Christian Faith
Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, has been at the front of news since it suffered an attack last Wednesday evening. A group was meeting in fellowship to pray and study the Bible with their pastor, Rev. Clementa Pinckney, also a state senator. A visitor in the group sat with them for one hour before drawing out a gun and killing nine people, including the pastor, and critically wounding others.
In reaction, some, including media, worried that the most common recent reactions to such tragedies--protests growing into violence--would be the case; because the congregation of the church is historically black and the attacker who killed on Wednesday night is white. (Investigation into the shooter's behavior showed evidence of racist motivations.)
However, the remaining church members quickly united in a rare example of faith. Amid their pain and the shocking awareness that evil had entered their church in deadly disguise, they chose to rely upon God. The church has called the slain Christians "the Mother Emanuel Nine."
From USA Today online (with video), the words on Sunday of interim pastor Rev. Norvel Goff:
"A lot of people expected us to do something strange and to break out in
a riot.
Well, they just don't know us. We are people of
faith....
"The blood of the Mother Emmanuel Nine requires us to work until not
only justice in this case, but for those who are still living in the
margin of life,
those who are less fortunate than ourselves, that we stay on the battlefield
until there is no more fight to be fought."
those who are less fortunate than ourselves, that we stay on the battlefield
until there is no more fight to be fought."
Our nation hungers and thirsts for righteousness, for cleansed hearts in spiritual revival. Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, shows signs of the spark of revival that through the ages has often ignited from events of persecution.
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