US church reopens after massacre ‘by the devil’

CHARLESTON

The historic black South Carolina church where a white gunman murdered nine African Americans held its first service since the massacre on Monday, an emotional gathering celebrating the lives of those slain.

Several hundred congregants, some tearful, packed the Emanuel African American Episcopal Church for a service led by visiting clergy because the congregation’s pastor was among those killed by a suspected young white supremacist.

The service offered still-grieving Charleston — in another era, the American capital of the transatlantic slave trade — a chance to mark what many argued was its triumph in thwarting the shooter’s reported aim to foment racial hatred.

Celebrants at Emanuel church said the accused gunman, Dylann Roof, 21, from a rural town near the state capital Columbia, had failed miserably in his quest to break their spirit of love and faith.

“There they were in the house of the Lord, studying your word, praying with one another,” said visiting minister John Gillison from the pulpit.

“But the Devil also entered. And the Devil was trying to take charge,” he said.

“Thanks be to God, hallelujah, that the Devil cannot take control of your people. And the Devil cannot take control of your church.”

The crowd spilled out into the street, where loudspeakers relayed songs and sermons from the two-hour service live to hundreds of worshipers braving brutal summer heat.

Later in the day, more than 10,000 people spread out across the four-kilometre Arthur Ravenel Bridge to hold hands in a stunning show of solidarity with the Emanuel church.

“It’s not black lives that matter any more. All lives matter,” said Black Lives Matter leader Jay Johnson to loud cheers as he joined the overwhelmingly white and cheerful crowd.

Once on the bridge and holding hands in a “unity chain” from Charleston to the middle-class suburb of Mount Pleasant, participants observed nine minutes of silence, one for each of the Emanuel massacre victims.

The attack on Emanuel, one of the most renowned African American houses of worship in the United States, was the bloodiest on a black church since the civil rights era.

The victims, aged 26 through 87, notably included Emanuel’s chief pastor Clementa Pinckney, 41, also a respected South Carolina state senator who campaigned for tighter gun laws.