THE CHURCH MILITANT
Ephesians 5:11-"And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them". This Christian News Blog maintains a one stop resource of current news and reports of its own related to church, moral, spiritual, and related political issues, plus articles, and postings from other online discernment ministries, and media which share the aims to obey the biblical commands to shed light on and refute error, heresy, apostasy, cults, and spiritual abuse.
Pope Francis has finally released his long anticipated encyclical on the environment to both worldwide acclaim and condemnation. Environmentalists praise it as a death knell for fossil fuels and the herald of a new age of green ethics. Climate realists call it an emotional screed — an unfortunate and unprecedented public relations boost for irrational global warming alarmism and politicized, atheistic UN climate policies. Joseph Kurtz, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, told The Guardian that the encyclical sums up "our marching orders for advocacy," while Republican presidential contenders Jeb Bush and Rick Santorum, both Catholic, have come out strongly against the pope on climate change.
Despite its appeal to save Mother Earth with drastic lifestyle changes in industrialized nations, the encyclical Laudato Si, on the "Care for Our Common Home," holds few surprises. After all, the Italian news outlet L'Espressopublished a leaked copy in Italian on June 16, two days before the planned official release. An incensed Vatican asked major media to postpone commentary, emphasizing that the unauthorized version was just a draft. But the preemption made significant headlines, and it turns out there were no significant differences.
The encylical is an inflated version of the joint statement issued in April after the Vatican's conference on climate change. (The latter weighed in at fewer than 5,000 words, while the Pope needed more than 40,000 to say his piece. The documents also differ in their judgments on population control. Whereas the UN-inspired joint statement called for "reaching a level and sustainable population," the encyclical admits that "demographic growth is fully compatible" with prosperity.)
Otherwise, the two documents ignore all scientific evidence to the contrary and present identical arguments: Humans are destroying the earth, and radical environmentalism is a moral imperative. However, while the joint statement bears the seal of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the encyclical comes from the pen of the pope himself and therefore holds even more sway among media and policy makers. It also issues an even stronger call for "ecological conversion." Francis's litany of "sins" against the environment include "excessive anthropocentrism" at the expense of nature, deforestation and wetland destruction for the purpose of agricultural cultivation, and human-caused global warming from greedy fossil fuel consumption. Ironically, increased use of air-conditioning is particularly corrupt (see paragraph 55). Wealthy nations, says Francis, owe a "social debt" to the poor and impoverished people of the world, a debt which can be paid by increased funding and "better distribution of wealth."
But will they pay? So far, the pope complains, weak political leaders have proven themselves incapable of mobilizing public opinion or influencing industrial economies. This propagandized caricature of Earth-on-the-brink, plundered by greedy capitalists, leads up to the encyclical's biggest anticlimax — an appeal for world government. Admittedly, that seems an unconventional stance for the pope. But Vatican spokesmen have repeatedly confirmed Francis's desire to influence UN climate talks scheduled to begin this November. The encyclical has already won high praise from UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
It is small wonder, considering the pope's vapid assertion: "The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable." Francis claims that "it is essential to devise stronger and more efficiently organized international institutions, with functionaries who are appointed fairly by agreement among national governments, and empowered to impose sanctions."Lest anyone believe that his envisioned world government would be solely concerned with the environment, Francis quotes his predecessor, Benedict XVI:
To manage the global economy; to revive economies hit by the crisis; to avoid any deterioration of the present crisis and the greater imbalances that would result; to bring about integral and timely disarmament, food security and peace; to guarantee the protection of the environment and to regulate migration: for all this, there is urgent need of a true world political authority.
Is it possible that these popes are proposing a world government with total control of currency, the food supply, military forces, private property and immigration, along with a court system to uphold its decrees? This plan disturbingly parallels the UN's Sustainable Development Goals enumerated in its Agenda 21 program, formulated at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The John Birch Society describes Agenda 21 as a plan "for the global control and restriction over your daily life, including your private property, individual rights, and civil liberties — all in the apparent name of the environment and so-called social justice."
