In my original post on the Alabama Church Burnings, I speculated that the arsons were the work of Satanists, based on talking with several people who lived in the vicinity of the burnings, and the evidence of a cow that had been shot to death near one of the churches.

What I didn’t print at the time was my initial cynical (that word means something, OK?) thought that since all the churches were Baptist churches, “It must’ve been those darn Methodists” who committed the crimes. In my part of the country, the different denominations joke with each other frequently about such things. I didn’t print it because I didn’t feel that such a serious subject should be joked about.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered today that two students from Birmingham-Southern College — a Methodist-affiliated college — have been arrested for the crimes. The Birmingham News has the story:

Two Birmingham-Southern College students — Ben Moseley and Russell Debusk — were arrested overnight and brought to the federal courthouse this morning.

The third suspect, UAB student Matthew Lee Cloyd, remains at large.

Cloyd, a junior at the university, transferred to UAB in the fall of 2005 from another Birmingham college, said UAB spokesman Gary Mans.

Cloyd’s car, a dark green Toyota 4Runner with a wildlife tag, matched that of witness reports in the area of the fires, according to federal sources. Authorities used imprints of tire tracks left at the scene to help track down the suspects, sources said.

Federal agents worked throughout the night to track down Cloyd, but he continued to elude them.

Moseley and Debusk were arrested on campus. School officials said they couldn’t say much about the investigation.

Now before the comments start, in no way do I believe that Methodists were responsible for the church burnings. I do believe that three misguided individuals — two of whom happened to attend a Methodist college — committed some terrible crimes. Methodists had no more to do with these crimes than the average Muslim had to do with 9/11.

I cannot understand the motivations of anyone who would burn down a small country church, attended by hard-working individuals whose only desire was to worship God as they pleased in their own communities, but I have faith that our criminal justice system can teach them the error of their ways, and demonstrate to them how much better off they’d be if they’d just managed to be a little smarter.

To paraphrase a quote I made in the video accompanying my first post on this subject, rednecks punks who start church fires aren’t known for their intellect or their cunning around my part of the country, and I have no doubt that these idiots left enough evidence behind to put them in the slammer for a very long time.

Matthew Lee Cloyd, grow a brain and turn yourself in, quickly. We don’t want you to get hurt. Just punished.

UPDATE: Matthew Lee Cloyd has been caught!

TD