What tenable agenda underlies burnings of Southern Baptist churches at the tail of the Second Millennium and again - vigorously - at the start of the Third? (See what happens when anti-Semtism depletes preferred inventory? Stockroom folks start rotating themselves.)
Faith is rotted optimism. The Southern Baptist phenomenon - god said it, I heard it, that's it - was brewed as imposed religion to render 18th and 19th century Darkies tractable. Its Northern progenitor (Roger Williams chartering Providence, Rhode Island in 1635) was steeped in poppycock fanaticism. The Southern flavor blends Christian mummery (itself a concoction of ancient Palestinian political spin and pagan phantasms), African delusions, and operational exigencies of Black slavery.
Divine right rule of Darkies was a stick of sacrifice and obeisance in this life to earn a pledged carrot of reward and retribution in the next. "De massas done gonna be in de fields and de niggers in de manor house in Heb'n." It sang so prettily that pestilent hordes of poor white trash bought into priests' multi-level sales opportunities. Buffoons pushing faith got hooked on their own addictive wares. The remaining question was which color of parishioner could "Hallelujah!" louder and sweat more abundantly on humid Sunday mornings as butterball shamans clothed in polyester robes of many colors chicken-walked with pompadours while their wives drooled mascara in holy rapture. One assuredly knows that Old Nick exercises better taste in all things.
This would be passable fun and games, shepherds shearing sheep of their wool and frequently relieving themselves with the sheep, were it not so grievously misplaced. The Dead Sea Scrolls clearly state concurrent existence of two Jerusalems, one ruled by the Lord of Light and the other by the Lord of Darkness. Christianity chose SOP to deny Lucifer and adopt the Dark Side, precipitating explicit chronic inconveniences spectre-wise.
Southern Baptist fixation upon the Devil coefficient of its parishioners (infernal coefficient of exculpation) is second only to its condemnation of every aspect of life hinting at personal triumph. A Southern Baptist church narthex protuberates with the meanest and most perverse genre of abnormal, baleful psychology. The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Index exercises a peculiar scoring scheme for priests. Laymen vouchsafing allied cognitive escapades would be fast track diagnosed grotesquely insane.
(Kindred pictorial and textual content - ecstasy, torture, guilt, gore, righteousness, aberrant sexuality, perverse behavior, obsession with the supernatural - enraged one Dr. Frederic Wertham, author and psychiatrist, as Seduction of the Innocent. Beelzebub was abroad in 1954 comic books. The Senate Judiciary Committee put in its thumb and pulled out the Comics Magazine Association of America, whose Offiical stamp of approval quashed American comic book content and rendering to Archie and Veronica mediocrity until 1960s comix (R. Crumb) proclaimed artistic probity. Only one intervening comic published without the Official stamp and without advertising: MAD.)
Southern Baptist obsession with protracted total immersion baptism (get that holy water inside and out) is less an exercise of cruel fetish than a desperate assay for witches. A witch cannot be drowned. Water rejects a witch as it does wood. There had best be plentiful of water on tap because when exposed to consecrated masses, the damned erupt in a fireball of spontaneous Devil-baby combustion (purportedly scorching an image of Elvis into the ceiling every time).
The Industrial Revolution spawned religious backlash as imperative literacy and numeracy reconstructed the whole of Western culture. Whirling bobbins in factories conjured up childhood as a learning period more pervasive and penetrating than any catechism. God-besotted zealots gathered their disaffection and colonized America. Machinery followed them like stink behind an Arab.
The lyric whimsy of angel measurement dripped from garish literature and TV inundation as the 20th century ran short, though Virgin Mary sightings suffered keen competition from upscale UFOs (though both featured zesty anal probs). Laity befuddled by technology and unable to counterfeit its cost of mentation had nowhere to flee, either from reality or from their gesticulating priests. They clutched their bibles, dipped torches in pitch, and snarled back at reality, eager to deny personal responsibility in exchange for Official forgiveness. In the interregnum betwixt the worldly stick and the heavenly carrot they practiced godly cleansing upon each other - His will be done (in dead of night, with blood).
Burning churches are palatable filler for talking heads eagerly filling TV screens with cracker-accented anguish. Burning churches are grist for civil rights mills keen to loosen compensatory wads from public exchequers. Burning churches make good copy, newspapers to books, because everybody loves exuding Liberal compassion if somebody else apparently picks up the tab. Burning churches electrify pulpits as congregations are harangued to dig deep into their pockets and hand it over to god. Burning churches are religion's devotees looking at each other aghast, assuming a pro-active stance thereafter, and proceeding according to their god's own rules of engagement.