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We Are
Charleston
by Herb Frazier, Bernard Edward Powers Jr., PhD, and Marjory
Wentworth
c.2016, Thomas Nelson
$24.99 / $31.00 Canada
256 pages
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Truth Contributor
The Word is what you crave.
It’s where you find your comfort, strength, the peace you
need to get through the day. Reading it is like hearing
God’s voice; studying it is feeling His power, and in the
new book We Are Charleston by Herb Frazier,
Bernard Edward Powers Jr., PhD, and Marjory Wentworth,
knowing it could mean offering forgiveness.
There are, say the authors, two Charlestons in South
Carolina.
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Tourists see lovely horse-drawn carriages, fine dining and
historic homes but there’s a flip-side Charleston, too. It’s
where slavery began, where Jim Crow laws once ruled and
where racism is still an issue. That’s where Mother Emanuel
AME Church has stood for generations, welcoming people of
faith.
Wednesdays are Bible study nights at Mother Emanuel,
although on June 17, 2015, that was pushed back a bit for a
business meeting. By 8:00 p.m, however, “a dozen of the most
devout parishioners” were ready for the Word of God.
Exactly 16 minutes later, “a skinny young white man” entered
the door and joined the group, sitting next to the church’s
pastor; the young man was a stranger there, but they
welcomed him just the same. And after prayerful fellowship
and Bible study, “as eyes were closed and heads were bowed”
for a final benediction, he took out a gun and started
shooting.
But why did Dylann Roof scream racial sentiments, reload his
gun five times, and kill nine strangers in a house of God?
The answer, say the authors, lies in the past, aboard slave
ships, on wharves where people were once sold, and on a
flag. It goes back some 200 years, to another time, when
that church was a “target of hate.” And, yes, it lies in the
story of a “young man who purchased a weapon to kill human
beings.”
But surprisingly, what resulted from that night more than a
year ago wasn’t just a history lesson. It wasn’t merely
grief, either. What happened in the days after that night
was forgiveness, over and over and over…
There is, of course, more to this story than just what
happened in June 2015 in South Carolina – and that’s where I
struggled with We Are Charleston. There’s too much
inside this book and it veers too much off-course.
I see where the authors are trying to take readers: the
book’s open and ending are about the shooting and aftermath,
while the middle part consists of African-American history
and that of the AME church, with an attempt to tie them
together. These subjects are very interesting, but the tie
here is too broad and too deep; I’d have been happier with
two different books.
And yet, it’s easy to brush aside book-gripes when presented
with a powerful message like the one you’ll see;
specifically, one of forgiveness, strength and
forward-movement. That alone left me satisfied after all.
And so, cautiously, with caveats, I say read this book. Skim
some parts if you must, but savor its end: We Are
Charleston could be the words to remember.
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