From the Associated Press.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – The latest episode of satirical cartoon show “South Park” has been censored after a radical Muslim group threatened the show’s creators for their depiction of the Prophet Mohammed.

A spokesman for the Comedy Central television channel confirmed to AFP that the network had added a series of audio bleeps to the episode broadcast late Wednesday, which effectively removed all references to Prophet Mohammed.

“I can confirm that Comedy Central added additional audio bleeps after the cut of the episode was delivered by the producers,” the spokesman said.

Comedy Central would not confirm that the changes were linked to statements made by the New York-based Revolution Muslim group earlier this week.

The extremist group said South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker risked the same fate as slain Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered by a Muslim extremist in Amsterdam in 2004.

Revolution Muslim posted the address of Stone and Parker’s Los Angeles production offices, but denied they were encouraging violence.

“We have to warn Matt and Trey that what they are doing is stupid and they will probably wind up like Theo van Gogh for airing this show,” the group said.

A spokesman for the group denied the statement was an incitement.

“Revolution Muslim only wants those offended to be able to voice their opposition by letters to the show’s creators,” a spokesman told CNN.

The Muslim group’s statement followed the April 14 episode of “South Park,” where the Prophet Mohammed appeared wearing a bear mascot costume in order to avoid his image being shown.

“South Park,” which follows the surreal and often profane adventures of four schoolchildren in a fictitious Colorado town, has regularly lampooned religions during its 13 years on the air.

Atlantic Online blogger Andrew Sullivan accused Comedy Central of “wussing out” by censoring Wednesday’s episode.

“‘South Park’ has long had Jesus and Satan, they have ridiculed Mormonism, eviscerated Scientology, mocked Catholicism and showed the Buddha actually doing lines of coke,” Sullivan noted.

“None of the adherents of these other faiths have threatened to kill Matt and Trey, but, of course, some Sunni Islamists did so. So what does Comedy Central do? They wussed out even further.”

Cartoon depictions of the Prophet Mohammed in Scandinavian media outlets in recent years have led to violence and plots to murder those responsible.

In 2005, Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published 12 drawings focused on Islam, several of which were seen as linking the religion and the Prophet Mohammed to modern terrorism and suicide bombings.

The cartoons led to angry protests by Muslims worldwide, leaving dozens of people dead and causing major damage to Danish embassies and other facilities.

Rocked by evidence of protecting offender priests and with Pope Benedict XVI under fire for letting sex abuse cases go rampant, the Catholic Church stands in the midst of one of the most widely publicized scandals of the decade. What is the Vatican’s response to the clerical reproach that has the entire world waiting for justice? Simply put, “Civil law concerning reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed,” a statement published online which calls all bishops to report suspected or known abusers to police.

This statement, implemented Apr. 12, does not address allegations that the Catholic Church has been concealing these sex abuse cases nor does it address the fact that its confidentiality clause allows for offender priests to thwart and bypass justice. Although the Vatican claims the policy has always been in effect, it has never been enforced until now. Still, victims have argued that it is too late for this policy to be mandated and that if they really wanted to enforce this rule, the Vatican would have made a public announcement instead on relying on the internet to deal with such an important issue. It is also unclear about actions taken for failure to report and punishment for offender priests who actually are reported. In addition, people are questioning how reliable or trustworthy bishops or other clergymen will be in reporting these crimes and just how willing they are to turn in their associates. Such is the case with a 1985 letter that reveals Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, postponing a decision to defrock a priest for “the good of the Universal Church” after waiting years to answer a request about a priest who molested children in California.

Others are skeptical of the effectiveness of the policy and even move for harsher punishment: “Let’s keep this in perspective: it’s one sentence and it’s virtually nothing unless and until we see tangible signs that bishops are responding,” said Joelle Casteix, director for the Survivors Network for Those Abused by Priests. “One sentence can’t immediately reverse centuries of self-serving secrecy. It would be far more effective to fire or demote bishops who have clearly endangered kids and enabled abuse and hid crimes, than to add one sentence to a policy that is rarely followed with consistency.”

From the Associated Press.

LAKEWOOD, N.J. – Environmental regulators in New Jersey are trying to decide what to do about an unlicensed religious artifact burial site.

