Eleven years ago, a group gathered at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, South Carolina, for a time of study and prayer. The congregation is AME, a traditionally African-American denomination, and the two pastors were graduates of a Lutheran seminary. In a mass shooting, a hate-filled white supremacist killed nine of those attending, including both pastors, those we now call the Emanuel Nine.
The shooter was a member of an ELCA congregation, which is part of why then-Presiding Bishop Elizabeth Eaton described it as “an intensely personal tragedy” for the ELCA. Lutherans have added the Emanuel Nine to our annual calendar of martyrs and saints, remembering their death by marking their feast day on June 17th, next Wednesday. On that day, the church encourages congregations and Christians to affirm their commitment to repenting of the sins of racism and white supremacy, to venerate the martyrdom of the Emanuel Nine, and to mark this day of penitence with study and prayer.
Here is an interesting update, ten years afterwards, on Mother Emanuel and the Charleston SC community. Here is the sermon Pastor Goede gave five years ago when the church first added the commemoration to our calendar.
Augustana Lutheran Church of Hyde Park 
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