GUNBATTLES IN CHURCH: AN AMERICAN PLAGUE

All three of us grew up attending church regularly and we still do. In our early lives, we never, ever worried about our personal

safety while in church. How things have changed. Attacks on worshippers at a Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas near Ft. Worth and  at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in Monsey, New York just before the end of 2019  illustrated the vulnerability of all kinds of faith communities. The situation has gotten bad

enough that last summer the Federal Bureau of Investigation invited religious leaders from across the country to a meeting in Washington on how houses of worship can protect congregants from violent attack. 

A Brutal, Hateful HistoryiHHi

Overwhelmingly, church shootings appear motivated by hate of members of the religious group attacked:

*In 2015, acknowledged white supremacist Dylan Roof killed nine black congregants engaged in bible study at the “Mother”  Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof, who’s been sentenced to death, posted racist statements on line before he acted.

                     

*In May 2019, a Nashville, Tennessee jury convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment 27-year old Emanuel Samson after he shot and killed one person and wounded seven others at a Church of Christ in Antioch, Tennessee. Prosecutors asserted Samson acted in retaliation for the Charleston massacre. 

                      

*On October 27, 2018, a gunman who had posted anti - Jewish rantings on line, killed 11 and wounded six at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

                        

*Six people died in an attack on a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin on August 5, 2012, by a U.S. Army veteran who’d immersed himself in the white power music scene in North Carolina.

                      

*As early as July 2008, an unemployed truck driver named Jim David Adkisson shot and killed two people and wounded six others at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. Authorities found a manifesto in Adkisson’s car expressing his hatred for liberals, Democrats, blacks, and gays.

                     

Motives for some church shootings have remained murky, such as in the killing of 26 people at a Baptist church in Sulphur Springs, Texas in November 2017. The investigation into the White Settlement, Texas incident remains open and the motive, if known to authorities, hasn’t been disclosed.

                      

How Much Security?

Religious leaders, in light of this ghastly

history, now face questions about how they secure their places of worship without turning them into fortresses. The White Settlement Church, ten years ago, formed a security team made up of trained, armed volunteers. Church leaders there credited the security team with saving “a lot of lives” when they noticed the gunman “acting suspiciously” and shot him during a gun battle that erupted just before communion. Two members of that security team died in the attack.

Some congregations employ uniformed security officers who patrol the premises during services, looking for people who seem out of place or are, as in the case of the White Settlement attack, “acting suspiciously.”  Some houses of worship, though not all, arm these officers. The presence of uniformed officers certainly could deter potential attacks. If a shooter opens fire and the officers are not armed, however, an outcome like that in White Settlement with a limited loss of life, might not materialize.

  

Some religious organizations aren’t comfortable with weapons on their premises while they conduct services, whether in the possession of security personnel or potential attackers. The prospect of gun battles, especially involving untrained volunteers, creates almost as much fear among some religious leaders and congregants as having no security at all. Not all churches, especially small ones, can afford a uniformed security force.

Recent events, noted one leader of a Jewish organization formed in response to security threats, have accentuated the reality that attacks on places of worship “can happen

anywhere.” Our own review of the history of church attacks shows that no religion, denomination, area, or ideology is safe. Conservative evangelicals in rural churches, Jews in urban synagogues, African Americans in small city churches, and liberals in progressive havens have all suffered violent attacks in the last 12 years.  It’s become a universal, non-discriminatory problem.

Our Take

We are not security experts. None of us have been trained in the methodology of law enforcement, police work, or prevention of criminal conduct. We will not, therefore, suggest how places of worship should best protect themselves from violent attack. Doing so would involve us in speculation, and conjecture, a venture we decline.

We have different faith histories and practices. Religion plays varying roles in our lives and religion’s impact may change from time to time within our lives. We do find the attacks of recent years troubling because they threaten a basic freedom we cherish about our American citizenship – the right of worshiping in the way we see fit, without governmental or other interference. Exercising that right necessarily requires a measure of personal safety and security.

That’s why we see this issue as so important and why local, state, and national leader in religion and law enforcement must address it.

