In June 2015, my wife and I were on a mission trip with students at a church where I previously served as a youth pastor. The trip had all the makings of a typical youth excursion; students leaving things behind, the organizations we partnered with falling through in some areas and, of course, having to change a flat tire on the church van.
I swear, I changed a tire on that van once, maybe even twice a year for three years.
Justin Cox
We arrived and experienced some uneventful days before sitting down on the evening of June 17 to have dinner together. Some students were playing board games, some were checking their phones, and others were watching the movie Selma, which I had brought along. About halfway through the film, my wife’s phone started buzzing. There had been a mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C.
Social media began to explode with accounts of what happened at Mother Emanuel AME. I grabbed my phone and told students to do the same as they were informed to contact their parents to let them know we were OK.
You see, we were in Charleston when the shootings happened.
Proximity offers an experience like no other. We heard sirens go by in the home we had rented for the week yet thought nothing of it. As we tuned in to national news outlets, we began to see places and street corners we had just walked down hours before. While phones were being scrolled by everyone, the movie Selma played in the background, depicting the struggle and pursuit of racial equality during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Even then, I saw the significance of what was unfolding. We were watching history and found ourselves smack in the middle of it.
Hearing the tragic news of what took place at Florida State University brought my memories of Charleston that summer flooding back. I remember the initial fear, the anger, the need to want to do something. I wanted to go out into the streets and be present as a faith leader. Yet I had students with me and my responsibility to them took priority.
All my wife, Lauren, and I could do was watch the story unfold as we stayed up late into the night. The next morning, we were scheduled to stop at a local charitable organization for a tour before heading back to eastern North Carolina. I notified them to let them know we were not able to come.
“Instead, I took the students to a memorial service just a few blocks away from Mother Emanuel.”
Instead, I took the students to a memorial service just a few blocks away from Mother Emanuel at Morris Brown AME church.
I could say much about what we all saw and experienced that day. The speakers and the songs sung in and outside the sanctuary. I’ll never hear “This Little Light of Mine” the same way again. Then there was the patrolling bomb squad, the obvious undercover security, and the constant tears flowing around and by us.
When I think back to this horrific display of racism and white supremacy, I push myself to remember the scene inside the Morris Brown sanctuary. I saw clerical collars of all shapes and sizes next to kippahs. I watched imams embrace rabbis while Christian ministers waited for their chance to do the same. I watched one of the biggest men I have ever seen openly sob in front of me. I saw people from all different faith backgrounds lament together.
It’s still one of the closest things to the kin-dom of heaven I believe I’ve ever come in contact with.
This summer will mark a decade since the slaying of nine souls in Charleston. What has changed in that time? Nothing.
Charleston 2015.
Sutherland 2017.
Pittsburgh 2018.
Uvalde 2022
Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Stoneman Douglas.
And now, Tallahassee.
In the wake of another shooting, the talks of how this could have been prevented skyrocket to the surface. People huddle up to their proposed ideologies and accompanying collective groups and hold fast to their believed corrective actions. Some call for gun law reform, while others cry for more guns. Some call for action, while others call for conversation. Some point to the obvious underlying tension of systemic oppression. Others say we as a nation just need to move on from problems like racism and antisemitism because they are perceived to be in the past. These same people often have “Remember 9/11” bumper stickers.
“The United States continues to deny it has a problem.”
No, the United States continues to deny it has a problem, and meanwhile, victims’ bodies continue to pile up.
Since 2015, I’ve seen a lot of talking. I’ve seen a lot of agendas. I’ve seen biased reporting. I’ve seen an unwillingness to hear another side or experience that doesn’t line up with one’s own understanding. I’ve seen police officers at the entrances of places of worship and wonder if this is what we are willing to accept. I’ve seen too much victim-blaming by political leaders.
And I continue to witness these tragedies as the only time people come together.
The sad reality is that maybe these moments are the only opportunity we, as a nation, can feel something about each other. Perhaps we’ve reached a level of apathy that has pushed us off the charts into a realm where the ability to love anything, especially those we consider “others,” is next to impossible. And even when we do, these moments are so compartmentalized we are forced to process and move on as quickly so that we might be ready to do it again a few weeks later.
Maybe that’s why white America has such a hard time understanding transgenerational trauma because it forces us to linger and reflect on inhuman acts committed toward the bodies of Natives and African slaves in the name of Manifest Destiny.
Sitting with that hurts, as it should, because if you spend enough time reflecting, you might realize this isn’t “their problem” but “our problem,” too.
What I’m asking is not a call to come to terms but a call for reconciliation. And it shouldn’t take another shooter and dead students to realize this.
The April 17 tragedy in Tallahassee reminds me of Charleston. The April 27 shooting at Elizabeth City State University does, too. Each is a reminder of what systems of oppression spewing hatefully bent rhetoric propagating elitism can do. It reminds us of our country’s lack or inability to see itself as ever possessing anything resembling fault.
It makes me think our greatest sin is our lack of empathy toward those we’d call neighbors.
Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University and Wake Forest University School of Divinity and is currently enrolled in the doctor of ministry program at McAfee School of Theology. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.