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You are here: Home / Balloon Juice / Bleg / There Are Other Congregations Whose Churches Have Burned in Need

There Are Other Congregations Whose Churches Have Burned in Need

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Right now everyone is paying attention to the Cathedral of Notre Dame as it smolders. And to a certain extent that makes perfect sense. It is a historic marvel and a major tourist attraction both because of its historic and its religious significance. President Macron has unequivocally stated that the cathedral will be rebuilt. And the organizations that were set up to raise funds for its renovations will now quickly switch over to fundraise for the rebuilding effort. But even as those funds are raised, there are other churches, specifically some African American churches here in the US that were deliberately burned down in acts of domestic terrorism whose congregations need some help to rebuild their houses of worship.

From the GoFundMe link:

Three historically black churches have burned in less than two weeks in one south Louisiana parish, where officials said they had found “suspicious elements” in each case. The officials have not ruled out the possibility of arson, or the possibility that the fires are related.

“There is clearly something happening in this community,” State Fire Marshal H. Browning said in a statement on Thursday.

The host of this campaign is the Seventh District Baptist Association, a 149 year old non-profit religious organization.  We are working with the Governor of Louisiana, local leaders, elected officials, the impacted churches and their pastors, other faith organizations and the community to ensure 100% of all funds raised will be evenly distributed to the three churches affected.

Please donate here and look for upcoming opportunities to help these churches and communities begin to heal.

The Seventh District Baptist Association lead by President Freddie Jack,  is comprised of approximately 60 Baptist churches from seven parishes in Southwest Louisiana, which includes the three churches affected by the recent fires.  The District meets on a quarterly and annual basis emphasizing Christian Education, Evangelism, Discipleship and fellowship in the Body of Christ.

The District’s annual session is held the first week in June  where we celebrate our legacy and plan continual ministry events to reach the lost and edify the Saints.  The District will be holding its 149th Annual Session in Lake Charles, Louisiana the week of June 2nd.

President Jack requested that a Go Fund Me campaign be initiated to show our support for our church families and the communities affected.  We are unequivocally committed to aiding our Sister Churches.  The donations received are earmarked specifically for the Seventh District’s member churches – St. Mary Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church and Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church.  All of your generous donations will be disbursed equally among all three churches for not only rebuilding their sanctuaries, but for the purchase of all necessities lost in the fires, including pews, sound system, musical instruments, etc.

Seventh District and the Pastors and congregations of the St. Mary Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church and Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church thank you and solicit your continual prayers and support as we will overcome this tragedy together because we are ONE BODY IN CHRIST!

Ruth V. Jack, Finance Secretary
Seventh District Baptist Association

I know we hit you all up for money all the time here, especially Doug who has now raised enough money to put his baby through grad school with these ActBlue fundraisers he tells you are going to political candidates…  with the ActBlue drives for political candidates and the pet blegs, but if you’ve got some spare change this month, these good folks could use a little TLC.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

40Comments

  2. 2.

    Adam L Silverman

    @ruemara: You’re welcome. It’s either help these folks out or throw more money at one of those ActBlue things so Doug can send the kid to that Swiss boarding school, so…

  3. 3.

    Martin

    Honor the troops, bitches!

    The Trump administration has deported Jose Gonzalez Carranza, a 30-year-old undocumented immigrant whose wife died as a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan, according to AZ Central. The couple’s 12-year-old daughter was left in Phoenix, AZ.

    Gonzalez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last Monday as he commuted to his welding job. He’s since been deported to Nogales, Mexico, according to his attorney Ezequiel Hernandez.

    Now, Gonzalez is living in a shelter for deported immigrants in Nogales, and says he is worried about his daughter.

    “I feel so bad,” he told AZ Central. “I’m thinking about, I might never see her again.”

    Golzalez wife, Army Pfc. Barbara Vieyra, was killed by an IED while fighting with the U.S. Army in Afghanistan on Sept. 18, 2010. She was 22.

    “She sacrificed her life for this country,” Gonzalez told AZ Central.

    ICE reversed the decision, but only because the optics were so horrible. So long as nobody was writing about it with barrels of ink, they were cool with it. May everyone in this administration die in a fire.

  7. 7.

    eemom

    Appears we woke political junkies are just as suckered by the bright burning object du jour as the dumbest trumptards. Quelle surprise.

  8. 8.

    Suzanne

    Apparently Salma Hayek’s rich husband is donating $100M to rebuild Notre Dame, so I think they’re covered.

    I think this is a great response.

    Al-Aqsa had a fire today, too. Just a terrible day for beauty. We need to hang onto as much as possible.

  13. 13.

    Suzanne

    @Adam L Silverman: Sorry about missing your post. I usually don’t log onto this site until well after I get home from work.

    Though I routinely check Facebook and Twitter throughout the day, and they were both, pardon the expression on a day like today…..a total dumpster fire.

  15. 15.

    Suzanne

    @Suzanne: I should probably note that building fires get me kind of worked up, since I spend so much time in my professional career working on fire and life safety issues. i used to have nightmares as a child about being burned, and one of my earliest memories is when my neighbor’s house had an electrical fire. In graduate school, we spent a really distressing amount of time studying major fires and other building failures to identify causes and design errors that exacerbated the events, and I always found it really hard to take. I know I get more emotional and worked up over these events than I should. But they’re so, so sad and scary.

  16. 16.