Indeed, world government as the only alternative to eco-catastrophe is an ongoing theme of the UN's environmental programs. "Throughout the last two years, in preparation for the encyclical rollout, the Vatican has relied solely upon global warming alarmists in its rush to judgment to meet the UN 2015 Sustainable Development Goals' timetable," said Elizabeth Yore, child's rights attorney for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. She maintains that alarmists "exploit discredited climate change science to justify their extremist population reduction policies." Yore traveled to Rome in April as part of a Heartland Institute delegation to educate the pope about real climate science.
Also with the delegation was E. Calvin Beisner, spokesman for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. "Sad to say, despite Pope Francis's best intentions, the policies he recommends to mitigate global warming would make it far more difficult to overcome poverty," warns Beisner. "Pope Francis should champion economic development as a solution both to poverty and to environmental degradation."
Not that environmental degradation is quite as bad as the encyclical claims. Not by a long shot. Of the "numerous hypothetical disastrous consequences of climate change," notes Richard Keen, "none of these projected catastrophic consequences are anywhere to be found on the real Earth." Keen is meterology professor emeritus of the University of Colorado-Boulder. Also speaking for The Heartland Institute, he observed that there has been "no warming whatsoever" during the past 18 years and that measures to mitigate supposed global warming "would be flawed policies that will fail to solve a non-existent problem."
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
TONY CAMPOLO AND FORMER CHRISTIANITY TODAY EDITOR COME OUT IN SUPPORT OF HOMOSEXUAL CHRISTIANITY(Friday Church News Notes, June 26, 2015, www.wayoflife.orgfbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143) - More “evangelicals” recently came out in support of the heresy of homosexual Christianity. Influential teacher and author Tony Campolo issued a news release saying, “I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church.” Though this has been framed by many as a major change of stance, Campolo has long been wishy-washy on the issue of homosexuality, and like the good emerging church leader he is, he is adept at the miracle of facing two ways. For many years he has stated that homosexuality is a birth condition and not a “volitional” matter. When I interviewed Campolo in 2008 at the New Baptist Covenant Celebration in Atlanta, he was wearing a rainbow scarf in support of homosexual rights. Campolo’s wife, Peggy, is a national leader of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists (AWAB), which urges Baptist congregations to receive homosexuals into full membership privileges. At the New Baptist Covenant Celebration, I interviewed an AWAB council member named Kathy Stayton who said that she rejects the first three chapters of Genesis as literal history, does not believe that marriage is a divinely-ordained institution or that homosexual acts, even outside of “committed relationships,” are sinful. The AWAB booth distributed an article by Peggy Campolo entitled “Some Answers to the Most Common Questions about God’s GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered] Children” from the Summer 2000 edition of The InSpiriter. Agreeing with Campolo’s recent statement was David Neff, retired editor of Christianity Today, who said on Facebook, “God bless Tony Campolo. He is acting in good faith and is, I think, on the right track.” Neff told Christianity Today: “I think the ethically responsible thing for gay and lesbian Christians to do is to form lasting, covenanted partnerships. I also believe that the church should help them in those partnerships in the same way the church should fortify traditional marriages” (“Does Campolo Announcement Signal Move,”Christian Newswire, Jun. 12. 2015). (The current senior editor of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, quickly reaffirmed the magazine’s official stance against same-sex “marriage,” though in typical New Evangelical fashion, Galli also stated that they won’t condemn or distance themselves from those who differ.) Neff’s position is impossible to reconcile with two clear teachings of Scripture. First, any sexual relationship outside of holy matrimony is sinful and under God’s judgment (Heb. 13:4). Second, holy matrimony is restricted to a covenant between one man and one woman (Gen. 2:18-24). This was affirmed by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 19:4-6. “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge” (Heb. 13:4). The issue of homosexuality is revealing the apostasy of a large number of “evangelicals.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
PHILADELPHIA — A former editor of a prominent Christian publication is praising Tony Campolo after he announced this week that he has decided to endorse and speak out for the inclusion of open homosexuals in the Body of Christ—a move that is generating concern among Christians nationwide.
“God bless Tony Campolo,” wrote retired Christianity Today editor David Neff on Facebook this week. “He is acting in good faith and is, I think, on the right track.”
