From the Associated Press

AMSTERDAM – Dutch gay rights groups have called for an end to protests against a Catholic church southwest of Amsterdam after it said it would no longer seek to bar homosexuals from taking communion.

The Sint-Jan church in Den Bosch says it will leave it up to believers to decide whether they are ready to receive communion.

Mass at the church on Sunday was disturbed by protests. The demonstrations began last month after an openly gay man in a nearby village was chosen for a prominent role during Dutch carnival celebrations but was refused communion by his local priest — offending many in the village.

Most Dutch people support gay rights, but the Catholic Church teaches that homosexual activity is sinful.

From the Associated Press.

Republican congressional candidate Stephen Fincher, a farmer and gospel singer from Frog Jump, Tenn., campaigns at the National Guard Armory in Ripley, Tenn., Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010. Ask national Republicans to name a model 2010 congressional candidate, and they're likely to mention Stephen Fincher. (AP Photo/Lance Murphey)

NEW YORK – Ask national Republicans to name a model 2010 congressional candidate, and they’re likely to mention Stephen Fincher. A 37-year-old farmer and gospel singer from Frog Jump, Tenn., Fincher has raised more than $675,000 in his bid to succeed retiring Democratic Rep. John Tanner.

His nontraditional background suits the GOP just fine.

“He’d never run for office before, never been to Washington, D.C., before,” marveled California Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who met Fincher on a recruiting trip for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “He said, ‘Listen, Mr. Kevin,’ he said he couldn’t look his children in the eye and say he watched this country change and didn’t do something about it.”

That a political novice like Fincher could become a top GOP contender to win a historically Democratic district speaks volumes about the unpredictable political environment that has come to define the 2010 midterm elections.

Voters are angry. President Barack Obama’s job approval ratings have sunk, particularly among the independents who helped put him in office. The Democratic and Republican parties are both unpopular. Independent voters are growing in stature and anti-tax tea party activists have become a potent political force.

The fractious atmosphere has sent both parties scrambling to find challengers and open seat candidates who fit the national mood, while they also try to protect incumbents from being steamrolled by it.

“Arguably, both political parties need to earn back voters’ trust,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for theNational Republican Senatorial Committee. “Republicans lost it and we need to gain it back.”

It’s not a slam dunk for Republicans, who long to retake control of both the House and Senate amid voter unrest.

They must contend with a party identity tarnished during George W. Bush’s presidency and the pressures of tea party activists who believe the GOP has become too moderate. Tea party-backed candidates are running in dozens of Republican primaries across the country, setting up potentially messy and expensive intraparty battles.

And at least nine former GOP House members are running to recapture seats they held during Bush’s presidency. Current and former members of Congress also are the GOP’s nominees or front-runners for the nomination in six Senate contests so far.

That doesn’t help the GOP make an argument it’s the party of change. Newcomers like Fincher and little-known state legislators like Scott Brown do. Republicans scored a huge victory last month when Brown — with help from independents, tea party activists and the GOP establishment — took the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat away from Democrats in Massachusetts.

“There seems to be a spirit among the kind of challengers who’ve said, ‘I don’t really know a lot about politics, but I know what my community is all about,’” said Rep. Pete Sessions, a Texas Republican who heads his party’s campaign operation for House seats.

Brown’s candidacy was well-suited to the anxious political environment. He focused on a narrow, fiscally conservative message while casting himself as an independent thinker untethered to partisan demands. While he was a featured speaker before conservative activists last week, he also voted with Democrats this week to end a Republican-led filibuster of a jobs bill backed by Obama.

Like Brown, Fincher isn’t quick to identify himself as a Republican. He calls himself a conservative on his campaign Web site, adding, “My roots run deep in Tennessee, not politics.”

Democrats also are advising their candidates to stress their political independence and avoid becoming caricatured as captives of Washington.

Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, who chairs the House Democrats’ campaign operation, points to his party’s 5-0 record in House special elections last year as proof that his party can still win with the right candidates and message.

That record will be tested again this spring, with special elections to fill three House seats, all held by Democrats:

_The Pennsylvania seat of the late Rep. John Murtha.

_The Florida seat of former Rep. Robert Wexler, who resigned last month to run a Middle East think tank.

