KNOXVILLE, Tenn.—Though churches targeted by gunmen in Colorado and Tennessee are from different ends of the religious spectrum, church leaders see similarities in the tragedies and a new chance for unity.
“It is amazing that this has not happened more often given the polarization of religious groups in the United States,” said Bill Leonard, dean of the divinity school at Wake Forest University.
Last Sunday morning, two people were killed and six wounded at the liberal Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. In December, four died in attacks on a missionary training center in suburban Denver and an evangelical Christian megachurch in Colorado Springs.
Those involved with the churches see much in common.
“We’re both churches and we both hold views that people disagree with strongly. … It’s certainly because we hold some principles that are nonnegotiable,” says Brady Boyd, pastor of the targeted New Life Church in Colorado.
The Unitarian church has a long history in Knoxville of open-door tolerance and progressive social work in support of everything from racial tolerance to women’s rights and gay rights.
When a congregation takes its faith into the community there’s always a chance of upsetting someone, said the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the 1,000-congregation Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston.
“That is the reality. When you tackle complicated issues there are going to be differences of opinion. The only question is, how you deal with those things? There are ways to deal with them respectfully,” Sinkford said.
Frank Page, past president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, agreed that anytime a church, whether conservative and liberal, is “in the forefront they are going to be the target of anger misplaced.”
“The more visible a church, the more likely it is to be in the cross-hairs,” he said. But Page thinks churches should be active. “Let your light so shine before men that they would see your good works and glorify your fatherhood in them,” he said, quoting the Bible.
Knoxville suspect Jim D. Adkisson, 58, of the Powell community left a letter describing his “hatred for the liberal movement.” An affidavit to a search warrant said he confessed to police that he targeted the church “because of its liberal leanings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country.”
Police recovered three books from his home, all New York Times best-sellers by national conservative pundits: “Liberalism Is a Mental Health Disorder” by Michael Savage; “Let Freedom Ring: Winning the War of Liberty over Liberalism” by Sean Hannity; and “The O’Reilly Factor” by Bill O’Reilly.
By contrast, Colorado shooter Matthew Murray, 24, took his own life without explaining his reasons for the rampage—though his Internet postings revealed he dabbled in the occult, briefly joined the Mormon church and turned against charismatic Christianity.
“I suspect we were a target, yes because we are Christian and yes because we are a prominent church. But more than that I don’t know,” Boyd said. “For him (Adkisson) to say it (his reasons) will actually be good for them to know. We don’t know.”
However, Ted Jones, president of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian congregation, said Adkisson’s divorced wife was once a member of the church so the congregation can’t be sure.
“Our fear level goes up and down depending on how much it was the congregation, how much it was his ex-wife’s congregation, who’s got the target on their back,” Jones said. “But as I was saying to the Baptist minister, all denominations have had their time of being persecuted. If you have a faith tradition, that’s part of the deal.”
Regardless of the Tennessee gunman’s motive, religious leaders must understand how their rhetoric can contribute to hateful behavior, Leonard, the divinity dean, wrote in an e-mail from Jerusalem.
“Rhetoric that leads to hateful actions must be restrained in communities of faith and in the media,” he said.
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AP Staff Writer Dan Elliott in Denver contributed to this story.