As previously reported, Campolo, who serves as one of the leaders at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia—a part of the National Baptist Convention USA and American Baptist Churches USA—made the announcement on Monday.
“It has taken countless hours of prayer, study, conversation and emotional turmoil to bring me to the place where I am finally ready to call for the full acceptance of Christian gay couples into the Church,” he wrote in a statement posted to his website.
Campolo’s wife, Peggy, is a homosexual activist and believes that the Church should be accepting of same-sex “marriage.” He explained that his wife is one of the reasons why he has decided to endorse acceptance of homosexuals in Christianity.
“One reason I am changing my position on this issue is that, through Peggy, I have come to know so many gay Christian couples whose relationships work in much the same way as our own,” he said. “Our friendships with these couples have helped me understand how important it is for the exclusion and disapproval of their unions by the Christian community to end. We in the Church should actively support such families.”
After Neff applauded Campolo for his statement, Christianity Today reached out to him to obtain further clarification.
“I think the ethically responsible thing for gay and lesbian Christians to do is to form lasting, covenanted partnerships,” Neff replied in an email to Mark Galli, the current editor and former Presbyterian minister. “I also believe that the Church should help them in those partnerships in the same way the Church should fortify traditional marriages.”
Galli said that he is disappointed in Neff’s words.
“At CT, we’re saddened that David has come to this conclusion,” he wrote in an editorial on Tuesday. “Saddened because we firmly believe that the Bible teaches that God intends the most intimate of covenant relationships to be enjoyed exclusively by a man and a woman.”
Mark Tooley, the president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, also commented on Neff in The Stream.
“Neff in recent years has inclined leftward, especially in his former role on the executive board of the National Association of Evangelicals,” he wrote, stating that Neff has backed “ostensible ‘compromise’ abortion language from Democrats to ease passage of Obamacare” and endorsed “Jim Wallis’s ‘Circle of Protection’ around federal entitlement programs,” among other items.
Tooley noted that the former Christianity Today editor, however, did sign a statement in support of biblical marriage in 2009.
“Neff’s and Campolo’s full embrace of same-sex behavior indicates that theological and ethical orthodoxy may become increasingly difficult and rare for religionists on the political Left,” he said. “As they quit the historic consensus on the Christian teaching now under most assault, they likely will be joined by a growing cadre of post-Evangelicals who prefer cultural accommodation to traditional Evangelical counter cultural witness.”
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Delivering a sharp blow to the First Amendment, a 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court has declared specialty license plates to be “government speech” and not private speech and, thus, subject to censorship by government officials. The Rutherford Institute warns that the ruling could set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for the government to censor private speech whenever it occurs in a public or government forum. At issue in Walker v. Texas Division, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Inc., was whether Texas officials violated the First Amendment when they denied a Civil War heritage group’s request for a specialty plate bearing the Confederate battle flag, allegedly because the Department of Motor Vehicles was concerned some people would be offended by the Confederate flag.
In weighing in on the case, The Rutherford Institute had urged the Court to affirm that specialty license plates—which run the gamut in Texas from college alumni associations and fast food chains to real estate brokers and Dr. Pepper—are private speech which may not be censored on the basis of viewpoint. Institute attorneys also argued that by inviting groups to engage in private speech and contribute to the marketplace of ideas, the government surrendered the right to treat the license plate as “government speech” subject to any censorship the state deems appropriate.
“This ruling sanctions total government censorship. We are witnessing an elitist philosophy at play, one shared by both the extreme left and the extreme right, which aims to stifle all expression that doesn’t fit within their parameters of what they consider to be ‘acceptable’ speech, ” said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “There are all kinds of labels put on such speech: it's been called politically incorrect speech, hate speech, offensive speech, and so on, but really, the message being conveyed is that you don't have a right to express yourself if certain people don't like or agree with what you are saying.”
