“This whole week I’ve been reflecting on this this thing called grace,” President Barack Obama said, while delivering the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney in Charleston, South Carolina on Friday, June 26.
“Clem knew that the path of grace involves an open mind – but, more importantly, an open heart. If we can find that grace, anything is possible. If we can tap that grace, everything can change.”
Rev. Pinckney, pastor of Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and a South Carolina state senator, was mourned by thousands who packed into the TD Arena at the College of Charleston, as well as millions via television and social media.
Rev. Pinckney and eight of his parishioners were murdered by a stranger who was allowed to join their Bible study at Mother Emanuel on June 17. According to press reports of survivors, the killer, a young white man, wanted to kill black people out of vengeance and to start a race war.
“The alleged killer was so filled with hate,” President Obama said in his eulogy. “He failed to comprehend what Rev. Pinckney so clearly understood – the power of God’s grace. Blinded by hatred, the alleged killer couldn’t see the grace surrounded by Rev. Pinckney and others. But God works in mysterious ways. God has different ideas. He didn’t know that he was being used by God.”
Obama said the grace of God could be seen in the upwelling of support for Mother Emanuel and a new unity that could lead to change. The young man charged with the murders at the church draped himself in the Confederate battle flag, but in response to the massacre, the state’s governor and other officials have called for the flag to come down.
“By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace. But I don’t think God wants us to stop there,” President Obama said.
“Perhaps this tragedy will cause us to answer some tough questions – cause us to examine what we are doing to cause our children to hate. Maybe we now realize how racial bias can infect us – how we’ll call Johnny back for a job interview, but not Jamal.”
President Obama said the massacre must lead to change in honor of the slain pastor.
“Clem understood that justice grows out of recognition of ourselves in each other – and that you being free means me too,” President Obama said. “I believe it would be a betrayal against everything Rev. Pinckney has stood for if we go back to a place of business as usual.”
By eulogy’s end, President Obama would take those gathered – and the nation – someplace they had never been before. A standing president, while delivering a eulogy on national television, sang the first notes of a hymn a cappella. He sang the first notes of “Amazing Grace,” and that compelled clergy, the massive choir standing behind him, and mourners throughout the arena to join in and sing it with him.
Though President Obama personally eulogized Rev. Pinckney, whom he met while campaigning for president in 2008, he also remembered the parishioners slain.
“Cynthia Hurd. Susie Jackson. Ethel Lance. DePayne Middleton-Doctor. Tywanza Sanders. Daniel L. Simmons. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton. Myra Thompson,” President Obama named them all. “Good people. Decent people. God-fearing people. People so full of life and so full of kindness.”
Then he spoke directly to the families of those killed.
“To the families of the fallen, the nation shares in your grief. Our pain cuts that much deeper because it happened in a church,” President Obama said.
“The church is and always has been the center of African-American life, a place to call our own in a too often hostile world, a sanctuary from so many hardships.”
After the service, the president and first lady, as well as the vice president and his wife, met individually with members from all nine victim families.
