Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., long known as Mother Emanuel, was near its 200th birthday when, on June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, opened fire, killing nine church members of the historic Black congregation. Journalist Kevin Sack, who has shared in three Pulitzer Prizes in his career, covered the tragedy for the New York Times. Now, he returns to Charleston with his debut book, Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church (Crown, June), which "situates that terrible event in a long history of suffering and resilience in which the birth and development of the church plays a pivotal role,” says Kevin Doughten, Crown’s executive editor. We spoke with Sack about the history of Mother Emanuel and two centuries of radical faith.
Why write this book?
Like everybody, I was deeply affected by what happened in 2015, first by the shootings themselves but then by the expressions of forgiveness for the remorseless killer by family members of the victims only two days after he had killed their loved ones. It felt to me that the church shouldn't be forever known only for that night—that it was important that people understood the 200 years of amazing history that had led the church to that moment.
How do you understand those statements of forgiveness so soon after the shooting?
Anyone who interpreted those expressions of forgiveness toward Dylann Roof as being for Dylann Roof really misunderstood their intent. Forgiveness is a self-preservationist device that's been adopted by African American Christians over 400 years to preserve their mental health in the face of incredible trauma, stress, oppression, and discrimination. The expressions of forgiveness were a reclamation of agency by people who had been robbed of it by this crime.
Why do you describe the founding of Mother Emanuel as a radical act?
In 1817, thousands of African American Methodists in Charleston, most of them enslaved but led by free people of color, withdrew from mainline Methodist churches to establish their own congregation during the height of enslavement. This was a radical act, and the white community in Charleston perceived it as such and began efforts suppressing the church almost immediately. Four years after its founding, the church was dismantled board by board under the under the order of the authorities. The congregation stayed dormant until the end of the Civil War.
What did you learn about Mother Emanuel through the lens of Christian theology?
There was always an incredible tension between the imperative Christianity placed on broadcasting the Word and spreading it widely —the idea that Christianity would have a sedative effect on a captive population and keep them hard at work—and the opposite truth, which is that scripture is full of dangerous notions about egalitarianism. African American Christians took the faith of their oppressors and used it to affect their own spiritual and physical liberation.
How did writing this book affect you—a white, Jewish person who's not from South Carolina?
I approached the task with a lot of humility. I felt a particular burden, not only because of my own background, but because of the obvious sensitivities in writing about the intersection of race and faith and politics in the context of a mass killing at a church during Bible study. These folks had the incredible grace to allow me to intrude on their grief, and I didn't take it for granted. I came out of it a different person, with more mature views about the role that faith plays in the lives of individuals and communities, and particularly in the power of the Black church to resist oppression.
