USA | Black church to hold first service since shootings

Emanuel AME Church stands in the background as a mourner visits a sidewalk memorial in memory of the shooting victims, in Charleston, S.C.

Members of a historic black church in the U.S. were to return to their sanctuary yesterday and worship less than a week after a white gunman killed nine people there, and similar sermons of recovery and healing will reverberate throughout the country.
Yesterday morning was to mark the first worship service at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church since Dylann Roof, 21, sat among a Bible study group and opened fire after saying that he targeted them because they were black, authorities said. The church pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was also a state senator, was among the dead.
Events to show solidarity were planned throughout the city and beyond, including the synchronized ringing of church bells at 10 a.m. (US time). South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and her family were to attend the service at Emanuel.
Despite grim circumstances the congregation has been faced with, the welcoming spirit Roof exploited before the shooting is still alive, church members said.
Harold Washington, 75, expects the sanctuary to host even more newcomers after one shattered the group’s sense of peace and security.
“We’re gonna have people come by that we’ve never seen before and will probably never see again, and that’s OK,” he said Saturday. “It’s a church of the Lord, you don’t turn nobody down.”
Church leaders will try to address the heavy psychological burdens parishioners bring with them.
“I think just because of what people have gone through emotions are definitely heightened, not just in Charleston but with anyone going to church because it is such a sacred place, it is such a safe place,” Shae Edros, 29, said after a multiracial group of women sang “Amazing Grace” outside the church Saturday afternoon.
“To have something like that completely shattered by such evil — I think it will be in the back of everyone’s heads, really,” Erdos said. Erdos was planning on attending Sunday service in nearby Mount Pleasant.
The suburb is connected to Charleston by the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, where people were expected to join hands in solidarity yesterday evening. The bridge’s namesake is a former state lawmaker and a vocal Confederate flag supporter.
Roof had been photographed with the flag several times before the shooting.
Unity Church of Charleston the Rev. Ed Kosak said delivering Sunday morning’s sermon would be emotionally taxing but he felt empowered by the strength and grace Emanuel members have shown — a demeanor he said has set the tone for religious leaders everywhere.
“I’ve gone into Sunday sermons before like when Virginia Tech happened, and when the Sikh shootings happened”, Kosak said. The situation in Charleston may be harder to give a sermon on because it hits so close to home. But, Kosak said, “I am more ready than ever to speak to this tragedy in ways I didn’t think I could before.” Phillip Lucas, Charleston, AP

Protesters, politicians: take down confederate flag

Crowds of protesters and two prominent Republicans on Saturday called for removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of South Carolina Statehouse following the massacre by a white gunman at a historically black church. The man charged in Wednesday’s nine killings, Dylann Storm Roof, 21, held the Confederate flag in a photograph on a website and displayed the flags of defeated white-supremacist governments in Africa on his Facebook page. On Saturday evening, a substantial crowd rallied outside the Statehouse, calling on officials to take down the flag originally flown by the pro-slavery South during the 1861-65 American Civil War. “We must put that flag in its place as a part of history,” said Sarah Leverette, a 95-year-old civil rights activist, who attended the protest. Bringing it down, she added, means the nine people killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal on Wednesday night, have not died in vain. On Saturday, Republican South Carolina state Sen. Doug Brannon said he would now introduce a bill to remove the flag entirely.