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Monster: Who Really Killed the Knoxville
Unitarians?
RJEskow
I'd say that Unitarians were God's thoughtful people, but they make no
particular claims about God. In some parts of the country that takes real
courage.
My first wife and I joined a Unitarian church in suburban DC and raised our
kids there. She and I were from different religious backgrounds - in a way, I was from different religious backgrounds, raised in Judaism but with Catholic
and Southern Baptist relatives. We both practiced Buddhist meditation (and
found others there that did the same.)
Unitarians tend to be intellectual, verbal, literate, thoughtful, and from a
variety of backgrounds. Some are atheist, some are agnostic, others believe in
God in a variety of Eastern and Western forms. Some would describe themselves
as "ethically Christian," although others would not - and it is not
an exclusively Christian group. The running joke among Unitarians was that the
name "Jesus" is only heard when someone falls down the stairs, and
that the only sacrament is the black coffee brewed after services.
The Unitarian Universalist (or UU) denomination is the product of a merger
between Unitarianism and Universalism, two centuries-old Christian
denominations. Unitarianism was founded on the belief that the Trinity was
illogical and that there could only be one divinity. Universalists believed
that God was too merciful to condemn anyone to an eternity in hell, and that
even the most evil person would get out of there eventually (after fifty
thousand years or so). Eventually they merged and abandoned all dogma. (You can
read the Knoxville church's website for a summary of beliefs.)
When my work sent me to Hungary,
I arrived in the only nation on earth that ever had a Unitarian state (during
the reign of King John Sigismund, who decreed religious tolerance in 1568).
Ralph Waldo Emerson is the closest thing to a saint that UU's have. An ordained
minister in the church, his Harvard
Divinity School
address was revolutionary in its day.
Emerson rejected all claims of the supernatural in the Bible. He said that
miracles were "monster," in the original meaning of that word as
"against nature." In a characteristically striking turn of phrase, he
said they were "not one with the blowing clover and the falling
rain." Emerson was telling us that the beauty of the manifest world should
be enough.
Is it worth killing a person for believing that?
My current (and future) wife and I were married by the Rev. Forrest Church at All Souls Unitarian
in Manhattan.
(Dr. Church is now teaching
us how to face death.) When at several points in my career jobs came up in
the Deep South, I always checked to see if there was a Unitarian Church
nearby. One of those job possibilities, which I chose not to pursue, was in Knoxville.
Jim Adkisson of Powell, Tennessee was the man with his finger on the
trigger. He had mental health problems, and a hard and bitter life. He
apparently left a letter explaining that he hated the church for its liberal
beliefs and opinions. And the church had a sign outside indicating it welcomed
gays and lesbians.
Who really killed those Unitarians? Was it the preachers who spread hatred
and intolerance? The politicians who court and flatter them instead of
condemning their hate speech? The media machine that attacks liberals, calls
them "traitors" and suggests you speak to them "with a baseball
bat"? The economic system that batters people like Jim Adkinson until they
snap, then tells them their real enemies are gays and liberals and secular
humanists?
If you ask me, it was all of the above.
You killed them, Pat Robertson. You killed them, Pastor Hagee. You killed
them, Ann Coulter. You killed them, Dick Morris and Sean Hannity and the rest
of you at Fox News.
The shooting began while the children of the church were putting on a
musical based on "Annie." One broad-shouldered church member blocked
the bullets from hitting other people, and died. You don't need to believe in
dogma to be a hero. Remember that song from "Annie"? It probably got
on your nerves like it got on mine. "The sun'll come out tomorrow."
The sun coming out. That's natural. It's one with the blowing clover and the
falling rain. But a man driven insane, then programmed by society to kill
people just because they're loving and tolerant?
That's monster.