Like many states, Texas allows motorists to use specialty license plates, which display a message or symbol supporting a cause or nonprofit group. By law, any nonprofit organization is allowed to apply for a specialty plate by submitting a design to be approved by the Department of Motor Vehicles. In 2009, Texas SCV, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve the memory and reputation of soldiers who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War, applied for a specialty license plate and submitted a design that featured the SCV logo, which is a Confederate battle flag framed on all four sides by the words “Sons of Confederate Veterans 1896.” When the matter reached the DMV, it asked for public comment on approval of the application, and in response received comments both supporting and against the application. Eventually, the DMV voted to deny the application, explaining that some of the public comments found the Confederate flag portion of the propose plate offensive. The SCV then filed suit, alleging that the denial of the application constituted viewpoint discrimination in violation of the First Amendment. A district court subsequently ruled that the state did not violate the Constitution. On appeal, however, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reversed that decision, holding that the specialty license plates are private speech protected by the First Amendment. Moreover, the Fifth Circuit ruled that the DMV unconstitutionally discriminated against the SCV by classifying as offensive its view that the Confederate flag is a symbol of sacrifice, independence, and Southern heritage.
Affiliate attorneys D. Alicia Hickok and Todd N. Hutchinson of Drinker, Biddle & Reath LLP, in Philadelphia, assisted The Rutherford Institute in advancing the arguments in the amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The right of the citizens to keep and bear arms has justly been considered, as the palladium of the liberties of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against the usurpation and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and triumph over them.
In his own commentary on the works of the influential jurist Blackstone, Founding-era legal scholar St. George Tucker wrote:
This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty.... The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.
If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no resource left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers, may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual state.
As the president’s and other politicians’ shameful manipulation of the massacre at a church in Charleston demonstrates, the forces of disarmament in the federal government will stop at nothing to take advantage of suffering to impose new and increasingly dictatorial restrictions on the right that protects the enjoyment of all the other fundamental God-given rights that were once the inheritance of all Americans."
Obama To Use South Carolina Church Shooting To Gun Grab
Published on Jun 18, 2015
David Knight covers other instances where the 2nd amendment saved lives and how even if this was not a false flag attack the left media will use this crisis to go after the guns.
THE RIGHT & DUTY OF SELF DEFENSE
OBAMA'S STATEMENT
"GUN CONTROL FOR WHITES ONLY"?
CHARLESTON SHOOTER WAS ON DRUG LINKED TO VIOLENT OUTBURSTS
Dylann Storm Roof was taking habit-forming drug suboxone
Charleston shooter Dylann Storm Roof was reportedly taking a drug that has been linked with sudden outbursts of violence, fitting the pattern of innumerable other mass shooters who were on or had recently come off pharmaceutical drugs linked to aggression.
According to a CBS News report, earlier this year when cops searched Roof after he was acting suspiciously inside a Bath and Body Works store, they found “orange strips” that Roof told officers was suboxone, a narcotic that is used to treat opiate addiction.
Suboxone is a habit-forming drug that has been connected with sudden outbursts of aggression.
A user on the MD Junction website relates how her husband “became violent, smashing things and threatening me,” after just a few days of coming off suboxone.
Another poster on the Drugs.com website tells the story of how his personality completely changed as a result of taking suboxone.
The individual relates how he became “nasty” and “violent” just weeks into taking the drug, adding that he would “snap” and be mean to people for no reason.
Another poster reveals how his son-in-law “completely changed on suboxone,” and that the drug sent him into “self-destruct mode.”
A user named ‘Jhalloway’ also tells the story of how her husband’s addiction to suboxone was “ruining our life.”
A poster on a separate forum writes about how he became “horribly aggressive” towards his partner after taking 8mg of suboxone.
A website devoted to horror stories about the drug called SubSux.com also features a post by a woman whose husband obtained a gun and began violently beating his 15-year-old son after taking suboxone.
According to a Courier-Journal report, suboxone “is increasingly being abused, sold on the streets and inappropriately prescribed” by doctors. For some users, it is even more addictive than the drugs it’s supposed to help them quit.
As we previously highlighted, virtually every major mass shooter was taking some form of SSRI or other pharmaceutical drug at the time of their attack, including Columbine killer Eric Harris, ‘Batman’ shooter James Holmes and Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza.
