With wood construction and their spire creating a perfect flue, a church building can create quite a spectacular fire. A rural location allows plenty of time before the fire is reported and fire equipment can be brought to bear.
And a lot of rural churches in the south are "predominantly black" churches.
Accordingly, there is a history of church burnings--caused by arsonists without any racist motive.
True and on the non arson side of it many are heated by gas furnace. The Pilot Light goes out and the safety valve fails to cut off gas. We had this happen at our church fortunately it didn't explode and burn. The person who opened the doors on Sunday smelled gas and didn't flip a switch but did leave the door open to vent it out.
A perfect example of the saying:
“Correlation is NOT causation”.