A network of Cooperative Baptist Fellowship churches in Arkansas, Louisiana and Mississippi expressed grief and solidarity with a Jewish congregation targeted by an arsonist earlier this month.
“An attack on a place of worship is an assault on one of the most basic human rights — the universal right to freedom of religion or belief,” Great Rivers Fellowship said about the Jan. 10 fire at Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss.
The statement was penned by Shane McNary, coordinator of ministry for the regional organization. He previously led Baptist churches in Kentucky and Arkansas and served Romani communities in Slovakia and Chechia as CBF field personnel.
Shane McNary
The FBI has accused Stephen Spencer Pittman, 19, of using gasoline to set the early morning blaze that caused extensive damage and led to the indefinite closure of the facility.
Pittman reportedly was offended by the congregation’s “Jewish ties,” and the U.S. Justice Department vowed to seek “severe penalties” for the suspect. He remains jailed after pleading not guilty to a federal arson charge Jan. 20 at the U.S. courthouse in Jackson.
“This hateful, antisemitic attack on the Beth Israel Congregation is disturbing and unacceptable,” said U.S. Attorney J.E. Baxter Kruger of the Southern District of Mississippi. “Mississippians may rest assured that my office will not stand idly by when violence and intimidation threaten our community.”
Beth Israel Congregation has been the target of violence before. In 1967, the Ku Klux Klan firebombed the synagogue, which is the largest and oldest in in the state.
“According to federal court documents, Pittman referred to it as ‘the synagogue of Satan’ — a term used by followers of Christian Identity, a white supremacist religion that teaches that Adam and Eve were white, that non-whites are ‘mud people’ and that Jews are the offspring of Satan,” Mississippi Today reported.
In its Jan. 27 statement, Great Rivers Fellowship condemned the latest arson attack as an example of “religiously motivated violence” inspired by “ideologies of hate and separation.”
“An attack on a place of worship is an assault on one of the most basic human rights — the universal right to freedom of religion or belief. Religious hatred and identity-based aggression begin with hate-filled rhetoric that is corrosive to the soul, causing more self-harm than the destruction of the other it seeks.”
The fellowship said it stands with its Jewish neighbors in Jackson with “grief and resolve” and will continue to nurture longstanding relationships between the faith groups.
“We lean into the transformative, resilient love found when we embrace and celebrate the God-given diversity within our communities, affirming the universal dignity of all people as Image-bearers of the divine,” the statement says.
The congregation’s website says it has received “tremendous support” and an “outpouring of love” as rebuilding continues.