As the website SSRI Stories profusely documents, there are literally hundreds of examples of mass shootings, murders and other violent episodes that have been committed by individuals on psychiatric drugs over the past three decades.
Pharmaceutical giants who produce drugs like Zoloft, Prozac and Paxil spend around $2.4 billion dollars a year on direct-to-consumer television advertising every year. By running negative stories about prescription drugs, networks risk losing tens of millions of dollars in ad revenue, which is undoubtedly one of the primary reasons why the connection is habitually downplayed or ignored entirely.
A crazed lone gunman struck a church in Charleston, South Carolina, last night, killing nine people.
Here’s what we know about the story so far.
The suspect, who was captured 250 miles away in Shelby, North Carolina, earlier today, is identified as 21-year-old Dylann Storm Roof, a white man from Columbia who family members describe as a “quiet, soft spoken” person with few friends.
The shooting took place yesterday at the Emanuel African Methodist EpiscopalChurch in Charleston.
All of the nine victims – three males and six females – were black, leading investigators to conclude the shooting was motivated by racial hatred, which prompted a federal hate crime investigation by the Justice Department, US Attorney’s Office and FBI.
Among those killed was Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 41, a South Carolina state senator and the pastor of the church.
The gunman is said to have used a .45 caliber pistol gifted him by his uncle, and killed all but one person, telling her to “Tell the world what happened.”
A 5-year-old girlalso reportedly survived the massacre after following her grandmother’s advice to play dead.
When one of the victims pleaded with him to stop, the suspect allegedly responded, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”
Photos online reveal the shooter had a jacket with two patches of South African flags associated with the Apartheid era. Another photo of Roof on the hood of his Hyundai Elantra also shows a frontside license plate featuring confederate state flags.
“Several locations in South Carolina were subject to bomb threats Thursday afternoon in the wake of a shooting that killed nine people at a Charleston church Wednesday night,” reports the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Joseph P. Riley Jr. , the longtime Democrat mayor of Charleston, South Carolina, blamed the Second Amendment for the killing of nine people at a church in the city last night.
“I personally believe there are far too many guns out there, and access to guns, it’s far too easy. Our society has not been able to deal with that yet,” he said.
He said the Second Amendment results in “easy ability for people to gain possession” of firearms and “no doubt contributes to violent acts.”
Riley has advocated preventing Americans from exercising their constitutional right to own firearms for decades.
He said he was disappointed more Americans did not support the “major national effort” to restrict the Second Amendment following “the tragic event with the school in New England,” a reference to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
“I’ve never stopped pushing for it,” he said of his views on rolling back the amendment. “This is just a very heartbreaking and tragic example of why it is needed.”
Polls indicate more than half of all Americans support the right to own firearms.
Move to Link Racism and Gun Violence
Gary Younge, writing for The Guardian, said after the incident that America suffers from the “twin pathologies of racism and guns” and both “are deeply rooted in the nation’s history since its founding.”
Younge said the Second Amendment fuels racist violence. “America does not have a monopoly on racism. But what makes its racism so lethal is the ease with which people can acquire guns,” he said.
He said there is a “blood-soaked pedestal erected around the constitution’s second amendment.”
Others moved to place the attack within the context of domestic terrorism.
The white terrorist who killed black folks in #charleston is channeling the same energy as the S.C. state flag. Remove that symbol of evil!
“White right-wing domestic terrorism is one of the greatest threats to public safety and security in post 9/11 United States of America. Such a plain-spoken fact is verboten in mainstream American public discourse,” writes Chauncey DeVega for the liberal website Salon.
(Publishers Note: Our position: First our prayers and deepest sympathy is with the Immanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C. who tragically lost nine of their finest, including their beloved pastor to another of America’s undisciplined, godless, video game cultured, drugged, rock headed, stone hearted, conscienceless, robots that is passed off as a human being. If a person kills one, society says it is evil, they can’t bring themselves to say the word sin. But kill multiple people as Dylan Storm Roof did Wednesday evening at that prayer meeting and they will call you sick, because they can’t believe that any normal person could do anything that hideous. But the Bible says, ” “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?”
