Charleston church massacre looms over hate crime debate in US state of South Carolina
Columbia, South CarolinaAP South Carolina can both honor nine Black worshippers killed five years ago in a racist attack and send a message that it loves and protects all its neighbors by becoming the 48th state to pass a law with more severe penalties for hate crimes, supporters said Wednesday. A small group of House […]
At victimised Charleston church in the US, Democratic presidential candidate Cory Booker condemns gun violence, racism
Charleston, South Carolina, US RNS Invoking God and Christian love, Democratic presidential candidate Senator Cory Booker railed against gun violence and racism in a speech on Wednesday at the site of a 2015 church shooting that left nine African American worshippers dead. “We’re here this morning in the wake of yet another act of hatred […]
THE INTERVIEW: JENNIFER PINCKNEY, WIDOW OF MURDERED MOTHER EMANUEL PASTOR
MAINA MWAURA, of Religion News Service, speaks with Jennifer Pinckney, the widow of Mother Emanuel Pastor Clementa Pinckney, four years after the death of her husband in the 2015 mass shooting at his church, Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina…
US faith and civil rights groups ask for FBI meeting on white nationalism
RNS A coalition of faith groups and civil rights organizations is asking to meet with the director of the FBI, arguing that after a string of attacks on houses of worship in recent years, the agency should focus on the threat of white nationalism. The coalition, which includes Muslim Advocates, the Union for Reform Judaism, […]
Essay: How a national emergency order in the US endangers the “other”
US rabbi JONATHAN PERLMAN and pastor ERIC SC MANNING express their concern about US President Donald Trump’s recent declaration of a national emergency on the country’s southern border…