’d think that constructive seeking would be preferable to destructive acting out (not saying that this is what this pastor did), but I guess that acting out is so much easier.
I agree about the process of losing faith, R Johnston and LRA. With me, it was gradual, new to me in my teens, never that unriddled with doubts and cognitive dissonance to begin with, and I had, and have, always been a seeker after fact (the word “truth” should mean the same thing, but Christians have corrupted the word horribly!) and life.
So in my case, it was just a variation on the hard work of seeking, learning, rejecting beliefs that don’t work, self-examination, and changing and growing wiser anyway!
So your posts and my thoughts just gave me my new slogan:
Don’t do the hard work of living the self-examined life…
“Christianity: The Easy Way Out!”
Hmmm… like a book-burning. I like the idea.
And remember that God is hiding so as not to overpower your free will but has left crumbs around for you to find. So pick up the crumbs, use it to make pizza dough, bake the pizza, sell it and give the money to the church. Then God will come out of hiding and flood your soul with tingly love.
Might that be why some christians post on this blog – to feel martyred for the cause?
(Besides trying to win souls with their hateful, incoherent, illiterate rants, I mean.)
Yeah, you really need to be obnoxious to feel like you’re being persecuted for your Christianity in America.
I think it’s more that the ones with that particular mindset are too interested in reprising the whole “thrown to the lions in the Coliseum” motif.