_The Hawaii seat of Rep. Neil Abercrombie, who’s said he will resign Sunday to run for governor.

Van Hollen said incumbents facing re-election battles are being urged to “vote in an independent-minded way — sometimes with the majority, and sometimes not. Sometimes with Obama, and sometimes not.”

Of the former GOP lawmakers running to reclaim seats, Van Hollen said, “Voters don’t believe that turning the keys back to the guys who drove over the ditch in the first place is a good alternative.”

Republican Steve Chabot, running for his old seat in a Cincinnati-area district he lost in 2008 to Democrat Steve Driehaus, is working hard not to fall into that trap.

Despite his seven terms in the House, Chabot believes he can still position himself as the independent outsider in the race and frame Driehaus as being too deferential to Democratic leaders in Congress.

“Rather than do what’s right for the people here, he’s followed Nancy Pelosi’s lead on virtually everything,” Chabot said of Driehaus.

Republicans consider Driehaus’ seat one of their best targets, but Chabot said he’s raising most of the money for his race in and around his district.

“I’ve always felt you’re very much on your own when you are running,” Chabot said. “If the party is able to help, we appreciate that, but we are not depending on it.”

From the Associated Press.

Until a few weeks ago, the Rev. Gail Sowell was pastor at two Lutheran churches in the small Wisconsin town of Edgar. That was before members of both congregations jumped headfirst into the simmering debate over gay clergy in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.

“It was pretty gruesome,” Sowell said, recalling shouting matches inside the sanctuary; the mass resignation of one church’s council, save one member; even whispers around town that she was a lesbian. “For the record, I’m not,” she said.

When the smoke cleared, the congregation at St. John Lutheran Church narrowly voted to not leave the ELCA. Across town at Peace Lutheran, they voted to leave and fired Sowell. “Fortunately, I’m thick-skinned,” she said.

Not all ELCA congregations have seen that level of turbulence over the ELCA’s decision last August to allow pastors in committed same-sex relationships to serve openly. But by most accounts, it has been a confusing and murky time in the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination.

Several hundred congregations are moving toward a permanent split with the ELCA and more will likely come, but the number is still a small portion of the 10,000-church denomination.

Last week, a conservative Lutheran group announced its plans to establish the North American Lutheran Church, a new denomination that will recruit dissident congregations. Rather than setting up a clear-cut choice, though, even some critics of the ELCA’s new policy say the move could further confuse already splintered Lutherans at a time when Protestantism in general seems to be moving away from a denominational model.

“It just feels like we’re stepping off a sinking ship, and I’m not inclined to get on another boat,” said the Rev. Bill Bohline, lead pastor at Hosanna! in Lakeville, Minn., which had been the state’s second largest ELCA church until its members voted overwhelmingly in January to sever ties with the denomination. “That’s not where the spirit is moving.”

Pushing plans for the new Lutheran denomination is Lutheran CORE, an activist group that led opposition to the gay clergy policy. Critics say liberalizing policies toward homosexuality directly contradicts scripture.

Lutheran CORE leaders hope to have the North American Lutheran Church up and running by August. They hope for a denomination that’s less bureaucratic than the ELCA, but still makes it easy for congregations across the country to collaborate on shared goals.

“We heard from many congregations who came to us, who said we’d like to leave the ELCA, but for us the other options aren’t quite right,” said Ryan Schwarz, a private equity manager in Washington who’s leading the effort to organize the new denomination.

Since August, congregations have not left the ELCA in huge numbers. The denomination has about 10,000 congregations, and in all 220 have taken at least one of two required votes to leave. So far, only 28 congregations have actually approved leaving, which requires two separate votes that each attain a two-thirds supermajority.

“Even if that number doubles or triples, it would still be less than 5 percent of the ELCA,” said Bishop Peter Rogness of the St. Paul, Minn. synod. “So it’s not as though a schism has happened, where we’re a denomination split in half. Nothing on that magnitude is in the offing.”

Lutheran CORE leaders say the process for leaving is laborious and time-consuming, and those that already left were on the leading edge of opposition.

“I think they should be alarmed by these numbers,” said the Rev. Mark Chavez, Lutheran CORE’s director. Many churches, he said, just started the discussion.

“I don’t think the wave has hit them yet,” Chavez said.

