“It shouldn’t be an act of courage to enter a place of worship,” said a survivor of the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue shooting
But it is
Every day
In churches
Most recently in synagogue after synagogue
In mosques
In 2020
In America
All over America
We understand
Ever since June, 2015, Charleston, the Holy City, the City known for her houses of worship, has placed police officers at all churches, synagogues, mosques
Really
The first place in the Western world to allow almost anyone to vote and hold office, if they were white, and male, and professed a faith, any faith, not just the faith of the monarch
Dissenters
Jews
Heathens
All allowed
Home to the second oldest synagogue in the United States
John Locke wrote our initial constitutions
The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina
1669
Praising our religious freedom, Voltaire himself said, “Cast your eyes over the other hemisphere, behold Carolina, of which wise Locke was the legislator.”
He had no idea that over three hundred and fifty years later that freedom of religion would be curtailed
As I ushered in church, at a parish organized in 1680, I spoke to the police officer assigned to us
That’s right
A police officer
Assigned to us
Weekly
A man came in with a backpack
She asked him to please return it to his car
He did
A tourist with a fanny pack, oh law, also came into the church
She asked him to please return it to his car
Really
He said he was on foot and let her search it
That same man wrote a note and placed it in the collection plate on the visitors’ card
Counting the money after church, I saw the note
“Thank you for including me. Lovely service. Please pray for ________”
I wish I could have written him back
“Dear Sir, I am sorry that your fanny pack had to be searched, but we live in a sinful and broken world.”
This is America
This is worship in America
We really are soldiers
Worship as an act of war
Ye soldiers of the Cross
But I can’t help but think that Jesus would have wept
Dad, what's for supper? 