On June 17, 2015, a 21-year-old white man sat for an hour with 14 African-American worshipers in a Wednesday-night Bible study at Charleston’s historic Emanuel AME Church. Suddenly, he pulled out a .45 caliber semi-automatic weapon and began firing. Only five people survived the brutal massacre.

The forgiveness that flowed from many of the families’ victims in the immediate aftermath of the shocking tragedy was amazing. Don Harper, an African-American, former member of the Anderson University board of trustees and a member of Utica Baptist Church in Seneca, said, “Those people, in a crisis situation, exemplified Christ better than I have seen since I’ve been alive.”

A year has passed, and the families of the “Emanuel Nine,” along with many others, continue to mourn. Disputes have erupted over how millions of dollars in contributions for the church and for victims’ families have been spent.

Moreover, some in Charleston have observed that segregation is still present and racial profiling continues to exist.

Philip Pinckney, an African-American Southern Baptist church planter in Charleston, said minority voices “have been muffled or ignored as we’ve tried to explain the persistent injustice that continues to destroy our communities [and] the institutional bias built into our economic and educational systems.”

Since the Charleston massacre, Pinckney said he’s met with white pastors who have felt a burden to pursue racial reconciliation. “I’ve watched them struggle to even find the words to describe what they feel,” he said. The key to racial reconciliation, he said, lies not in inviting African-Americans to worship with white congregations, but in the Church’s recognition of the “innate dignity” of all men and women as “image-bearers of God.”

“It’s not a social issue, it is a Gospel issue,” said Pinckney. Churches should seek to avoid “being blinded by cultural idolatry and so deny the imago dei that every individual and culture bears,” he said.

If racial reconciliation is an ongoing and complicated process, tremendous change has occurred in South Carolina since June 2015. The Confederate flag no longer flies on the statehouse grounds, a feat that was seemingly impossible before the Emanuel shooting.

People’s lives have changed, too, and there is progress in building relationships free of the bitterness of prejudice. Marshall Blalock, pastor of Charleston’s First Baptist Church, said, “The outpouring of love and unity that inspired the world has faded some over time, but the deep conversations over race can now take place.

“I am beginning to understand that ‘moving on’ is not a solution. We can be well-intentioned while simultaneously pouring salt in the wounds by ignoring the profound hurts experienced by so many in the African-American community.

“Grace-centered friendships across racial lines are the means of reconciliation, and those relationships require removing our protective shields and entering meaningful conversations.”

As The Courier went to press, Blalock was scheduled to be part of a June 14 panel discussion about the Charleston shooting at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis.

Craig Tuck is lead pastor of Centerpoint Church, a predominantly white congregation that shares space with a black high school in downtown Charleston because church members are seeking “a diverse dynamic in order to learn and develop relationships cross-culturally,” said Tuck.

“Little did we know that the tragic events that took place at Emanuel AME Church one year ago would open doors to building stronger relationships,” said Tuck. “The response of grace and forgiveness by the victims’ families opened a doorway for healing instead of hatred.”

Tuck said that his church “is not making racial reconciliation our goal; rather, we are pursuing relationships by pushing through the brokenness of prejudice, differences and socio-economic disparity.”

Since last year’s tragedy, Emanuel AME Church has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Joseph Darby, vice president of the Charleston NAACP and a presiding elder of the AME Church, stated: “Emanuel has become part tourist attraction, part shrine.”

Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, was one of the Emanuel victims. Her son, Chris, was featured in an article in The Courier following his mother’s death. Today, the Singleton house is filled with gifts and messages from people across the nation and from foreign countries. Her two younger children now live with an aunt and uncle in Georgia. Chris continues to live in Charleston and play baseball with Charleston Southern University. His life, too, has changed.

Teammate Brandon Burris, who graduated from CSU in May, pointed out that Chris is “more knowledgeable about the Bible, and God is way more in his life. You can definitely see it coming out of him.”

Singleton led the team as a sophomore with a .322 batting average, most home runs, most doubles, and most runs batted in. His dream is to play professional baseball. He will be eligible for the MLB draft next year following his junior year.

Singleton has taken up his mother’s legacy of prayer. She was known as a prayer warrior, often praying for an hour or more. Her son once told her, “You pray too much.” She responded: “You can never have too much prayer.”

After the shooting, Singleton publicly forgave the shooter. “Love is stronger than hate,” he said at the time. Recently, he stated, “I didn’t realize how powerful what I said was until after it became powerful.” He says if he had not been a follower of Christ, “this would have been 10 times harder than it is.”

Singleton has thrown out the opening-game pitch at Yankee Stadium, played video games with the NFL’s Cam Newton, and shaken President Obama’s hand. When sixth-grader Jackson Howard was given an assignment to write an essay on his hero, he chose Singleton.

Some change has come to South Carolina and to Charleston, while some things remain the same. The church has changed, and the victim’s families have been changed. Many others have changed in varying ways. Tuck observes that there is a spirit of “love, forgiveness and unity that has been building and growing among leaders and congregations in Greater Charleston.”