A rabbi coordinated the dumping of 2,000 trash bags full of Jewish text and clothing on private land in Lakewood during Passover. Orthodox Jews are not permitted to discard the items, called shaimos, by normal means.

Some neighbors complained, calling it an illegal dump. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection issued a warning last week and ordered that the site be cleaned up.

The agency, however, says it is sensitive to the religion’s requirements. For now, it is allowing the bags to stay until it decides how to relocate them.

The rabbi is expected to discuss options with DEP officials next week.

___

Information from: Asbury Park Press, http://www.app.com

From the Associated Press.

VATICAN CITY – Archbishop Jose Gomez was named Tuesday to succeed the archbishop of Los Angeles, the Holy See’s most significant acknowledgment to date of the growing importance of Latinos in the American church.

The appointment is also evidence that Pope Benedict XVI wants a strong defender of orthodoxy leading the largest diocese in the nation: Gomez, 58, is an archbishop of Opus Dei, the conservative movement favored by the Vatican.

The Mexican-born Gomez was named coadjutor for Los Angeles, which means he will take over the archdiocese when the current archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony retires on Feb. 27 next year, his 75th birthday.

The appointment of Gomez, who now leads the Archdiocese of San Antonio, puts him in line to become the highest-ranking Latino in the American Catholic hierarchy and the first Latino cardinal in the U.S.

Hispanics comprise 70 percent of the 5 million Catholics in the Los Angeles archdiocese, and more than one-third of the 65 million Catholics in the United States. In a separate nod to Latino Catholics, Benedict in 2007 named the first cardinal for heavily Latino Texas, Archbishop Daniel N. DiNardo of Galveston-Houston.

“This just recognizes the reality on the ground that the center of gravity of U.S. Catholicism is moving to the South and West and is becoming increasingly Hispanic,” said David Gibson, a Catholic author who writes about religion for PoliticsDaily.com.

Mahony, who was dogged by the clergy sex abuse scandal, developed a reputation during his quarter-century tenure in Los Angeles as a liberal-leaning leader and was often the target of Catholic conservatives. Under church rules, bishops submit their resignations at age 75, but the pope often asks prelates to stay in their posts for several years more.

Mahony, nicknamed “Hollywood” because he was born there, is the longest-serving U.S. cardinal since theSecond Vatican Council, the modernizing reform conferences of the 1960s.

Gomez was scheduled to appear at a morning news conference in the Los Angeles cathedral. The pope will likely name Gomez a cardinal in the future, given that Los Angeles is such a large and important archdiocese whose leader has traditionally worn a red hat.

The new coadjutor said in a statement that he was grateful for the appointment and the trust that the Vatican’s nuncio had in him. “I will try with all my strength to earn that trust,” he said.

Gomez will have to oversee the fallout from the abuse scandal that came to light during Mahony’s tenure.

In 2007, Mahony agreed to a record-setting $660 million settlement with more than 500 alleged victims of clergy abuse.

A federal grand jury is also investigating how the Archdiocese of Los Angeles handled claims of abuse, and has subpoenaed several witnesses, including a former Los Angeles priest convicted of child molestation and a monsignor who served as vicar for clergy under Mahony.

Mahony’s attorney has said the cardinal is not a target of the investigation.

Gomez will face scrutiny of his own track record on responding to abuse claims in his previous posts. The abuse crisis, which had eased in the U.S., has gained new attention because of a flood of new cases in Europe.

Gomez was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and studied theology at the University of Navarra in Spain. He was ordained an Opus Dei priest in 1978 and worked in the Galveston-Houston area and in Denver before being named archbishop of San Antonio in 2004.

Opus Dei was founded by Saint Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer in Spain in 1928. Escriva held that sainthood could be achieved by anyone, from homemaker to professional, by carrying out everyday tasks extraordinarily well.

The movement, which enjoys a unique status at the Vatican, was depicted as a murderous cult in Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code,” which Opus members and the Vatican have denounced as defaming the church.

Hispanics are the fastest-growing group in the American Catholic church. More than 50 percent of U.S. Catholics under age 25 are of Latino heritage, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

___

Associated Press religion writer Rachel Zoll contributed from New York.

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.