Seldom are such overt acts of violence as church burnings, other hate crimes, tortures, murders, and police brutality linked ideologically with one another, much less with subtler forms of violence, such as economic and social marginalization and international policy that places varying values on human lives. Monument to a burned and rebuilt church in Riverdale, Georgia. During the last decade of the twentieth century, we have witnessed a myriad of tacitly linked violent acts. Churches are burned by the fuel of racism, as is evidenced by those arsonists with a White supremacist affiliation. Churches are burned out of religious intolerance, as is evidenced by satanic rituals that include the destruction by fire of the ritual site.
Churches are fire-bombed in copycat incidents often intended to promote extremist ideologies.
The common factors are the method, the act, and the significance of the target. The number of recent church burnings, which disproportionately involve Black and multiracial churches, increased dramatically in the early to mid 1990s. The Black church attacks fit the definition of a hate crime. Yet the significance of the Black church as a pivotal sociological and economic structure pushes the definition further. A hate crime is an act committed or attempted by one person or group against another, or their property, that in any way constitutes an expression of hatred toward the victim based on his or her personal characteristics.