A GLIMPSE INTO OUR INNER BEINGS: WHAT WE READ

In this space over the last 3 ½ years, we’ve acknowledged drawing on books we’ve read for ideas on matters we see as worth writing

about. We’ve pointed readers to books (The Half Has Never Been Told, The Color of Law, and The Warmth of Other Suns) we regard as essential for understanding race in America. We reviewed one of them (The Color of Law) in explaining America’s chronic housing discrimination problem. And, we drew on Madeline Albright’s Fascism: A Warning, in sounding the alarm about President Donald Trump’s dangerous affinity for dictators.

                      

Reading books defines each of our lives, beyond the utility of their content. We find

solace in the books strewn around our homes and offices and packed onto our shelves. None of us can contemplate a life without books. But, what do we read and why? With each of us, there’s a story offering insight into who we are and how we’ve evolved.   

Henry: Diversity, Diversity, Diversity

Many books I’ve read have taken me places I

couldn’t have imagined and offered context for the jumbled exploration of my own thoughts. From my earliest years, reading provided a spiritual experience in which I could join others in exploring humanity and personal relationships. Even in childhood, I read many

different things in many different areas.  I still do: science fiction like Isaac Asimov’s The Foundation Trilogy and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler; physics, like The Great  Unknown by Marcus Du Sautoy

and Alan Lightman’s Einstein’s Dreams; religion, including The Bible and A History of God by Karen Armstrong; fiction,including mysteries like Walter Mosley’s Down the River Unto the Sea and classics like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, John Updike’s Rabbit Run, and The Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell. In keeping current on events of the day (and in step with my co-authors) I read Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.

                    

Each of these works, and many others I’ve read, remain part of my fabric. This approach

has a drawback. Sometimes, when I go into a bookstore, I find myself happy and sad at the same time – happy because I’m amidst so much knowledge I’d hope I can absorb and sad because I can’t read it all.    

Rob: A Change is Gonna Come

If 25 years ago I’d been asked for an explanation of what I read and why, the answer would have been quite different than what I offer today. Before the late ‘90s, with the exception of trashy

“airport novels” I occupied  myself with on cross country flights, I read nonfiction. My bookshelf included volumes on elections (Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President series), analyses of World War II

(Richard Overy’s Why  the Allies Won), political memoirs (Robert McNamara’s In Retrospect), and biographies of major historical figures (Robert Caro’s The Years of Lyndon Johnson series).

These books brought  me considerable knowledge about a few subjects and I thoroughly enjoyed reading them. But, as I see now, I was missing something. A change was coming.   

In 1999, a friend invited my wife and me into a couples book club. Under its rules, each

person took a turn at picking the book for quarterly dinner meetings. Book club membership changed my reading habits (and my life). During the ensuing 21 years, we’ve read 90 books, about half fiction. I found myself reading, and enjoying, A Confederacy of Dunces, John K. Toole’s wonderful, Pulitzer Prize winning novel  set in

New Orleans, where I once lived, and Stephen King’s 11/22/63,  a time travel novel that presented an entirely different perspective on the JFK assassination. 

My book club experience confirmed the wisdom in the old adage some writers live by: if you want facts, write nonfiction. If you want truth, write fiction. l took that to heart. My

book club experience in hand, and after my wife’s death, I  decided I’d try my hand at writing fiction. I began grabbing more and more novels. I still read lots of nonfiction, but I’m now a confirmed, dedicated fiction reader too.

Woodson: Choices and Goals

My book choices are influenced largely by my life choices and goals. With fewer days left to live than I’ve already lived and with goals remaining, I concentrate my reading on what furthers achievement of my goals.

                        

Because I am a property manager and real estate investor, I read a lot on real estate and economic matters (books like Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Chris Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires, Joseph

Stiglitz’s People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent, and  Property Management Kit for Dummies by  Robert Griswold).  My interest in political and racial issues is satisfied by reading books like Doris Kearns Goodwin’s masterful Team of Rivals and the critically  important That Used to be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World and How We Can Comeback by Tom Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum, Dying of Whiteness by Jonathan Meltz, and

Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Finally, because I participate in several Christian ministries, I read books

on religion, including Systematic Theology by Wayne Grudem, Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive by T.D. Jakes, Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose, and The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav. Then there’s the Holy Bible. I read that too.

                         

As with Henry and Rob, my reading focus developed over time. It reflects life choices

I’ve  made because of my evolution as a person and as a professional, and through recognizing the limitations we all face as humans. Reading remains an essential part of my life.   

            

  

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.