{"id":10164,"date":"2015-06-18T00:00:38","date_gmt":"2015-06-18T00:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/new.brethren.org\/news\/?p=10164"},"modified":"2018-11-07T18:47:39","modified_gmt":"2018-11-07T18:47:39","slug":"church-of-the-brethren-letter-to-ame-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/2015\/church-of-the-brethren-letter-to-ame-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Church of the Brethren Sends Letter of Condolence to African Methodist Episcopal Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A letter from the Church of the Brethren, signed by general secretary Stan Noffsinger and Intercultural Ministry director Gimbiya Kettering, has been sent to members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The letter shares condolence, in response to the shooting there Wednesday, June17, which\u00a0is being investigated\u00a0as a hate crime.<\/p>\n<p>Copies of the letter also have been sent to the AME denominational headquarters, in care of senior bishop John R. Bryant and general secretary Dr. Jeffery Cooper.<\/p>\n<p>The shooter who attacked during a Bible study at the historic African-American church murdered six women and three men, including the church\u2019s pastor Clementa Pinckney who also was a state senator. The police have arrested the suspected shooter, a 21-year-old man from Lexington, S.C. CNN reported that \u201cthe suspect&#8217;s father had recently bought him a .45-caliber gun for his 21st birthday in April.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Federal authorities have opened a hate crime investigation into the shooting. \u201cThe only reason someone would walk into a church and shoot people that were praying is hate,\u201d said Charleston mayor Joe Riley, as quoted by CNN.<\/p>\n<p>The Emanuel AME Church is the oldest AME church in the South, founded in Charleston in 1816, and has a place in history as a center of civil rights activity. \u201cIt was borne of discrimination, burned to the ground in hate, and rose again,\u201d said a CNN review of the church\u2019s history. Read \u201cEmanuel African Methodist Episcopal: A Storied Church in a Historic City\u201d at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/06\/18\/us\/charleston-emanuel-ame-church-history\/index.html\">www.cnn.com\/2015\/06\/18\/us\/charleston-emanuel-ame-church-history\/index.html<\/a> .<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: medium\">\u00a0<\/span><em><span style=\"font-size: medium\">The Church of the Brethren letter follows:<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-10165\" src=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/church-of-the-brethren-letter.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"1081\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/church-of-the-brethren-letter.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/church-of-the-brethren-letter-194x300.jpg 194w, https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2018\/10\/church-of-the-brethren-letter-663x1024.jpg 663w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A letter from the Church of the Brethren, signed by general secretary Stan Noffsinger and Intercultural Ministry director Gimbiya Kettering, has been sent to members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The letter shares condolence, in response to the shooting there Wednesday, June17, which has been characterized as a hate crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":[],"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[806,1261,1274,632],"wf_post_folders":[],"class_list":["post-10164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-congregational-life-ministries","tag-general-secretary","tag-intercultural","tag-stanley-j-noffsinger"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10164"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12684,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10164\/revisions\/12684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10164"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.brethren.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=10164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}