At my church on Sunday, June 28, we sang a new hymn printed in the bulletin. It was They Met to Read the Bible by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette, a pastor from Wilmington, Delaware, to the tune of Beneath the Cross of Jesus (ST. CHRISTOPHER 7.6.8.6.8.6.8.6):
They met to read the Bible,
they gathered for a prayer,
They worshiped God and shared with friends
and welcomed strangers there.
They went to church to speak of love,
To celebrate God’s grace.
O Lord, we tremble when we hear
What happened in that place.O God of love and justice,
we thank you for the nine.
I then realized this song was in specific response to the Charleston shooting, and I could barely finish singing it, because I was sobbing too much.
Here are stories in The New Yorker and the Presbyterian Church USA News.
Meanwhile:
Obama’s Graceful Pause in Charleston. “The power in the president’s eulogy for Clementa Pinckney came not from his singing, but from the silence that preceded it.”
A string of fires in the South at black churches is being investigated. One church burned by the Ku Klux Klan 20 years ago in South Carolina apparently was NOT arson, this time.
The Ku Klux Klan has a permit to protest the removal of the Confederate flag on July 18 at the South Carolina Statehouse, “with the group calling accused mass murderer Dylann Roof a ‘young warrior.'” Actually, I think this is great. Seriously. It puts to lie the notion that the Confederate battle flag was just some quaint artifact of the past, but is still a symbol of hate and oppression.
There is an open carry bill – that means guns- in the South Carolina state legislature. Hope it doesn’t pass anytime soon.
A creepy tragedy !!
Those dumb Klux. They’re in the same boat as Westboro: the one reserved for pariahs.
There is no excuse for the KKK and other groups that promote this type of caustic hatred. I’m not one who thinks the Confederate flag needs to be flown in any official government capacity. It is part of US history and as such, a part we should never forget.
Still working on my own post on Charleston. I’ve had a lot of experiences and conversations lately that are impacting the post.
One example was last night at a party. The conversation wandered over to the Confederate Flag. One person was really adamant that people were “over reacting” to the flag. A lot of people were upset about painting over the flag on the Dukes of Hazard General Lee.
I didn’t say anything directly because I just didn’t want to get into an argument with the particularly loud idiot that was very upset.
But I was really upset that so many people agreed that the flag was okay in a lot of circumstances. With the exception of Loud Idiot, I don’t think that anybody there was a racist, just “small town white folk.”
Everybody at the party was white. I wondered if people would say the same things if a black person was in the room. Maybe I should have asked that out loud.
Please let me know when you do. In brief, I believe that, in May 2015, people were UNDERreacting to the flag. So it evens out.