After Trump’s assassination, Asheville’s clergy hope for healing
![After Trump’s assassination, Asheville’s clergy hope for healing After Trump’s assassination, Asheville’s clergy hope for healing](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/07/15/PASH/74411798007-img-6119.jpg?auto=webp&crop=5711,3213,x0,y535&format=pjpg&width=1200)
ASHEVILLE – Following the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13, many Asheville religious leaders called for a moment of healing and “prayer for our nation” during Sunday services.
Finding comfort in times of unrest and violence does not require condemning violence. It also requires that we love one another, said the Rev. Douglas Bynum of Saint James African Methodist Episcopal Church.
“We have to love each other,” Bynum told the Citizen Times. “We have to respect each other.”
Bynum said he briefly mentioned the attempted murder during his July 14 service, noting that their faith community has been affected by radical political violence before. In 2015, a 21-year-old gunman killed nine black churchgoers attending Sunday services at Emanuel AME Church, also known as “Mother Emanuel,” in Charleston, South Carolina.
“We recognize that our country needs healing. You see that in the political violence. You see that in the way we treat the foreigners who are within our borders and how we exclude those who are disenfranchised among us,” Bynum continued.
During a July 14 service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville, Rev. Audette Fulson called on everyone to reject political violence after presidential candidate Trump was injured and a rally attendee was killed in Butler, Pennsylvania, and urged that love be “at the center of who we are and what we do.”
“We reject political violence and pray for those affected, for those harmed by it, for those who incite it with words and deeds,” Fulson said, hoping that the nation can “reweave its fabric” by “infusing love into every warp.”
More: Photos: Bloody Trump stormed off stage after attempted murder at rally in Pennsylvania
Pastor Mack Dennis of the First Baptist Church of Asheville called for healing in his Sunday sermon, telling the Citizen Times that it was “a dark mystery and a scandal” that a Christian or member of any other religion would call for “retaliation or revenge” in the face of political violence.
“Reconciliation is the key,” Dennis said.
South Carolina-based pastor Clayton King, who delivered the sermon for Biltmore Baptist Church, spoke about the assassination at the beginning of his live-streamed sermon. Before falling to his knees in prayer, King asked that “God would bring unity to our nation” and that “we would be peacemakers in a time when everyone seems to be at each other’s throats.”
Recent high-profile cases of political violence and extreme rhetoric in the United States include the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, the shooting of U.S. Congressman Steve Scalise, and the brutal attack on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Political violence and extreme rhetoric have also occurred in North Carolina and Asheville in recent weeks.
On June 29, an alleged attack occurred at the West Asheville Library, apparently stemming from political disagreements during a talk about Palestinian resistance during the Gaza war. Just one day later, gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson declared that “some people need to be killed” during a fundraiser at Lake Church in Bladen County.
The July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, which drew comparisons to the 1981 assassination of President Ronald Reagan, was condemned by Republican and Democratic politicians, with President Joe Biden also urging him to “step back” from harsh political rhetoric.
“We cannot and must not go down that path in America. We have been down that path before throughout our history. Violence has never been the answer,” Biden said during a speech from the Oval Office on July 14.
Before the breakfast on July 14, Rev. Milly Morrow of Grace Episcopal Church said the congregation observed a moment of silence and felt that the ongoing violence in the world requires us to “focus on love, not fear.”
“I think my faith tells me that this moral arc bends toward justice – that love conquers all,” Morrow said.
More: North Carolina politicians react to the shooting at Donald Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania
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Will Hofmann is the growth and development reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA Today Network. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected]. Please support this kind of journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times..