St. Louis area shaken by 7 church fires in two weeks

It was about 6:30 a.m. when a priest texted a strange message to Dale Wunderlich: “Sorry to hear about the fire at the Shrine.”

“What — what — what?” thought Wunderlich, rector of Shrine of St. Joseph, a Roman Catholic church in St. Louis.

Bewildered, Wunderlich turned on the TV and saw the news — an arsonist had scorched the front doors of his rectory early Thursday morning before firefighters doused the flames.

The attack was disturbing — but Wunderlich was not the only victim.

Seven St. Louis-area churches have been the targets of arson over the last two weeks, all following the same pattern: a small fire set at the front door, late at night, with no message left behind.

Investigators believe the attacks might be linked, though no suspect has been identified. None of the churches have burned down, and no one has been hurt.

But the first six church arsons, which struck predominantly black St. Louis neighborhoods, have summoned old fears about attacks on black churches in a region already exhausted by more than a year of racial unrest since the killing of Michael Brown, a young black man, by a white police officer in nearby Ferguson, Mo.

“Fires in churches awaken some of saddest memories in our collective past,” St. Louis Metropolitan Police Chief Sam Dotson said Wednesday at a prayer vigil calling for an end to the attacks, less than 24 hours before an arsonist would strike again. “Anyone who knows that troubled part of American history must regard these events with utmost concern.”

St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis M. Jenkerson told reporters the blaze at the Shrine was a “similar-type style of fire to the other six church fires” in northern St. Louis and north St. Louis County beginning Oct. 8.

After Wunderlich arrived later Thursday morning to survey the damage, he was greeted by clergymen whose churches had also been attacked. The Rev. Rodrick Burton was one of them.

“It’s the same M.O. each time,” said Burton, whose New Northside Missionary Baptist Church became the second church hit on Oct. 10.

Burton felt lucky, in a way: A neighbor called the Fire Department around 3 a.m., and damage was limited to his church’s doors.

But Burton was troubled by the lack of urgency he perceived from the community as he watched fires strike other churches again and again, until a blaze seriously damaged the fifth house of worship on Saturday — New Life Missionary Baptist Church.

“There was a lot of apathy from the African American community and the faith community at large” after the initial fires, Burton said, even though African American churches across the nation have a history of being targeted in attacks. “I don’t know if you want to call it Ferguson fatigue — it seems like there’s a malaise in the response generally, in the African American community.”

Burton has since started visiting each church hit by arson and posting photos of the damage to social media with the hashtag #stlchurchfire2015 to draw attention and encourage solidarity.

“It doesn’t matter what the motive is; any attack against freedom of religion, I feel Americans should be concerned about it,” Burton said. “After Ferguson and all this stuff, people saying we need to come together — we need to come together.”

Investigators and officials have offered at least $9,000 in reward money for information leading to an arrest.

Although fire officials said Thursday’s blaze was similar to the previous attacks, Jenkerson noted that Shrine of St. Joseph’s rectory is located much closer to downtown St. Louis than the other six churches, which were clustered in or nearby the suburb of Jennings.

The congregation at Shrine of St. Joseph is primarily white, according to Wunderlich, with about 100 to 150 regular attendees on Sundays plus an average of about 100 visitors from around the country and the world.

“There was no warning, no threat ahead of time,” Wunderlich said.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has joined in the investigation of the fires.

Fire departments responded to an average of 280 arsons per year at churches and funeral homes between 2007 and 2011, according to data analyzed by the National Fire Protection Assn.

An unusual surge in church arsons between 1995 and 2000 led to the creation of the National Church Arson Task Force, which found that one-third of the attacks were against black churches. Though hate or bias was a motive in some of the fires, vandalism, mentally ill perpetrators and insurance fires were also common, the task force found.

But perhaps most unexpectedly, a Satanist was the biggest culprit in the church fires of the ‘90s. Jay Scot Ballinger was suspected of burning about 50 churches across the Midwest and the South between 1998 and 1999, and was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a Georgia church fire that killed a volunteer firefighter.

matt.pearce@latimes.com