#SanBernardinoShooting: Will Anything Change??

Here are some reflections from friends of R3 in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. If you have a reflection you would like to share, please send it to rhetoricraceandreligion@gmail.com

Don’t blame the NRA for doing what the NRA does; blame conservative media for stoking the fears and resentments of white people who have been led to believe that government, minorities and white women are the sources of all of their material and psychological insecurities. For more than 30 years, first on talk radio, then cable television powerful forces have sought to shape our society’s politics by stoking this fervor. Lay the blame where it belongs, on the purveyors of lies whose only purpose is to build a phalanx of resentful white people who feel no common bond with others in our society and whose only aim becomes to silence and remove.-Stephen Ray

So the authorities have asked KNBC/MSNBC to stop taking so many live pictures of the scene in San Bernardino. Why?? It makes people have to deal with the REALITY of this kind of violence??? When will America deal with its inherent contradictions concerning who “the powers that be” believes are truly deserving of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness??? Stop lying America!!! Your slip is showing and everybody AROUND THE WORLD has known it for GENERATIONS UPON GENERATIONS!!!-Kimberly Joy Chandler

My church befriended a mosque over the summer and has maintained consistent contact with its imam and members over the past several months. I talked to our imam friend over the phone this afternoon and heard him express the pain of having his beautiful and beloved faith maligned and misunderstood in the wake of each terror attack. My heart broke for him as I expressed my church’s commitment to continuing our friendship and our intention to pray for members of his mosque who experience discrimination and ostracism. He was deeply moved that our congregation would be willing to mention his mosque in prayer during a worship service, despite our theological differences.

Clergy friends and fellow church leaders, when you pray for victims of terror attacks here and abroad, please remember those who are mislabeled, pigeonholed, and victimized through acts of social violence in our country– including our Muslim brothers and sisters who live peacefully, but are so profoundly misunderstood. Please pray for them today and especially on Sunday, and please consider reaching out in friendship to a mosque in your area for interfaith dialogue. They need displays of friendship, solidarity and understanding more now than ever.-Crystal Lewis

I want to make sure I have this straight: you and your wife, who just had a baby six months ago, make a plan to go into your job, dressed in body armor carrying military assault weapons, to kill your coworkers (many of whom supposedly got together a couple of months ago to host a baby shower for you and your bride). You left the baby with grandma, making sure everything was fine as you packed up homemade pipe bombs and prepared them for detonation. You wrote on a website that your “eastern and western” ways are in conflict with one another – neither an excuse or an explanation, just your personal musings as you searched online for a wife. I don’t understand how your personal conflict(s) has become the nation’s public tragedy. I hate that I know so much about your life and Nothing about the victims. I am refusing to learn your name because try as I might, I can not “unlearn” the names of your kindred spirits -Dylan Roof, Robert Dear, Timothy McVeigh, James Holmes,…to name just a few. I can not wrap my head around this tragedy even though I am trying.-Karsonya Wise Whitehead

I am a Christian. I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I am a seminary-trained, doctoral degree holding ordained minister and pastor in a Christian denomination who also studied religion as an undergraduate student. That said, I am not ignorant of Christian history. Persons claiming Christianity as faith have committed and continue to commit great human and environmental atrocities, often times in the name of the LORD. Yes, Christians wound and kill other Christians in the name of the LORD. Still, their actions do not define all Christians or their faith.

We must be careful not to demonize all persons of one faith for the actions of others who make claims of that same faith. Even in my passionate opposition of police brutality, I have been careful not to label all police officers as bad cops. Jesus warned us about those who see splinters of evil in others but disregard the logs of evil embedded within their own eyes. If we were all as invested in becoming the best person that we can be as we are in telling others what we perceive them not to be, our world would be made better instantaneously-Michael W. Waters