Some of the breakaway churches have already found alternative denominations to take them in.

The Lutheran CORE effort isn’t coming together quickly enough to be viable, said the Rev. Kurt Rau, whose Calvary Lutheran Church in Kalispell, Mont., instead opted to affiliate with Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ.

“They’re a little slow to the party,” Rau said.

His church’s new, much smaller denomination itself split from the ELCA in 2000 over perceptions that the bigger congregation was getting too liberal, and so far has been the chief receptacle for congregations leaving the ELCA.

St. Paul Lutheran Church in New Braunfels, Texas, also joined LCMC, said Brian Baese, a self-employed salesman who is president of the church council.

Lutheran CORE’s proposal came “too little, too late,” Baese said. “We can’t hang around when we don’t know how long this is going to take. The momentum was carrying in this direction, and we had to go with it.”

At St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in La Mesa, Calif., the congregation also voted to ditch the ELCA — although the Rev. Mark Menacher said that had less to do with gay clergy and more to do with other long-standing theological disputes. St. Luke’s is affiliating with yet another small denomination, the Fellowship of Confessing Lutheran Churches.

Menacher is skeptical about the success of the North American Lutheran Church. “If all that joins you together is concern about same sex relationships, I don’t think that’s a very strong reason for being,” he said.

Bohline, the Lakeville pastor, said Lutherans should stop worrying so much about how they organize themselves. It’s a main reason for the decline of mainline Protestantism in recent decades, he said.

“When I went to seminary, I wasn’t sure I should be a pastor because I didn’t understand what was so different about Lutherans or Baptists or Methodists. And you know, we’re not that different,” Bohline said. “We’re working on the same playing field here. So let’s get on with it.”

From the Associated Press.

UNITED NATIONS – What do actress Geena Davis, Britain’s Duchess of York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the head of the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists have in common?

They’re all committed to empowering women.

At a U.N. event Monday promoting gender equality, they were joined by heads of foundations, corporate leaders, academics, diplomats, representatives of voluntary organizations and several other celebrities, including Miss USA Kristen Dalton and Sweden’s Princess Madeleine.

The U.N. Economic and Social Council chose International Corporate Philanthropy Day to focus on women’s rights and generate support for one of the U.N.’s Millennium Development goals — promoting equality between women and men.

Ban told several hundred participants that “full empowerment requires more progress in two key areas: expanding economic opportunity and ending violence against women.”

“Our goal must be clear,” the U.N. chief said. “No tolerance of the use of rape as a weapon of war. No excuses for domestic violence. No looking the other way when it comes to sex trafficking, so-called `honor killings’ or female genital mutilation.”

The secretary-general also urged the private sector to promote women at all levels of corporate responsibility and the philanthropic community to “make sure that female beneficiaries are treated equally.”

Davis, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for “The Accidental Tourist” in 1989 and starred in “Thelma & Louise” and the ABC television series ”Commander in Chief” where she played the first female U.S. president, called for a radical change in the way women and girls are portrayed in the media.

“At the dawn of a new millennium — in a world that is over 50 percent female — the message the media sends is that women and girls have far less value than men and boys,” she said.

Davis said research shows that there are three male characters for every female character across all film ratings and that the vast majority of female characters “are stereotyped and hyper-sexualized.”

“What message are we sending both boys and girls about women’s role in society?,” she asked.

Davis said that’s why she founded the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and its programming arm, See Jane.

Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson, who is divorced from Britain’s Prince Andrew, said the key to equality is “good mothering” because mothers promote education.

She announced a new initiative called “the Mother’s Army” to “harness the collective power of mothers” to enable women and girls to “dare to dream.”

Mary Quinn, senior manager of the Avon Foundation for Women which has already given $1 million to the U.N. Trust Fund to combat violence against women, announced an additional $250,000 pledge to the fund for a project to tackle gender-based violence in Mexican communities.

Maria Borelius, CEO of the nonprofit organization Hand in Hand International, pledged to create 10 million additional jobs among the world’s poorest women. Francine LeFrak of Fair Sky, a company that promotes women artisans in Rwanda, announced that she would start a similar program for women in Haiti.

And Tariq Cheema, founder and chair of the World Congress of Muslim Philanthropists, announced the launch of a global initiative called “Empowerment Through Enlightenment.”

