St.Petersburg Times, Tampa edition, reports this arson attempt at Temple Terrace, Florida.
The original story Temple Terrace police find burned Bible on altar in Masonic lodge, arrest man inside for arson reads:
TEMPLE TERRACE — An alarm sounded just before midnight Monday at the Masonic Lodge, 11807 N 56th St. A police officer arrived soon after.
This is what Officer C. Morris wrote in the report:
The window was broken, fingerprints fresh.
Inside, a burned Masonic Bible lay atop a damaged altar.
Nearby was Tod Redman Stewart, a 34-year-old homeless man. He was arrested at 12:27 a.m. and booked into a Hillsborough County jail.
This was the same man who set fire to a flag outside the U.S. District Courthouse in downtown Tampa three times — once in 2007 and twice in 2006.
On Sept. 14, 2007, a Times reporter watched as three officers and a couple of federal marshals surrounded him on the same spot of sidewalk he’d chosen twice before. Stewart ranted about a government conspiracy.
He waved paperwork showing that prosecutors ended up dropping previous flag burning cases, because doing so isn’t illegal.
…His charges: burglary of an unoccupied structure, first-degree arson and criminal mischief to a place of worship.
It’s a sad and tragic story when demented individuals see conspiracies everywhere. But the point in mentioning this story at all is the individual got arrested for arson to A PLACE OF WORSHIP.
We work so hard to convince people that Freemasonry is not a religion and come to find out that the authorities classify us as a house of worship. Would they say the same thing about the Elks?
If legally we are considered a church then we are one no matter how much we protest to the contrary.