A Matter of Faith: Three Approaches to Religion

We haven’t spent much time writing about it yet, but as will become evident as this blog continues and in our memoir, all three of us take matters of religion and faith quite seriously.  Though we grew up in traditional, all-black, Protestant (Baptist and Methodist) churches, each of us has taken a spiritual journey that puts us in a different place from where we began all those years ago. With this piece, we start periodic exploration of our journeys in an effort to convey the faith experiences that have taken us to the spiritual spots in which we now reside.

Who we worship with represents one issue we think many may find interesting, given where we started. The issue isn’t insignificant. One of us views the ethnic and racial composition of a congregation as a defining factor in the substance of his faith.  Another of us finds himself torn between an ideal and the practical when it comes to the need for and function of congregations composed of certain kinds of people.  Finally, one of us puts his focus on the theology of his places of worship, sacrificing undoubtedly desirable demographic characteristics for theological purity. None of these approaches is necessarily “right” or “wrong.”  They are just “different” and explain an important component of our religious and spiritual existence.

Woodson’s Mosaic Woodson attends and participates actively in a multi-ethic, multi-cultural, socio-economically diverse church.  Mosaic of Little Rock operates from a decidedly Christian perspective and its members, by and large, strongly profess a belief in redemption and salvation through Jesus Christ as personal lord and savior.  They present varying denominational histories and, most important, arrive at the church from a potpourri of racial and ethnic backgrounds, widely varying economic and social strata, and lacking the homogeneity typically associated with churches in the United States.  If 11 a.m. Sunday remains, as Martin Luther King once said, the most segregated hour in America, Mosaic’s members opted out of that circumstance some time ago.  

Mosaic’s big tent character, for Woodson, includes a substantive theological component.  He says, “Worshiping in a multi-ethnic church demonstrates our commitment as co-laborers with God in bringing the Peace of heaven to earth.” He adds, “If the Kingdom of Heaven is not segregated, then why should the local church on earth be? Failure to overcome racial division within the church makes us less credible witnesses to the faith.” He roots in scripture his view that worshiping in a diverse church means something real spiritually. He cites John 17:21-22, quoting Jesus speaking to God: “That all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. [22] And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them: that they may be one, even as we are one.”   An adherent of the multi-ethnic church sees joining together different kinds of people in worship as a way of bringing people together spiritually, economically, and politically and, therefore, to bring God to all people.

That Old Time Religion Mosaic, and fast growing churches like it (many Christian denominations stagnate or shrink now), may represent a new ideal that connects different cultures. Henry, however, still sees a need for “a place that offers rest for the weary.” Despite his hope and wish that congregations “care not at all about skin colors or the diverse cultures within,” a need remains for churches that primarily serve the spiritual and practical needs of particular ethnic populations. Given what he calls “cultural reality,” he acknowledges settling for a place called “the black church,” despite his desire for a different world. In other words, the practicalities of race and racism demand the continuing existence of places that primarily serve the needs of a historically disenfranchised group. These churches, for example, help preserve a history too often overlooked.

Henry prefers “to express my love in a place where diversity reigns and understanding abounds.”  But, he knows, the realities of America, even in 2017, do not always make that possible. Ministries that focus on the black community remain essential to the spiritual needs of many black people.  Community service that black churches render represents a significant part of the continuing need for such places.  So, Henry attends Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia, an iconic black church that traces its history to 1803. According to Henry, it serves a need and that’s just a fact.

Purity   Rob, for the majority of his adult life, has attended Unitarian Universalist Churches.  He’s been a member at Northwoods UU in The Woodlands, Texas since 1991. In the last few years, as his interest in and affinity for progressive Christianity deepened and expanded, he has sometimes attended United Church of Christ (UCC) churches.  These UU and UCC churches are overwhelmingly white, raising the issue of how much it matters what one’s fellow travelers should look like. Theology, not demographics, determines his answer.  That theology makes God as an all-encompassing concept with no all-powerful deity ruling the world and envisions Jesus not as savior but as a human, historical figure who walked the earth for an all-too-brief period teaching timeless lessons that remain models for living.        

Having attended Mosaic with Woodson, Rob finds that church’s diversity amazing, almost seductive.  Mosaic “looks like America,” to quote a former President. He admires the ministerial outreach and commitment to social justice at Alfred Street that Henry reports.  But, he knows, he could never attend either on a regular basis because the theology doesn’t match. The theology at his UU and UCC churches defines church for him. Nothing about the color of the people in the pews changes that.

So, there are three ways of looking at this. How do you look at it?