Saturday night, what was meant to be an evening of tradition and lightheartedness at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was instead interrupted by violence, reportedly the act of a lone shooter.
Such an event is, in every sense, traumatic and wrong. It should not happen. And yet, in the current political climate, even the response that followed seemed unable to offer the steadiness one longs for in moments like these.
The subsequent press conference — featuring the president flanked by leaders from the FBI, Homeland Security and the acting attorney general — did little to calm the unease. For me, it only deepened a growing sense of frustration and distrust. What might have been a moment for clarity and reassurance became something else entirely, even veering into self-serving rhetoric. The questions from the press, too, seemed to mirror the tone — more spectacle than substance. It left me unsettled.
Brian Henderson
The morning after, however, offered a different kind of encounter.
When I’m in town, I walk to First Presbyterian Church of Cleveland, colloquially known as Old Stone Church, which sits quietly and resolutely on Public Square. It is the oldest building there, a witness to generations of history unfolding around it. And yet, until today, I had somehow overlooked one of its most tangible connections to the past: the great bronze bell resting just outside.
Once suspended in the belfry, it rang out across the city for more than a century. It marked the end of the Civil War in 1865. It tolled as President Lincoln’s funeral procession passed through Cleveland. Although it no longer rings, it remains ever present and enduring.
This morning, I paused. I placed my hand upon its surface, cool and worn by time. And in that simple act, I was reminded: Time moves. Generations come and go. Even the most painful chapters of history, while never erased, do not hold absolute permanence.
“Time moves. Generations come and go. Even the most painful chapters of history, while never erased, do not hold absolute permanence.”
Inside the church, the Lectionary reading from Acts 2:42–47 spoke of early communities — people gathering, sharing, growing, finding their way forward together. It struck me as both timely and ironic. Just this past week, a Hartford Institute of Religion report noted that, for the first time in nearly 25 years, average church attendance has increased. And yet, alongside that rise, so too has a collective anxiety, especially among marginalized, immigrant and LGBTQ communities.
After the reading from Acts 2, during the Prayers of the People, dozens of candles were lit. Each flame carried a story, I imagine, some of grief and hope, and many of uncertainty. As the light grew, so did my awareness: I am not alone. We are not alone.
Soon, in the rhythm of the church calendar, we will encounter another passage from Acts, the story of the Ascension (1:6–11), where Jesus is taken up from the disciples’ sight. I’ve come to see this not simply as a miraculous departure, but as an invitation. An invitation to look up. To widen our field of vision. To resist the temptation to believe the present moment, no matter how fraught, is the final word.
We can convince ourselves that dysfunction, division and distortion are the new normal. Or we can choose something else. We can choose to engage, to challenge, to embody a different way of being, one that confronts empire and resists the pull of narcissism and complicity.
As Seamus Heaney once wrote, it is possible for “hope and history to rhyme.” That hope does not arrive passively. It rises, like a tide, through the persistent, courageous work of people who refuse to let the worst define what is possible.
The days ahead will no doubt carry more anxiety, more frustration. But I will remember the bell at Old Stone Church. I will remember what it has witnessed and what it still proclaims without sound: Even the deepest wrongs do not last forever.
And more than rising attendance numbers, what matters most is this: Our willingness to look beyond the immediate noise, to act on the hope we long to see realized. Perhaps, in doing so, the bells of time will continue to ring, not only as echoes of the past, but as calls into a future still being shaped.
We need to keep looking up even as we organize reality around us as did our ancient forebears.
Brian Henderson serves as executive director of Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.