“This initiative will raise awareness among the male population as well as offering skill-building opportunities to females to enhance their competitiveness in the society,” he said to loud applause.

From the Associated Press.

TYLER, Texas – Investigators say convenience store video and shoe prints helped them to link two suspects to two church fires in east Texas.

Nineteen-year-old Jason Robert Bourque and 21-year-old Daniel George McAllister were charged Sunday with a single felony arson in the torching of the Dover Baptist Church in rural Smith County.

Affidavits presented Monday in a state district court in Tyler, about 90 miles east of Dallas, say the footage and prints linked Bourque and McAllister to the Feb. 8 Dover Baptist fire and another the same night at the Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church, also in Tyler.

The churches are among 11 burned in Texas this year.

Bourque and McAllister could face life in prison if convicted. Bond is set at $10 million apiece.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

TYLER, Texas (AP) — Investigators say DNA evidence collected at the site of one of several Texas churches destroyed by arson links one of two suspects to the blaze, and they haven’t ruled out more charges.

Jason Robert Bourque, 19, and Daniel George McAllister, 21, were arrested and charged Sunday with one count of felony arson for the torching of a church in rural Smith County, said Tom Crowley, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Crowley declined to say which suspect produced the positive DNA match.

The church near Tyler, about 90 miles east of Dallas, was among 10 in east Texas burned since the beginning of 2010. Authorities believe those fires, along with another in central Texas, were arson. No injuries have been reported in the fires.

“Because they are charged with one doesn’t mean they’re not going to be charged with some of the others,” Crowley said.

Crowley said a telephone hot line established as the number of church fires mounted produced a tip that implicated one of the pair, and that they had been “on our radar” for several weeks. Officials declined to discuss a motive at a news conference Sunday.

Investigators collected DNA from the site of several of the fires, and samples from one of the suspects matched evidence found at the scene of the Smith County fire, Crowley said.

Bourque and McAllister could face life in prison if convicted. Bond is set at $10 million apiece. Crowley andSmith County jail officials said they had no information on attorneys for either man.

The pair used to attend First Baptist Church in McAllister’s hometown of Ben Wheeler, Crowley said. TheTyler Morning Telegraph reported that they attended Van High School in Van, about 7 miles away.

Bourque, of nearby Lindale, was arrested early Sunday in Van Zandt County, where four of the fires occurred, Crowley said.

McAllister was taken into custody in San Antonio. Crowley said McAllister had recently moved to the city.

The rash of fires began with a blaze at a church in Athens and another on New Year’s Day not far away. A fire in the central Texas town of Temple followed, but the federal investigation did not kick in until two churches were torched Jan. 11 in Athens. Less than a week later, four fires in five days were reported. The two most recent fires included the one that resulted in charges against Bourque and McAllister.

There were attempted break-ins at three churches in Tyler in early February, but those buildings were not burned, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

David Mahfood, pastor of one of the churches in Tyler that was torched, said residents still think they must remain vigilant.

“We’re blessed that no lives were lost and no one was injured, but I don’t think we let our guard down,” Mahfood said.

From the Associated Press.

In this photo provided by the Smith County Sheriff Department, Jason Robert Bourque, 19, of Lindale, Texas is shown. Bourque and Daniel George McAllister were arrested in a series of east Texas church fires that authorities believe were intentionally set. (AP Photo/Smith County Sheriff Department)

TYLER, Texas – Investigators say DNA evidence collected at the site of one of several Texas churches destroyed by arson links one of two suspects to the blaze, and they haven’t ruled out more charges.

Jason Robert Bourque, 19, and Daniel George McAllister, 21, were arrested and charged Sunday with one count of felony arson for the torching of a church in rural Smith County, said Tom Crowley, spokesman for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Crowley declined to say which suspect produced the positive DNA match.

The church near Tyler, about 90 miles east of Dallas, was among 10 in east Texas burned since the beginning of 2010. Authorities believe those fires, along with another in central Texas, were arson. No injuries have been reported in the fires.

“Because they are charged with one doesn’t mean they’re not going to be charged with some of the others,” Crowley said.

Crowley said a telephone hot line established as the number of church fires mounted produced a tip that implicated one of the pair, and that they had been “on our radar” for several weeks. Officials declined to discuss a motive at a news conference Sunday.