    Millard Filmore

    Hi Adam, do you suppose this is a second shot across Barr’s bow?

    dailykos.com/stories/2019/4/15/1850434/-This-isn-t-the-first-time-William-Barr-tried-to-fool-Congres…

    “William Barr was given an assignment—come up with a legal justification for the United States to enter a sovereign country, dispose its leader [Manuel Noriega], kidnap him, and bring him to America to stand trial.”

    He gave Congress a summary.

    “Barr had “significantly misled” Congress, and that his “summary” actually failed to fully disclose the study’s principal conclusions, much less its full opinion on the legality of the proposed action.”

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bruuuuce: @Suzanne: No worries and no issues with each of you. It’s just that at times I begin to wonder if anyone is actually reading the front page before they get into the comments. And honestly, I got tipped off to the fire at al Aqsa thanks to commenter Tenar Aha (or however you spell that – it’s late and the site is acting up so every time I try to look up the spelling the site locks up).

    It’s been a crazy day in what is going to be a crazy week in a crazy month in a crazy year.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Millard Filmore: I don’t think so. This has been known for almost 20 years. I think this is more a shot across the news media’s bow to focus. As well as to all of the well heeled folks in the upper strata of the legal academic and scholarship world that seem to be willing to give their peers public massages on the various TV news and commentary shows because they’re all colleagues, peers, and/or friends regardless of what their colleagues, peers, and/or friends actually do.

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Millard Filmore: I think a shot across the bow would be an actual leak of something from either the Mueller Report or something that actually forces him to change course, like the leaks about Sessions meetings with Kislyak, which he’d lied about, or the leaks about Whitaker being under investigation for his role in a corporate fraud.

  22. 22.

    lahke

    Hi, Adam, I know it’s late, but could you please rearrange your headline to put “in need” after”congregations”, rather than at the end? Because it makes my head hurt the way it is.
    Thanks.

  23. 23.

    ola azul

    @lahke:

    World-renowned (and reviled!) grammarian defiler that I is, when someone sez: “I gotta take a piss,” even I am prone — if likewise so disposed — to say, “I gotta piss — comma — myself.”

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    @rikyrah:
    If AG Barr is ultimately compelled to hand the Special Counsel’s report over to the House and it’s as damaging to Trump as he seems to fear, Barr might decide to state that the report says what he, Barr, says it says, and not what its text says it says. If that does indeed happen — it would not surprise me much if it did — it will be … interesting.

  31. 31.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @NotMax: Ah, I don’t even notice them anymore. As far as moral defibrillators, they won’t work on trump any more than the regular type of defibrillator will work on a rock. Come to think about it, I kinda doubt the regular type would work on trump either, seeing as he also has no heart.

  32. 32.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Amir Khalid:

    Barr might decide to state that the report says what he, Barr, says it says, and not what its text says it says.

    He already has.

  33. 33.

    JPL

    It’s not surprising that the administration hasn’t acknowledged the cause of the fires. Oh heck has trump even mentioned the destruction of the black churches?

  34. 34.

    Amir Khalid

    @OzarkHillbilly:
    Trump has tasked Barr with protecting him from what the SC report says. Which Barr has so far done by with the implausible denial that it implicates Trump — which he gets away with because the report is not yet public. When it is, Barr will be in an impossible position: still tasked with protecting Trump from Mueller’s findings. I expect that Barr will come out with transparent and futile lies, and thus at least seem to be doing something, to delay the inevitable tantrum during which Trump sacks him.

  36. 36.

    Jay

    Thank you Adam,

    But the fires are no longer “suspicious”

    They are arson,

    And now a hate crime.

    Notre Dame will be okay, like you said, if we have money, there are other worthy’s.

  37. 37.

    Donnah

    I can remember when our church burned down. It was in the 1970’s, a traditional Presbyterian church, and a handful of teenagers broke in one night, tore up the kitchen, then set fires in different spots. The church burned almost to the ground. The most heart-wrenching part was the loss of beautiful hand-carved altar and wooden tables our minister’s father had made. He was on his hands and knees digging through the ashes to find any salvageable pieces.

    A small gold cross, maybe a foot tall, had rested on one of those tables and was blistered and charred. The congregation decided to keep the cross as it was as a reminder of loss and of redemption. The church was rebuilt in a new, contemporary style. And if you go down into the lower level, you can still smell smoke.

    Of course

  38. 38.

    Adam Geffen

    @Suzanne:

    I don’t even work in fire safety and building fires scare the crap out of me. While I was an undergrad a housemate left a candle burning in his bedroom, one of those thick three-wick types. You can imagine where this is going. Candle burned down to the wooden table on which it was resting. ?‍♂️ And then proceeded to burn the house.

    Thank goodness no one was injured. The cats were saved. And the fire department got the fire under control before it wreaked the whole house.

    But I will never forget walking through the house after the fire department was done. How ~black~ with soot everything was. Everything.

    Also, I had never realized before how much damage the firefighters do while working to get a fire under control. Like this window is in our way. Smash. We need to check inside this wall. Smash. That was kinda interesting.

    More recently, in my current house, built in 1913, a GFI outlet failed (I think it short circuited internally) and started a tiny fire in its electrical box. Got that under control quick. And thank goodness for modern electrical code requirements.

    Now, I’m slowly working on replacing all my circuit breakers with arc fault breakers for added fire protection. I have 40 circuits so I can’t spend the $2k+ it would cost to do them all at once. But I’ll get there eventually.

  39. 39.

    Adam Geffen

    @Jay:

    Thanks for the suspicious->arson update. (I, sadly, assumed that would turn out to be the case.) I shared this GoFundMe with my fb network here in Detroit so I’ll update my post re that point.

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