Man in his present sinful condition is capable of doing the most vile, wicked acts that the mind can imagine. Any of us outside of the grace of God could be a Dylan Roof, a Charles Manson, or a Stalin, Hitler or Mao, or any other despot of the ages past or present.
That’s the reason that the most peace loving man that ever walked on this earth told His disciples, “… and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one.” He knew that there would always be the Dylan Storm Roof’s in the world. So his disciples would need the Sword of the Spirit and the Sword of the flesh, so to speak, for self defense. The church is not to be an advancing army, but they are to be able to defend themselves against those that would come to destroy them. Rev. Pinckney was wise to have his Bible, but he should also have had his sword (a weapon), or at least others in the congregation, designated to protect the congregation should have had one. Just possibly if they had obeyed their Lord in this area, nine people would not have died in that church last Wednesday night, or at least some might still be alive.)
Posted 11:15 AM, June 18, 2015, by CNN Wire, Updated at 02:30pm, June 18, 2015
CHARLESTON — When Dylann Storm Roof turned 21 in April, his father bought him a .45-caliber gun, a senior law enforcement source briefed on the investigation said Thursday.
It’s not known whether that handgun was used when Roof allegedly opened fire Wednesday night at a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine people.
“You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” Sylvia Johnson, a cousin of the church’s slain pastor, said the gunman told his victims, according to CNN affiliate WIS. She cited survivors of the shooting.
In the sparse details that have emerged about his life, none would suggest that he was capable of such hatred and violence.
Police in his hometown of Columbia — about 120 miles northwest of Charleston — obtained a warrant for his arrest in early March. He had been picked up by police on drug charges a few days earlier at Columbiana Centre mall, according to a police report.
Workers at two stores told mall security that Roof was acting strangely, asking “out of the ordinary questions” such as the number of sales associates and what time they left the mall, the police report said.
When a police confronted him, Roof “began speaking very nervously and stated that his parents were pressuring him to get a job,” according to the police report. Roof told the officer that he had not picked up any employment applications.
Banned from mall
Roof initially said he was not carrying anything illegal. But after he agreed to be searched, the officer found “a small unlabeled white bottle containing multiple orange … square strips” in his jacket, the police report said.
Roof told the officer the bottle contained Listerine breath strips.
When the officer asked again, Roof said the strips were suboxone, which is used to treat opiate addiction, according to the police report. Roof said he got the strips from a friend.
Though Roof was arrested on a drug possession charge that day in late February, it’s unclear why the March 1 arrest warrant was issued.
On April 26, police were again called to Columbiana Centre because of Roof, who had been banned from the mall for a year after his drug arrest, a police report said. The mall ban was extended to three years.
Roof was arrested that day in late April on a charge of trespassing; his car was turned over to his mother. The disposition of that case is also unclear.
John Mullins, who attended White Knoll High School with Roof, told CNN on Thursday that the suspect sometimes made racist comments and was “kind of wild” but not violent. Mullins also said Roof had some black friends.
“He was … calm,” Mullins said. “That’s why all this is such a shock.”
Roof repeated the ninth grade at White Knoll High School in Lexington County, according to Mary Beth Hill of the Lexington School District. She described him as “very transient,” adding that he “came and went.”
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina, said his niece, Emily, was in an eighth-grade English class with Roof.
“He was quiet, strange, very unsocial and everyone thought he was on drugs,” Graham said of the suspect, relaying the description from his Emily and sister Darline Graham Nordone.
The niece did not recall Roof making statements related to race, Graham said.
“I just think he was one of these whacked-out kids. I don’t think it’s anything broader than that,” said Graham, who is running for president. “It’s about a young man who is obviously twisted.”
On Wednesday night, the white and slightly built gunman was at the historic African-American church for about an hour, attending a meeting with his eventual victims, before the massacre, according to Charleston police Chief Greg Mullen.
Witnesses told investigators the gunman stood up and said he was there “to shoot black people,” a law enforcement official said.
The victims “were killed because they were black,” Charleston police spokesman Charles Francis told CNN on Thursday. Francis was asked what led authorities to investigate the shooting as a hate crime.