Investigators collected DNA from the site of several of the fires, and samples from one of the suspects matched evidence found at the scene of the Smith County fire, Crowley said.

Bourque and McAllister could face life in prison if convicted. Bond is set at $10 million apiece. Crowley andSmith County jail officials said they had no information on attorneys for either man.

The pair used to attend First Baptist Church in McAllister’s hometown of Ben Wheeler, Crowley said. TheTyler Morning Telegraph reported that they attended Van High School in Van, about 7 miles away.

Bourque, of nearby Lindale, was arrested early Sunday in Van Zandt County, where four of the fires occurred, Crowley said.

McAllister was taken into custody in San Antonio. Crowley said McAllister had recently moved to the city.

The rash of fires began with a blaze at a church in Athens and another on New Year’s Day not far away. A fire in the central Texas town of Temple followed, but the federal investigation did not kick in until two churches were torched Jan. 11 in Athens. Less than a week later, four fires in five days were reported. The two most recent fires included the one that resulted in charges against Bourque and McAllister.

There were attempted break-ins at three churches in Tyler in early February, but those buildings were not burned, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement.

David Mahfood, pastor of one of the churches in Tyler that was torched, said residents still think they must remain vigilant.

“We’re blessed that no lives were lost and no one was injured, but I don’t think we let our guard down,” Mahfood said.

From the Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican says the number of Catholics as a percentage of the worldwide faithful is growing slightly.

The Holy See says that from 2007 to 2008 Roman Catholics grew from 17.33 percent of the global population to 17.4 percent.

The statistics are included in a yearbook presented Saturday to Pope Benedict XVI.

The yearbook says the number of priests rose from 2000-2008 but that the number of nuns worldwide fell 7.8 percent.

The number of nuns rose significantly in Asia and Africa over those eight years but not enough to make up for sharp drops in Europe and America.

From the Associated Press.

DALLAS – Investigators have determined that two rural church fires on the same night this week in east Texas were the acts of an arsonist.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives announced its findings Wednesday night on the fires that damagedDover Baptist Church and Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church. Both churches are within three miles of each other outside Tyler.

The two fires occurred Monday night within an hour of each other.

ATF Dallas spokesman Thomas Crowley says those incidents bring to nine the number of deliberately set church fires in the area since Jan. 1.

No injuries have been reported, but agents suspect a serial arsonist or group of arsonists in the fires.

Tyler is about 90 miles east of Dallas.

(This version CORRECTS distance between Tyler and Dallas in last paragraph.)

From the Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY – A scandal in Italy’s Catholic Church has morphed into a tale of Vatican intrigue complete with forged documents, reports of dueling cardinals and a papal admonishment Tuesday to put the matter to rest.

The scandal erupted in August, when the newspaper Il Giornalereported that it had court documents showing the editor of the newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference had paid to settle charges that he harassed the wife of a man he was romantically pursuing.

The revelations were initially seen as retribution by Il Giornale, which is owned by Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s brother, against the bishops’ newspaper, Avvenire. The Catholic paper had harshly criticized the premier and demanded he answer questions about his purported liaisons with younger women.

Il Giornale accused Avvenire editor Dino Boffo of hypocrisy, saying the journalist had been fined in a plea-bargain several years ago for making harassing calls to the man’s wife.

Prosecutors say Boffo made the calls, but have denied the case involved a gay angle. Boffo acknowledged being fined in the case but said someone else had used his cell phone to make the calls. Amid the fallout, he resigned from Avvenire in September, saying he wanted to spare his family and the church further humiliation.

Three months later, Il Giornale’s editor Vittorio Feltri — who had penned the initial articles — admitted the document implying Boffo is gay was falsified, and apologized in a front-page letter.

The scandal resurfaced last week when Feltri said the document in question had been given to him by an “institutional” church official whom he trusted.

Some Italian media suggested that the editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, essentially the pope’s mouthpiece, was involved. Others suggested the Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was behind it.

There have been long-running reports in the Italian media of battles between Bertone and the leadership of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, particularly its previous head Cardinal Camillo Ruini. Italian news reports have said Bertone sought to wrest dealings with the Italian government away from the bishops’ conference and had vetoed candidates for the conference leadership who he deemed were too powerful.

