Flashing headlines stopped lesser trains of thought that morning, many of us hearing the news for the first time. The busy flow of strangers and hotel employees walking briskly toward their respective conference rooms stopped, and together we stood watching.
The evening before, a young white male had opened fired on members of a historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. Eight members died at the scene, a ninth at the hospital. The victims—Cynthia, Susie, Ethel, Depayne, Clementa, Tywanza, Daniel, Sharonda, and Myra—ranged in ages from 26 to 87. Together that evening, they had been studying the parable of the sower when twenty-one year old Dylann entered the church quietly and was welcomed at the table. He sat with them as they considered the Gospel of Mark and prayed, and then he stood up, uttered a hateful racial speech, and killed nine people in a house of worship.
In the days following, the Charleston shooting continued to command headlines, though not merely in reports of the horrific details as they unfolded. Dylann Roof was apprehended, details of his background given, acquaintances interviewed, inquires made into the gun he used, theories posited on the mindset that lead up to his terrible course of action. But the tragically familiar flow of details following US shootings was interspersed this time with less familiar reporting. Relatives of the victims gunned down at the church faced Dylann merely a day after his actions, offering striking, but not easy, words of forgiveness and mercy. That Sunday, just four days after fellow congregants and their senior pastor were left in a pool of blood in their basement, the church came together for services, the building having been released as a crime scene only hours earlier. Worship commenced as the standing congregation sang of Christ: You are the source of our strength; You are the strength of our lives. Across the city, churches in unison rang morning worship bells in solidarity with Emmanuel AME Church and the victims lost for nine full minutes—a minute for every victim. That evening, a unity chain of clasped hands extended across the 13,200-foot-long Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge from Charleston to the town of Mount Pleasant. The words and actions inspired by this Christian community in lament were a far cry from the “race war” Dylann vowed to the nine victims he would incite with their deaths.
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