CHARLESTON, S.C. -- Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church opened its tall wooden doors to the world Sunday, embracing strangers who walked in from the street or tuned in from home for the first worship service since a white gunman was accused of killing nine black church members.
It was that same hospitality that allowed the suspected gunman to be welcomed into a Bible study for about an hour before reportedly stood up, made racially offensive remarks and opened fire in the church known as "Mother Emanuel" because it is one of the oldest black congregations in the South.
"I was so pleased when authorities told us you can go back into 'Mother Emanuel' to worship," said the Rev. Norvel Goff, a presiding elder of the 7th District AME Church in South Carolina, before adding a note of defiance to a service sprinkled with themes of love, recovery and healing.
"Some folks might need some more time in order to walk in. But for those of us who are here this morning ... because the doors of Mother Emanuel are open on this Sunday, it sends a message to every demon in hell and on earth."
Goff choked back tears as he began the altar call by announcing the names of those killed.
"I am reminded this morning about the freshness of death, [which] comes like a thief in the night," Goff said. "Many of our hearts are breaking. Many of us are still shedding tears."
"But no demon on Earth can close the doors of God's church," he said.
The church's air conditioning did little to fight the heat of extra bodies in the sanctuary. There was fervent singing and shouting, so much so that many congregants waved small fans in front of their faces.
Despite the heaviness in the air, many stood -- some holding small children -- to shout their praises or raise their hands toward the church's vaulted ceiling. For added security, police officers stood watch over worshippers.
Some congregation members stood to applaud when Goff thanked law enforcement for their response to the shooting.
Goff thanked law enforcement "for working to create a safer place not just for some of us, but for all of us" and for "the respect they have shown our people."
"Respect gets respect," Goff said. "A lot of folk expected us to do something strange and break out in a riot. Well they just don't know us. We are a people of faith."
Goff was appointed to lead the historic Charleston church after Emanuel's senior pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, was fatally shot during the massacre. A black sheet was draped over Pinckney's usual chair, which sat empty. At least one parishioner knelt down in front of it and prayed.
Pinckney was also a state senator and married father of two children. Goff acknowledged Father's Day and said, "The only way evil can triumph is for good folks to sit down and do nothing."
Funeral services for Pinckney will be held Friday, Goff confirmed later Sunday. He said funeral services for most of the victims will be held later this week, but he declined to release details on services for the others until family members have a chance to finalize arrangements.
Pinckney's casket will be at the South Carolina Statehouse for public viewing on Wednesday afternoon. Additional public viewings will be held Thursday at a Columbia church and at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Security was tight Sunday as police were stationed around the church and near the pulpit. Backpacks and cameras weren't allowed inside.
Gillettie Bennett, 54, a high school math teacher, was the first in line at 6 a.m. She rose before 5 a.m. in neighboring Mount Pleasant, expecting a crowd, but found police still walking bomb-sniffing dogs around the memorial that now hugs the building.
"I wanted to be here to be part of history. It just shows the resilience of people in Charleston. This church community has just been through so much," Bennett said.
Several dozen church members were the first to be allowed into the church, walking up the red carpet to be seated at the center of the room.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley and Gov. Nikki Haley were sitting in the front. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., was also there.
Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum sat toward the back of the sanctuary next to liberal activist DeRay McKesson.
The family of Dylann Storm Roof, who faces nine murder charges in the rampage at Emanuel, attended an early service Sunday at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in downtown Columbia.
"They are shattered," Bishop Herman Yoos told the congregation at a later service. "But their faith is strong."
Several congregants of St. Paul's were friends both with the Roof family and with Pinckney, Pastor Tony Metze said.
"One of Mr. Pinckney's friends called Joe Roof -- Dylann's grandfather -- and said, 'I just want to say three words: I love you,'" Metze recounted. "That's the church."
Next door to Emanuel, the white congregants of Citadel Square Baptist Church gathered for their Sunday worship service. The church program listed the names of the nine victims. It also invited each churchgoer to walk, at the end of the service, to the church next door to place a flower on the steps of Emanuel as a sign of love and support.
In a brief interview before the service, the pastor, David Walker, said that he had been friendly with Pinckney, Emanuel's pastor.
Walker, 48, who hails from Anderson, said that he and Pinckney had been meeting over breakfasts and thinking about ways that the two congregations could come together, perhaps with joint services and Christmas Eve celebrations.
Later Sunday, people gathered on the Arthur Ravenel Bridge to join hands in solidarity.
Thousands of people gathered on either side of the bridge around dusk and then met near the middle of the span. Part of the bridge was closed as people were walking, taking pictures and chatting.
The bridge is named after a former state lawmaker and vocal Confederate flag supporter. The slayings have renewed calls for the flag to be removed from the Statehouse grounds, in part because photographs of Roof in a purported manifesto showed him holding Confederate flags. The 2,500-word manifesto also contained hate-filled writings.
Less than 2 miles from the church, someone vandalized a Confederate monument, spray-painting "Black Lives Matter" on the statue. City workers used a tarp to cover up the graffiti, police said.
Photos on local news websites from before the tarp was put up showed the graffiti in bright red paint, along with the message "This is the problem. #RACIST."
Around the country, pastors asked people to pray for Charleston. In Atlanta's First Iconium Baptist Church, a predominantly black church with a tradition of speaking out for social justice, the Rev. Timothy McDonald told his congregation Sunday that he had met Pinckney last April during a visit to Columbia, S.C., with a group of ministers.
The tragedy resonated far beyond urban areas. Congregants at a small church in rural north-central Pennsylvania signed a condolence card to send to Emanuel. The Rev. Nancy Light Hardy of St. James United Church of Christ said she debated mailing the card, which seemed "pitiful and lame" when set against the "inconceivable" killings.
"But at least it lets the Charleston church know that Christians across the country are thinking about them," she said.
Also on Sunday, two prominent Republicans called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism.
Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CBS' Face the Nation that the shooting "could be domestic terrorism when you look at it -- clearly it was a hate crime." Nunes went on to say that he didn't know if federal prosecutors would decide the case warrants terrorism charges. But "from a layman's point of view," Nunes said, "I think you easily call it domestic terrorism."
Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, said on ABC's This Week: "I don't think there's any question when someone comes into a church for the reasons of racism and hate that they're trying to terrorize people. ... I don't think there's any question this is an act of terrorism."
Civil-rights activists have called for the killings to be investigated as an act of terrorism in part because an online manifesto linked Roof calls for violent attacks against blacks in the South.
Roof reportedly sat with others in a Bible study group for nearly an hour before taking out a handgun and killing six women and three men.
Information for this article was contributed by Phillip Lucas, Mike Stewart, Don Schanche, David Goldman, Emily Masters, Allen Breed, Josh Replogle and John Mone of The Associated Press; by Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Timothy M. Phelps, Joseph Tanfani, and Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times; by Richard Fausset, John Eligon, Ashley Southall, Colleen Wright, and Frances Robles of The New York Times; and by Brian Bennett of Tribune News Service.
A Section on 06/22/2015