It saddens me that my last statement as Acting Stated Clerk is about another senseless tragedy that should not have occurred. Sonya Massey was a woman in need of assistance, and the very people who were sworn to protect her are the ones who ended her life.
A Louisville, Kentucky, pastor summed up the nation’s gun violence crisis with a three-word refrain on Wednesday: “Enough is enough.” The Rev. Dr. Angela Johnson, pastor of Louisville’s Grace Hope Presbyterian Church, delivered a brief but powerful sermon during a morning chapel service for employees of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).
It has happened once again. People are dead and injured in a mass shooting. This is a scenario that we see and hear about way too often. An individual lashes out, taking as many lives as possible with a senseless, brutal act of violence. Individuals who are simply going about their lives find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.
After a deadly shooting at Westside Middle School near Jonesboro, Arkansas, David Gill and others pined for a way to aid students in their emotional and spiritual recovery. He began delving into the idea of holding a healing camp at Ferncliff Camp and Conference Center, where he worked a few hours away.
In her efforts combatting gun violence, the Rev. M. Courtenay Willcox prefers going upstream with her activism.
On a June Saturday in Concord, New Hampshire, a young couple with a baby in a car seat drove up to the Wesley United Methodist Church to safely surrender a handgun. Why? “New baby!”
Every day there are new reports of gun violence in cities across the country, in schools, churches, and local businesses. A few weeks ago, five people were killed and as many as nine others were wounded at a bank building in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, just blocks from the national offices of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). In the hours and days following that shooting, there has been more gun violence, including a mass shooting in Texas over the past weekend.
Hundreds of people gathered outside of the Muhammad Ali Center in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, on a warm, sunny Wednesday afternoon to remember those killed and wounded in Monday’s mass shooting. This time of the year usually finds the city preparing for a massive influx of attention for the Kentucky Derby with visitors and media from around the world, but not on this occasion.
During an interfaith service held at Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church Monday following the morning’s mass shooting at Old National Bank, Rabbi Ben Freed of Keneseth Israel Congregation in Louisville pointed out it isn’t God who’s beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks in the Book of Isaiah.
The city of Louisville, Kentucky, is reeling today following a mass shooting at a business just two blocks away from the Presbyterian Center Monday morning. As many as five people are known to have been killed and eight others, including two police officers, were wounded. Police say the alleged shooter is also dead. The shootings began around 8:30. Few other details have been released while investigators are still on the scene.