Nine parishioners are dead, including a state senator, in an attack being described as a hate crime.

[Hiraeth]

Could we not argue that America is about freedom—whether we live it out or not—but it really is about freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness, and that's what church is all about. Freedom to worship, and freedom from sin, freedom to be fully what God intends us to be, and freedom to have equality in the sight of God. And sometimes you gotta make noise to do that. Sometimes, you maybe have to die, like Denmark Vesey, to do that. Sometimes you have to march, and struggle, and be unpopular to do that.
-The words of Clementa Pinckney, one of those killed at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

A gunman in Charleston, South Carolina, opened fire Wednesday night at a weekly prayer meeting in Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal, a local black church, killing nine people and wounding at least one other. “I do believe this was a hate crime,” said Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen.
ADVERTISING

Charleston police described the suspected attacker as a clean-shaven white man about 21 years old, with sandy blond hair, clad in a grey sweatshirt and jeans. He is not currently in custody. He warned that the perpetrator “is extremely dangerous,” but vowed to “bring him to justice.” In a Thursday morning press conference, Mullen said the suspect sat with congregants for about an hour before he began to shoot.

One of the people killed was Clementa Pinckney, a South Carolina state senator and Methodist pastor at the church. In a 2013 lecture posted on YouTube, Pinckney spoke about his church’s significance to Charleston and the nation.


full article and videos at link:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/06/shooting-emanuel-ame-charleston/396209/?utm_source=SFFB