A Message from the Bishop - May 2022A
Dear Friends,
Last week, clergy and spouses of our diocese gathered for our much-anticipated retreat, twice postponed from 2020 due to COVID. It was such an encouraging time together, with worship and fellowship, sharing and prayer, and talks by Bishop Terrell and Teresa Glenn of the Diocese of the Carolinas (see the article below).
During the retreat, we showed the extraordinary documentary film, Emanuel, which tells the story of the shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015, when 21 year-old Dylann Roof killed 9 African Americans attending Bible study in the church basement.
Dylann Roof had become a self-proclaimed white supremacist. He chose to travel to Charleston, the cradle of the Confederacy, to kill the pastor and members of the city’s preeminent African American congregation in the hope of sparking a race war in America.
Ten months before, Ferguson, Missouri had erupted in violence after Michael Brown was shot in an altercation with a police officer. Just two months before, Baltimore had erupted in violence after Freddie Gray died in police custody.
But things unfolded very differently in Charleston, and that was due in no small measure to how God worked through the grace and mercy offered by the family members of those Roof had slain.
Dylann Roof attended the mid-week Bible study at Mother Emanuel Church twice. On the first occasion, he was welcomed with warmth and graciousness by the group. He said nothing, but Myra Thompson had told her husband, “I hope he comes back.” On his second visit, he arrived late, but the members of the study had stopped their study and greeted him and introduced themselves. The pastor pulled out a chair next to him at the table; someone opened a Bible to the passage they were studying, the Parable of the Sower, and handed it to Roof. He silently sat through the study that Myra led, and then, during the closing prayer, he fired 74 shots, killing nine saints who had shown him nothing but love.
The next day, Roof was caught and arrested, and the following day, less than 48 hours after his killing spree, he was to have his bond hearing. Myra’s husband, the Rev. Anthony Thompson, is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America in our Diocese of the Southeast. Anthony wanted to be nowhere near Dylann Roof and so he told his family he would not be attending the hearing. However, his children wanted to go, and they insisted that he go with them. Anthony reluctantly agreed, but he set strict ground rules. He told them, “We’re going to sit down and be quiet, saying nothing to anyone. As soon as it’s over, we’re getting up and leaving. Those are the only conditions I’ll agree to go under.”
Dylann Roof was not in the courtroom, but he was linked in via live video feed set up between the courtroom and a room in the nearby jail. The judge startled everyone present by inviting members of the families of the victims to step forward and speak if they wish.
Five family members spoke, each offering words of love and forgiveness out of the depths of their pain and grief. You can hear them in this courtroom recording.
Anthony Thompson heard the voice of the Lord, a voice he knew, a voice he had heard before. Anthony was refusing to speak, but God whispered to him, “I have something to say, Anthony.”
In the deathly quiet and palpable tension of the courtroom, he stepped up to the podium and looked at Dylann Roof’s face on the TV monitor.
God put words in his mouth and Anthony said, “I forgive you. And my family forgives you. But we would like you to take this opportunity to repent. Repent. Confess. Give your life to the One who matters the most: Christ, so that he can change it and change your ways no matter what happens to you, and you’ll be okay. Do that, and you’ll be better off than what you are right now.”
Anthony records that when he spoke the name “Jesus Christ,” Roof’s fixed, unblinking, downcast eyes looked up for just a moment and Anthony was allowed to see not the unfeeling mask Roof had put on, but a fleeting expression of guilt and shame. As Anthony describes it, the hardened racist in that moment showed himself to be yet another unremarkable sinner.
And in a flash, Anthony life was forever changed. In his words, “I experience the unmistakable peace of Christ’s love filling my entire being. At that moment, I feel free, as light as a feather. As I return to my seat, I sense God calling me to a new purpose in His kingdom, a new beginning, a new mission in Christ to spread the Gospel of unconditional, biblical forgiveness.”
A reporter who was there expressed what countless others must have thought: “Thompson’s wife was not yet buried, and he was actually offering Roof a way to salvation.”
Unlike in so many other places where racist violence triggered more violence, in Charleston God’s forgiveness through these family members brought a very different result: the city erupted in grace. To everyone’s shock, Charleston witnessed no rioting, no assaults, no violent protests, no arrests, no bloodshed.
Hordes of reporters descended on Charleston to record the anticipated violence, as they had gone to Ferguson and Baltimore and all too many other places. But instead, they saw a city coming together. As Anthony puts it in his book, Called to Forgive, the media “arrived in Charleston aiming to film bloodshed and riots, to capture sensational shots of revenge and violent confrontation. Instead, they returned home with portraits of people showing biblical forgiveness in vivid, compassionate color, blacks and whites embracing, each offering love, support and comfort to one another.”
Anthony Thompson and the others offered forgiveness to a sinner in need of grace, and forgiveness for a city and a nation in need of healing.
Anthony’s story shows us so beautifully that sharing the forgiveness of Jesus is the most powerful weapon we have.
His story calls us to love our enemies, too. To forgive those who hurt us, even those who hurt us deeply, just as God in Christ forgives us. To release our bitterness and anger, so that the love of Jesus might flow through us to others, and so that in forgiving, you and I might truly know the peace of God that passes all understanding.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
The Rt. Rev. John A. M. Guernsey