Investigators are looking into whether Roof had links to white supremacist or other hate groups, a law enforcement official said. There is no indication so far that he was known to law enforcement officials who focus on hate groups.
In an image tweeted by authorities in Berkeley County, South Carolina, Roof seen is wearing a jacket with what appear to be the flags of apartheid-era South Africa and nearby Rhodesia, a former British colony that a white minority ruled until it became independent in 1980 and changed its name to Zimbabwe.
Roof was armed when he was arrested Thursday in Shelby, North Carolina — about a 3½-hour drive north-northwest of Emanuel AME Church, according to a law enforcement official briefed on the investigation. It’s not clear if it’s the same firearm used in the shootings.
Police had earlier said that Roof, of Lexington, South Carolina, might have been driving a black Hyundai with vehicle tag LGF330. He was arrested after a traffic stop prompted by a tip from a citizen, police said.
Charleston Police Chief Gregory Mullen told a news conference that officers “have obtained surveillance videos of the suspect in this case and a suspect vehicle.”
Mullen said the suspect was a “younger white male between 21 and 25 years of age, 5-foot-9 in height” and “has a very distinctive sweatshirt that has markings.”
Mullen emphasized the suspect is “a very dangerous individual.”
Woman spared by shooter to give account?
A female survivor told family members that the gunman told her he was letting her live to tell everyone else what happened, Dot Scott, president of the local branch of the NAACP, told CNN.
Scott said she had not spoken to the survivor directly but had heard this account repeated at least a dozen times as she met with relatives of the victims Wednesday night. Scott added that she didn’t know if the survivor had ended up at the hospital or being questioned by police.
Because of the church’s historic significance, it is not unusual for visitors, whether white or black, to visit it, Scott said. She said she’d had no indication that any children were among the victims.
Mullen told the news conference the suspect had been in the church attending a meeting that was going on — and “stayed there almost an hour with the group before the actual event.”
But he declined to comment on whether the suspect had let one woman escape.
‘Distinctive’ license plate
The suspect was seen leaving the church in a black four-door sedan, the flier says. “The vehicle you will see has a very distinctive front license plate,” Mullen added, but did not give further details on what made it stand out.
He appealed for the media to help in circulating the suspect’s image and for the public to be vigilant. The clean-shaven man pictured wears a gray sweatshirt over a white T-shirt, blue jeans and Timberland boots.
Police are “going through all kinds of video” and trying to identify any private or public video that may show anything useful for the investigation, Mullen said.
“No one in this community will ever forget this night and as a result of this and because of the pain and the hurt this individual has caused this entire community, the law enforcement agents are committed and we will catch this individual,” he said.
Charleston Mayor Joe Riley described the suspect as “somebody filled with hate and with a deranged mind.”
The man is a “no-good, horrible person,” he said. “Of course we will make sure he pays the price for this horrible act.”
Six of those killed in Wednesday night’s attack at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were female and three male. The victims included the church’s pastor, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney.
A statement from the Georgia branch of the NAACP said, “There is no greater coward than a criminal who enters a house of God and slaughters innocent people engaged in the study of scripture.”
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, and research purposes:
A shooter identified by the FBI as Dylann Storm Roof of Columbia, South Carolina, walked into a Wednesday night Bible study class at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17 and allegedly opened fire, killing the pastor, the Reverend Clementa C. Pinckney, and eight church members. Pinckney was also a member of the South Carolina State Senate, representing Senate District 45 as a Democrat.
Reuters reported that the FBI identified Roof as the shooter after Roof’s uncle, Carson Cowles, recognized him in the surveillance photo circulated by the media. “The more I look at him, the more I’m convinced, that’s him,” Cowles told Reuters in a phone interview.
As we write, Roof has been arrested in Shelby, North Carolina. AP cited a statement from Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen, who said the suspect was arrested during a traffic stop at approximately 11:15 a.m., EDT.
A citizen reportedly alerted police to Roof’s vehicle, which he thought was suspicious, Mullen said.
“I am so pleased that we were able to resolve this case quickly … so that nobody else is harmed by this individual who obviously committed a tragic, heinous crime in the city of Charleston,” Mullen was quoted as saying by NBC News.
