April 2007

The Virginia Tech Massacre:
People of faith gather to pray for comfort...and peace

On April 17, the Valley Forge-based staff of American Baptist Churches USA gathered around the peace pole in front of our denominational offices. This simple white pole shares the profound message "May peace prevail on earth" in several different languages and Braille.

In years past, we have gathered at this same place to pray for victims and survivors of the bombing of Oklahoma's Federal Building, for our nation after the September 11 attacks, and for our broken world at the beginning of the Iraq war.

This time we came together, once again, 24 hours after the senseless massacre on the campus of Virginia Tech. We came together as people of faith, struggling in the darkness of fear, confusion and deep, deep sadness, seeking reason, seeking comfort. I shared words that went something like this:

We are shocked and saddened by the wanton violence that has torn apart the lives of students, faculty and their loved ones on the Virginia Tech campus. We open our hearts to them, sharing and bearing their grief. We lift our prayers for them.

While we are shocked by this manifestation of malicious violence, we are not surprised by it. Our American culture is increasingly defined by barbarous acts of incivility. Just recently brilliant and beautiful women—also world class basketball players on their way to becoming physicians, musicians, educators and homemakers—were wounded by a national media mogul who referred to them as "nappy-headed hos."

Confessing his complicity to verbal violence, Don Imus said,"I did a bad thing." Bob Steele, a media ethicist at the Poynter Institute, commented in USA Today that, along with racism, Imus has a"significant pattern" of making"mean-spirited comments about women and about religion."

Living within a social fabric where this sort of"freedom of speech" reaches millions of listeners, it's no wonder that dehumanizing each other in word grows into dehumanizing each other in action too. That's what happened at Virginia Tech.

The media have reported that a student, Cho Seung-Hui, bought two guns just weeks ago with only two forms of ID and an instant computerized background check. In Virginia, reports indicate, there is no waiting period for the purchase of a gun. Then this student, like Imus, did a bad thing. He walked through the hallways and classrooms pumping bullet after bullet after bullet into students and faculty, irrespective of race, religion, gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation. Thirty-two were killed. We don't know the eventual death toll.

Has the toll of senseless acts of violence such as these made us numb? We hardly pay attention anymore. Here in Valley Forge, it took a numbers person like Sam Duncan, who runs our Computer Center, to remind us we had not gathered around the peace pole for a very long time.

Why haven't we thought to gather the ABC family every time 32 people die because of the war in Iraq? A 2006 United Nations study reports that more than 34,000 Iraqis died last year alone because of the war—that's 91 every day, three times the number killed at Virginia Tech. We should be gathering for prayer three times a day until this war is over. War is another bad thing.

We see how violence begets violence. How it grows from a word that wounds the heart and soul to a bullet that kills the body. In the wake of this latest slaughter, Lord, help us in our propensity to demonize our enemies and our desire to wipe them off the face of the planet.

As we grieve today, let us also confess. Let us learn to turn toward each other, to see and hear each other, to care for each other—laying down our hate, laying down our weapons, be they words or guns, to follow the Prince of Peace. Let us, together, build the Kingdom where, finally, peace will truly prevail.

With living hope,

Executive Director, National Ministries