Pastor: We will survive South Carolina church shooting
The African Methodist Episcopal Church will celebrate 200 years of incorporation in 2016. It’s persevered through world wars, slavery, the Great Depression, and church bombings during the civil rights movement.
And it will survive the mass killing of congregants at a Charleston, South Carolina church, said the Rev. Herbert L. Eddy, presiding elder of the New England conference of the AME church.
“We’ve been able to survive,’’ Eddy said. “I can only account it to the fact that God has smiled on the AME church.’’
Police today arrested the 21-year-old white man they said last night sat in on a prayer meeting at the historically black Emanuel AME Church before opening fire and killing nine people.
Eddy preached at Emanuel AME a few years ago, he said. He called it a beautiful church with wonderful congregants.
“Any time struggle has come, we stand up and face it,’’ Eddy said. “You have to take it one day at a time.’’
In Boston today, parishioners and clergy gathered at Twelfth Baptist Church to pray for those in Charleston, including the family of the slain Emanuel pastor, South Carolina state Sen. Clementa Pinckney.
Tonight at 7 p.m., a vigil will be held at the Bethel AME Church in Jamaica Plain.
“It’s terrorism,’’ said the Rev. Mark V. Scott, of Azusa Christian Community Church. “The attack on that one church is an attack on the entire church … That was an attack on black people.’’
The pastor’s thoughts went to the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. Four girls died in the attack.
“I see this as being something that is part of that legacy of terror,’’ Scott said.
“These kind of things are warnings,’’ he continued.
Boston Police Commissioner William Evans called pastors, including Scott, this morning to tell them he’d have a more visible police presence around local churches this weekend. That’s welcome, Scott said, but churchgoers shouldn’t expect armed guards at their Sunday services.
“Even though we’re in a dangerous situation, we need to keep our reliance on our faith,’’ he said. “I don’t think our response should be a response of fear.’’
Eddy said he called all his pastors today and told them that, before the sun sets, they should gather their members, and pray for those who lost someone in last night’s attack.
“If we ever really need the Lord,’’ Eddy said, “we need him now.’’
Charleston church shooting photos
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