NBC also reported details about the attack, received from surviving church members. Roof reportedly went to the church, asked for Reverend Pinckney, and sat among parishioners during a Bible study meeting.
One of the survivors related details to Pinckney’s cousin, Sylvia Johnson, who told NBC affiliate WIS-TV:
At the conclusion of the Bible study, from what I understand, they just start hearing loud noises ringing out, and he had already wounded — the suspect already wounded a couple of individuals.
The female survivor told Johnson that the gunman reloaded five different times and that her son was trying to “talk him out of doing the act of killing people,” reported NBC.
But he wouldn't listen, she said.
“You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” the shooter told the parishioners, the survivor related to Johnson.
The fact that Roof had the time to reload five times indicates that the church was effectively a “gun-free zone” and that the members were all unarmed.
In a statement delivered from the White House Briefing Room on June 18, President Obama — choosing his words carefully — made it clear that his considers Americans’ ability to purchase arms as the culprit in this tragedy, stating, in part:
We don’t have all the facts, but we do know that, once again, innocent people were killed, in part, because someone who wanted to inflict harm had no trouble getting their hands on a gun.
Now’s the time for mourning, and for healing.
But let’s be clear: At some point, we as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn’t happen, in other places, with this kind of frequency.
And, it is in our power to do something about it. I say that recognizing the politics in this town foreclose a lot of those avenues right now. But it would be wrong for us not to acknowledge it. And at some point it’s going to be important for the American people to come to grips with it and for us to be able to shift how we think about the issue of gun violence collectively.
Such is the call after every tragic event in which guns were used, whether it be the Columbine High School massacre in1999, the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, or the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012. All of these were senseless tragedies in which very disturbed individuals, for reasons that may never be known, decided to kill innocent people. During all of these incidents, the unarmed victims were unable to defend themselves against the perpetrators. In the Fort Hood incident, the gunman was eventually brought down, not by unarmed military personnel, but by a civilian police sergeant, Mark Todd.
Granted, the assailants in each case used a gun, but the killers were not motivated to kill by the act of possessing a gun, but by evil or deranged thoughts deep inside them. While a gun may be a more efficient means of killing than a knife or club, it is also a more efficient way for potential victims to defend themselves. Disarming the masses merely provides the very few evil murderers among us with defenseless targets for their insane rage.
Dr. John R. Lott, Jr., a columnist and the author of eight books including More Guns, Less Crime, wrote an opinion piece about the Charleston tragedy posted by FoxNews.com on June 18 headlined: “Gun-free zones an easy target for killers.” Lott began his essay:
The horrible tragedy last night that left nine people dead at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., probably could have been avoided. Like so many other attacks, the massacre took place in a gun-free zone, a place where the general public was banned from having guns. The gun-free zone obviously didn’t stop the killer from bringing a gun into the church.
Indeed, the circumstantial evidence is strong that these killers don’t attack randomly; they keep picking the few gun-free zones to do virtually all their attacks.
In identifying Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as a “gun-free zone,” Lott cited a synopsis of South Carolina law:
You may not carry a firearm on school premises (including day care and preschool facilities), in law enforcement offices or facilities, in court facilities, at polling places on election days, in churches or other religious sanctuaries, or in hospitals or medical facilities. (S.C. Code Ann.§ 23-31-215.)
Lott concluded his article: “Churches, like the one in Charleston, preach peace, but the killer there probably chose that target because he knew the victims were defenseless.”
There are many factors to consider in this very tragic event, and we would be remiss to deny that (unlike other similar events where racism may be falsely cited as a motive) this attack may have indeed been racially motivated.
When Roof told the assumed congregation, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go,” the “you” almost certainly meant American blacks.
That this man was apparently so irrationally consumed by hatred is unquestionably a terrible thing. However, guns cannot be blamed for the man’s pathetic disorder. That fault lies within the hidden recesses of his mind and his soul. _______________________________________________________________ Obama Exploits Tragedy for Gun Grab
Liberals: Disarm All Whites!
Published on Jun 19, 2015
Democrats respond to the S.C. Church shooting with an immediate call to ban ALL firearms.
