On Wednesday night, June 17, a young man walked into the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, where people had gathered for Bible study and prayer. After sitting with them for about an hour, he began making racist statements about black people, then opened fire on the group. Eight people, including the pastor, died on the scene and another died at the hospital.

And so we pray this news...

God of Mercy and Comfort,

Hear our thoughts and prayers about this news.

Another gunman has killed many people in another community.
We are saddened but we are not shocked.
This kind of thing has become so common in the United States.

But every life is special.
Every death must be honored.

We will not just lump the tragedy in Charlestown together with the murders in Columbine, Ft. Hood, Aurora, Oak Creek, Newtown, and so many other places.

Every life is special.
Every death must be honored.

Some reporters have called the Charleston killings "unthinkable."
But these murders were thought through in advance.

Some have called this tragedy "unspeakable." But as Charles F. Pierce wrote in Esquire:
"What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is 'unspeakable.' We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was. We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was. … We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. And we should speak of it as one more example of all of these, another link in a bloody chain of events that reaches all the way back to African wharves and Southern docks. It is not an isolated incident, not if you consider history as something alive that can live and breathe and bleed."

Holy One,
Help us to think about this tragedy.
Help us to speak out about what it is and what is signifies.

And give us the courage to act on our thoughts and words,
to stand up to violence of all kinds and the attitudes and policies that spawn it.
Amen.


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