"AND THERE SAT a dark leather-bound Bible soaked in blood. A bullet had pierced its pages.”
The Bible belonged to Felicia Sanders, one of the five people to walk out of Mother Emanuel AME Church alive after a stranger who had been welcomed to a Bible study shot and killed Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Cynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance, Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, and Myra Thompson.
The quote is from Jennifer Berry Hawes’ new book, Grace Will Lead Us Home: The Charleston Church Massacre and the Hard, Inspiring Journey to Forgiveness. With measured prose and journalistic excellence, this book rounds out the forgiveness and grace that have become synonymous with the Charleston massacre by exposing the outrage, isolation, and bumpy road of grief that followed the deaths.
This book is also an unexpected study in pastoral care for trauma survivors and their loved ones, and a cautionary tale for congregations thrust into the national spotlight. Not only did the church suffer a violent trauma, the community lost its core spiritual leadership in one night, and suffered the consequences of that void. A string of poor management of donations, power-hungry pastors, and very little, if any, visitation to the bereaved and survivors also left many with a sense that their beloved church was no longer their spiritual home. Tourists filled the pews while survivors chose to worship elsewhere.
Felicia Sanders’ bullet-pierced Bible was professionally cleaned and returned to her: “A pinkish hue tinted the gossamer paper inside.” Sanders held it as she spoke to the man who killed her son, Tywanza. “My Bible, abused—abused, torn, shot up. When I look at the Bible, I see the blood that Jesus shed for me. And for you. ... May God have mercy on your soul.”
Other family members that day called the killer a “monster” and told him to “burn in hell.” While national news celebrated the bond hearing in which forgiveness was spoken to the killer only days after the crime, notes from the sentencing trial reveal that the family members “weren’t the homogeneous group of forgiving people the world wanted them to be.”
In the four years since the Charleston massacre, there have been more mass shootings and killings in houses of worship and places where violence is least expected, so many that it’s hard to take in. Grace Will Lead Us Home lends flesh-and-blood details to a community still healing.
May God, indeed, have mercy.
Josina Guess is a Sojourners associate editor and a contributor to Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic.
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