Prayers for the Charleston Martyrs and America

America was again shocked, embittered, if not enraged, after a mass murderer shot nine persons to death in a church during bible study on a Wednesday night, June 17, in Charleston, S.C.

The suspected killer, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, was arrested in North Carolina June 18, as photos of him were viewed around the word as deeply as his mass sins were felt.

The suspect entered Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, a historically black church on Calhoun Street, to sit near and observe those in prayer and reading the bible. After an hour, allegedly, the hate-filled white racist pulled out his .45 caliber pistol, which he’d gotten as a birthday present, and took away those lives that would be the opposite of his: a reverend, a coach, a librarian, a lovely old lady.

According to the Charleston Courier & Post, Charleston County Corner Rae Wooten identified the victims who died as:

— State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, the church’s pastor;

— Cynthia Hurd, 54, St. Andrews regional branch manager for the Charleston County Public Library system;

— Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, a church pastor, speech therapist and coach of the girls’ track and field team at Goose Creek High School;

— Tywanza Sanders, 26, who had a degree in business administration from Allen University, where Pinckney also attended;

— Ethel Lance, 70, a retired Gilliard Center employee who worked recently as a church janitor;

— Susie Jackson, 87, Lance’s cousin who was named by a relative and was a longtime church member.
relative and was a longtime church member;

— Depayne Middleton Doctor, 49, who retired in 2005 as Charleston County director of the Community Development Block Grant Program;

— Mira Thompson, 59, a pastor at the church;

— Daniel Simmons Sr., 74, who died in a hospital operating room.

“They say to each of us, black and white alike, that we must substitute courage for caution. They say to us that we must be concerned not merely with [about] who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderers. Their death says to us that we must work passionately and unrelentingly for the realization of the American Dream,” said President Barack Obama, quoting Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., of racist murders a half century earlier, to illuminate a path to a place beyond the Charleston massacre. Next to him somberly stood Vice President Joe Biden before the press June 18 in the White House briefing room.

“Now is the time for mourning and for healing,” the president said. “But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen in other places with this kind of frequency. And it is in our power to do something about it.”

“I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it, and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.”

“The fact that this took place in a black church obviously also raises questions about a dark part of our history. This is not the first time that black churches have been attacked. And we know that hatred across races and faiths pose a particular threat to our democracy and our ideals.”

“The good news is I am confident that the outpouring of unity and strength and fellowship and love across Charleston today, from all races, from all faiths, from all places of worship indicates the degree to which those old vestiges of hatred can be overcome.”

Indeed, services and meeting in prayers happened in the city of the latest mass murder as well as in the nation’s capital as lawmakers joined in prayer. “A church should be one of the safest places on the planet,” said Senate Chaplain Barry Black. “God is near to the broken-hearted, and that would match South Carolina and all of us today,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.).

“And if one will hold on, he will discover that God walks with him, and that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace,” said Obama, invoking King’s remarks about the murder of four black girls at Selma, Alabama, church, in 1964.

The president concluded: “Reverend Pinckney and his congregation understood that spirit.  Their Christian faith compelled them to reach out not just to members of their congregation, or to members of their own communities, but to all in need.  They opened their doors to strangers who might enter a church in search of healing or redemption.”

“Mother Emanuel church and its congregation have risen before –- from flames, from an earthquake, from other dark times -– to give hope to generations of Charlestonians. And with our prayers and our love, and the buoyancy of hope, it will rise again now as a place of peace.”