Wichita churches mourn victims in Charleston shooting

About 30 people gathered in a Wichita church Thursday to pray for change and mourn the victims of the church shooting in South Carolina.

And they said the shooting is a reminder that such violence can happen anywhere.

“This, to me, is not a surprise,” Rev. Joseph Nixon said to a chorus of “No!” from those assembled. Nixon is the pastor of St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, where the vigil was held.

“The black church has been tormented, burned and bombed ever since two, 300 years ago, and it didn’t stop us … but we need to pray,” he said.

The killing of nine black churchgoers in Charleston has saddened and shocked people across the nation, but “we say fear cannot stop us,” said Charlezetta Nixon, his wife.

“We’ll still have Bible studies,” she said. “We’ll still pray. The preachers will still preach. We’ll still come to church. We’ll tell fear that it has to back down and go back to the bitter hell from which it was sent.”

Joseph Nixon said that prayer came with a mandate, and that those attending the vigil now had a job to do.

“Praying is fine, but we’ve got to do more,” he said. “You can’t look for a job and just pray. You have to submit a resume. Praying is fine, but I believe we are awake now, and we will, and must, do more.”

Kenya Cox, president of the NAACP in Wichita, said she was not nervous to speak – she was “just shaking.” She mentioned that, after reading hateful comments in online news articles about the shooting, her “heart broke in two even more.”

“The comment said, ‘They deserve that,’” she said. “Are we not humans? I mean, like I said, when you cut us, do we not bleed? We deserve this? No, nobody deserves this, and it is the responsibility of all of us collectively and joinedly to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ It’s not about legislation or a mandate – we’ve got to have a change of heart, that we want better and we are going to do better.”

People joined hands and swayed, singing “We Shall Overcome,” to close the vigil. Earlier, people raised their hands to God and sang “Amazing Grace.”

“To stand here in the oldest African Methodist Episcopal church in the city of Wichita, I should feel safe, but I can tell you right now I don’t, because you never know. You never know,” City Council member Lavonta Williams said. “That was a safe place – that was a place of … Bible study. For someone to come in and sit down and study and pray among the people that they would later prey on is … senseless.

“We’re grieving as if we were there. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families especially. And I continue to look forward to, and hope for, that day that we can all join hands as Dr. Martin Luther King said, and walk as one. And it’s not today.”

The Charleston church was an AME church as well. The Rev. Carieta Cain-Grizzell said her great-great-grandfather helped rebuild the Charleston church in 1865 after it was burned down.

“I just wanted to say we will not back up, we will not shut up, but we will continue to fight for righteousness and justice,” she said at the vigil. “What this world needs is love.”

Churches boosting security

Pastors at some Wichita churches said they would be changing protocols in light of the shooting.

Wade Moore, the president of the Greater Wichita Ministerial League, said that he has instructed his secretaries not to give out his information and whereabouts to strangers anymore. He said his church, the Christian Faith Centre on South Broadway, will be looking to provide increased security, especially on Sundays.

“As a church you always welcome people in, especially where we are on South Broadway,” Moore said. “You never know who needs a drink of water, a bit of food. We open the door to the homeless, to people we’ve never seen before, but now we need to be more careful with people who come in.”

The Kansas African American Museum has also decided to increase its security. “We realize that there is a relatively small group of people for whom our mere existence constitutes a provocation,” said Mark McCormick, the executive director. “To that end, we’re taking the appropriate precautions.”

Wichita police officials said Thursday morning they do not have plans to implement additional security measures at churches.

“To my knowledge, we haven‘t had any threats or indications of problems here,” Wichita police Capt. Jeff Weible said.

Junius Dotson, the pastor at the historically black Saint Mark United Methodist Church, said his church increased security measures about 10 years ago, using security cameras, monitoring who enters and exits and using watch guards.

“This event just heightens the need for churches to take security more seriously,” Dotson said. “A hate crime of any form or fashion against any group of people is wrong, it is deplorable. What makes it even different for me is not that they are black, but that they were in worship, they were in prayer, one of the most vulnerable positions a person can be in before God.”

The Wichita Ministerial League is holding another vigil at 7 p.m. Friday at Calvary Baptist Church, 2653 N. Hillside. All are invited.

Contributing: Stan Finger of The Eagle

This story was originally published June 18, 2015 at 12:41 PM with the headline "Wichita churches mourn victims in Charleston shooting."