Making Prayer Safe

THE WORD CAME IN THE MIDDLE OF Sunday-morning worship at River Oaks Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

- Elizabeth Dias

A gunman had stormed First Baptist Church two miles down the road. First responders raced from their pews to help their neighbors. Everyone else prayed.

But it was too late. For a congregation whose Sunday attendance averaged 50, the losses were catastrophic. “Most of our church family is gone,” said the pastor’s wife, Sherri Pomeroy, whose teenage daughter was among the dead.

The violence was all the more horrible because it felt so normal. Each new attack repeats the same sick liturgy. As mass shootings continue to touch every corner of public life in America, institutions including schools, malls and movie theaters are developing protocols to defend themselves.

That includes houses of worship. We grieve when a predator targets people in prayer, but it happens painfully often. In 2015, a white supremacist killed nine people at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church—a massacre that allegedly inspired a Sudanese immigrant to open fire at a Tennessee church in September 2017. This year, more than 100 Jewish community centers have faced bomb threats, and dozens of mosques have been targeted with violent threats or vandalism.