He shot them at prayer meeting. On June 17, in the year of our Lord 2015, a 21-year-old white supremacist millennial named Dylann Roof shot nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in cold blood at Wednesday evening prayer meeting. Prayer meeting: A midweek gathering common among American Protestant congregations, especially in the South. Prayer meeting: A mostly mundane event that draws the truly faithful for intercessory prayer and Bible study. After June 17, prayer meeting is no longer a safe place in American churches.
When he first showed up that Wednesday, Dylann Roof was apparently welcomed by the small band of black women and men gathered at “Mother Emanuel” Church. Word is that Roof, determined to start a “race war,” didn’t walk in shooting, but waited about an hour before pulling out the automatic pistol he had bought with money he received for his 21st birthday. Perhaps their kindness in welcoming the stranger threw him off his plan of premeditated murder. Yet once his hatred exploded, and multiple ammunition clips were emptied, nine African Americans were dead, including the church’s pastor, Clementa Pinckney.
Responses were immediate and poignant: candlelight vigils, peaceful public demonstrations in Charleston and across the country. Americans have become all too studied in ways to respond to mass shootings. Questions of forgiveness covered a wide spectrum. For some Christians the grace of forgiveness comes quickly; for others, forgiveness is a “kingdom of God” grace that is a long time coming. Both are responses are complex; both are gospel. There is no grace in manipulating either.
At such moments symbols matter. Roof’s online racist rants included photos of the Confederate Battle Flag, long a negative symbol connected to slavery, Jim Crow and the KKK. In the aftermath of the murders, momentum surged for removal of the flag from its public position in front of the South Carolina statehouse. Other Southern states have initiated similar responses. Walmart and other retailers moved to remove Confederate-flag-merchandise from their stores. Numerous political leaders, including Republicans long hesitant to eliminate all public use of the flag, tendered their support, but not without controversy. Rush Limbaugh fretted that the whole intent was to undermine the South politically and that the American flag would be next on removal the list.William Krystol warned that “the Left” would next coopt Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address because it called for “charity for all and malice toward none.” (How many people have to die before some people cease such trivializing?)
In a continuing response to issues raised by the Charleston shootings, the African Methodist Episcopal Church joins the Freedom Sunday Coalition of the National African American Clergy Network, the New Baptist Covenant, and other church-related groups in promoting Sunday, July 5 as Freedom from Racism Sunday. Organizers are providing materials to focus worship, Bible studies and discussion groups around issues of “repentance, confession and healing” regarding race and racism in America’s past and present. Churches across the racial and denominational spectrum are encouraged to utilize Freedom from Racism Sunday in ways that may be most helpful to their specific congregation.
The struggle for freedom from racism on July 5 and beyond might include the following:
First, who taught a 21-year-old man-child to hate black people? What are the sources of hate-mongering and white supremacy in 21st-century America? How many young people are being recruited as a new generation of racial bigots? What concrete actions might churches take for engaging persons young and old in understanding and moving beyond the evil of racial prejudice and anti-race violence?
Second, how might churches begin or extend race-based dialogues in specific regions and communities? What strategies for specific action against racism might be forged by coalitions new or newly committed to fighting racism?
Third, what do the murders suggest about violence, particularly firearm violence, throughout American culture? For several years, I have encouraged churches to develop training programs and response teams for confronting firearm violence when it (inevitably) occurs among us. As firearm expansion remains legislatively normative, these teams become increasingly essential.
Finally, churches might redouble efforts to provide Christian education in the long history of race, not only as it has impacted the American nation, but also shaped biblical interpretation, religious dissent, and the often mixed messages of Christ’s Church. The gospel offers a dynamic alternative to the racial narratives of hate-groups. Best not suppose that individuals know that history and the prophets of racial reconciliation. Dylann Roof certainly did not.
In a 1965 essay entitled The Luminous Darkness, prophet-mystic Howard Thurman wrote of race in America: “The walls that divide must be demolished. They must be cast down, destroyed, uprooted. This is beyond debate. … These barriers must be seen for what they are, a disease of our society, the enemy of human decency and humane respect. … The removal of the walls is the first step in the attack on the mood of which they are a manifestation.”
We’ve been taking that “first step” for a long time. Let’s get on down the road to greater freedom from racism as fast as we can.
Related story: Churches urged to make July 5 ‘Freedom from Racism Sunday’