Italian newspapers routinely publish unsourced stories about machinations in the Vatican. Rarely, though, do such reports elicit thorough and high-ranking denials.

On Tuesday, however, Bertone issued a statement saying that reports of Vatican involvement were false and that Pope Benedict XVI himself “deplored these unjust and insulting attacks” that were “defaming the Holy See.”

L’Osservatore Romano ran the statement on its front page with a note saying Benedict had approved the text and ordered it published.

The statement — unusual in its line-by-line denial of unsourced rumors — was confirmation that the case had reached the highest echelons of power in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, making clear that the pope had become personally involved.

“The Holy Father Benedict XVI, who has been kept constantly informed, deplores these unjust and injurious attacks, renews his complete faith in his collaborators, and prays that those who truly have the good of the Church to heart may work with all means to ensure that truth and justice triumph,” the statement said.

Feltri, for his part, denied he had ever met Bertone or L’Osservatore’s editor, Giovanni Maria Vian, much less obtained documents from them.

From the Associated Press.

TYLER, Texas – A spate of recent fires that destroyed or damaged several churches in eastern Texas were intentionally set, likely by the same person or group, federal authorities said Tuesday.

Fires that broke out at two churches near Tyler on Monday have not yet been ruled arson, but authorities are investigating them as such. They were reported within an hour of one another and there were signs that at least one of the churches had been broken into.

Since Jan. 1, eight churches — seven in eastern Texas and one in the central part of the state — have been set ablaze deliberately, authorities have said.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is heading the investigation into the blazes, believe they are the work of a serial arsonist or group of arsonists, said Clay Alexander, the head of the bureau’s office in Tyler.

Alexander offered few details about Monday’s blazes, but he said they were being investigated as arsons.

The fires broke out at two churches about three miles apart in a rural area northwest of Tyler, which is about 85 miles southeast of Dallas.

“We would just like to find out why this is going on and please stop it,” Smith County Fire Marshal Jim Seatonsaid.

Nearby fire departments have been on high alert because of the fires, and firefighters from throughout the area responded quickly to the Monday blazes at the Dover Baptist Church and Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church, said Smith County Assistant Fire Marshal Oren Hale.

There were no injuries reported in either fire, but the damage appeared to be extensive, said Hale, who worked at both fire scenes until about 3 a.m. Tuesday.

“They were big ones. They’re not to the ground, but they’ll be total losses,” he said.

Assistant Fire Marshal Connie McCoy-Wasson, who was first on the scene at Clear Spring Missionary Baptist Church, said flames were coming out of the building’s roof when she got there. The back door of the church had been broken, she said.

On Tuesday, the church’s red brick walls were all that remained. It’s pastor, Brandon Owens, said he planned to meet with his congregation of about 50 Tuesday night to figure out where they would worship Sunday.

“I will be preaching,” Owens said. “We will be OK. We’ll still be going.”

The church also burned eight years ago when it was struck by lightning.

Several people gathered Tuesday near the still-smoldering Dover church. Most of sanctuary’s roof had collapsed, but the steeple was still standing.

“It’s heartbreaking,” said 70-year-old Floyd Moseley, a retired Tyler firefighter who used to belong to the church and whose father helped build it.

The church only has about 70 members, with regular Sunday attendance about half of that.

Dover Baptist recently took precautions because of so many church fires, trustee Albert Valadez said. The staff barred the church doors and installed “dummy” inoperable video cameras above the main doors because the church couldn’t afford real video equipment.

“It’s devastating,” Pastor Carl Samples said. “It definitely tests your faith, but I know beyond every doubt that God can see us through.”

The ATF deemed the investigation urgent on Jan. 11, when two churches were torched in nearby Athens, said Alexander. He said agents who were working last weekend’s Super Bowl in Miami were brought in to help.

“We’ve been doing this for a long time,” Alexander said. “We’re not getting a lot of sleep. We’re tired. We’re frustrated that this is continuing to happen. But we remain strong in our belief that we’re going to find who did this.”

Rusk County Sheriff Danny Pirtle asked to meet with area church leaders on Thursday to discuss safety measures.

___

Associated Press Writer John McFarland in Dallas contributed to this report.