The man charged with killing nine black worshipers is a white youth who has been pictured wearing a jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and white-ruled Rhodesia. Another picture shows the 21-year-old, who told friends of his racist beliefs, sitting on a car with a vanity license plate depicting Confederate flags. The racial nature of the attack demands a united response from people of every creed, but its location — and the church’s long connection to the civil rights movement — demands an especially strong response from white Christians.
South Carolina is one of the most Christian states in the country: More than three of every four state residents identify as Christian, and only five other states have higher rates of weekly church attendance. If any good is to come of this tragedy, it is unlikely to be new legislation making it harder for dangerous people to acquire guns. While that is worth fighting for, a more modest hope is that white Christians will see the anguish and ask: What does our faith call us to do?
It does not require a theology degree to recognize that Christian teaching suggests more than just prayer for the victims and condemnation of the act are warranted. The shootings are also an opportunity to demonstrate neighborly love through action, as Jesus taught and lived. Christians are called to place the needs of others, particularly the poor and powerless, above their own: to bind up wounds, comfort the suffering and approach others with humility.
If white Christians in South Carolina are looking for a way to live out their faith during this time of mourning — if they want to offer an expression of selfless Christian love that goes beyond words — they could remove a long-standing source of pain in the African-American community, and one that is implicated in this atrocity: the Confederate flag that flies in front of the statehouse. Not as an admission of defeat, or even a sign of cultural retreat. The flag should come down as act of Christian kindness.