North Texans ‘shocked, saddened’ by Tennessee Valley UUC gunfire

Knoxville Police Department officers lead Jim D. Adkisson, a 58-year-old man charged with one count of first-degree murder, to a squad car in Knoxville, Tenn, on Sunday, July 27. He is believed to be the gunman who shot nine people Sunday at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, killing two. A children’s performance was under way at the time. - J. MILES CARY/AP Photo/Knoxville News Sentinel

Unitarian Universalist ministers in North Texas said this week that they are shocked and saddened by a shooting rampage that left two people dead and five wounded at a Unitarian church in Knoxville, Tenn., on Sunday, July 27.

But the Rev. Dennis Hamilton and the Rev. Laurel Hallman said they wouldn’t be cowed into abandoning the kind of liberal theology and policies that apparently spurred the hatred that police say led to the shooting.

“There is a coming together of this community [of Unitarians] in solidarity and love and support that is quite extraordinary,” said

Hallman, senior minister at First Unitarian Church of Dallas, during a telephone interview Wednesday, July 30. “I haven’t heard one person in the church saying, ‘We’d better be careful.’ We are committed to the dignity of every person. Every person is a child of God.

“That is a deep commitment. We’re not going to back off that,” she said.

Knoxville police say Jim D. Adkisson, a 58-year-old unemployed man, walked into Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist

Church, during a children’s performance based on the musical “Annie,” and opened fire with a 12-gauge semiautomatic shotgun. Two people were killed and five others injured.

Police Chief Sterling Owen said Monday, July 28, that they had found a four-page, signed letter in Adkisson’s vehicle in the church parking lot, in which he said he targeted the church because “he hated the liberal movement” and because he was “upset with liberals in general as well as gays.”

The Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church advocates for women’s rights and gay rights and has provided sanctuary for political refugees. It also has fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to its Web site.

All churches in the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations share those liberal stances. In a written statement issued Tuesday, July 29, the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association said that the denomination is “not based on a particular creed. Instead it is grounded in a few deeply held principles. First among these principles is ‘the inherent worth and dignity of all people,’ a belief that compels us to speak out on important justice issues.

“This has been part of our mission since the early days of abolitionism, continuing through women’s suffrage, the civil rights movement and our current advocacy on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons,” Sinkford said. “We truly are a church of ‘all souls,’ not just some souls.”

The Rev. Dennis Hamilton, senior pastor of Horizon UU Church in Carrollton, also spoke of the denomination’s “history of being in the forefront of social reform and human rights and peace issues. We are a very progressive church, a church that walks the talk.”

Hamilton also said he believes that the denomination has “what I think is probably the largest percentage of gay or transgendered ministers.”


The North Texas connection
Hamilton said the attack was devastating for the small denomination. With only about 1,200 UU churches across the country and “maybe about 300,000 members,” the UU community is like an extended family.

“I’d say each UU minister knows probably at least a third of all the other ministers,” he said.

The grief was even more immediate for many North Texas since one of the two people killed and one of the six injured had moved to Knoxville from this area, he said.

“I know the minister at that church,” Hamilton said. “Some of the people from the church in Denton had moved to Tennessee.”

Linda Kraeger, previously a teacher at Grayson County College and at Gainsville High School, was one of the two people killed in the shooting. Joe Barnhart, Kraeger’s best friend and a former professor at University of North Texas in Denton, was among the wounded.

Kraeger and Barnhart and their families had moved to Knoxville together last year, according to a report by CBS Channel 11 in Dallas. Kraeger and her husband were helping Barnhart and his wife raise their two granddaughters, the Channel 11 report said.

Hallman said that shortly after the attack she received an e-mail from a friend in a UU fellowship in East Texas, who said that her grandson and his paternal grandparents were at the Knoxville church when it happened. Her grandson, in fact, was one of the children in the musical performance.

“But then, she said, ‘We were all there.’ What she meant was that this attacks calls into high relief our work with people that other people like to hate,” Hallman said. “But at the same time, it has called us all together in an amazing way. It reminds us once again that there is a lot of hate in the world for people who we care deeply about.”


Fear in the aftermath?
The Rev. Jo Hudson is senior pastor and rector at Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, the largest — and arguably the most visible — LGBT church in the world. Threats of violence have long been a part of the Cathedral’s history. But Hudson said the threats have died down in recent years, something she attributes to a slow but steady change in the cultural climate.

“When this church was first starting to grow and becoming very visible, during that early period when [the Rev. Michael Piazza] first took over as senior pastor, there were threats,” Hudson said. “There were bomb threats. They were picketed by the Klan and Operation Rescue and Fred Phelps. During that time, the police event wanted [Piazza] to wear a bulletproof vest.

“But that was quite some time ago. Since I arrived [about three years ago] and even some time prior to that, we haven’t had any threats of that kind,” she said.

Hudson said that after a shooting several years ago at a Baptist church in Fort Worth, Cathedral officials decided to have uniformed security officers at all Cathedral services and major events, and that Cathedral staff members and volunteers are trained in emergency procedures in the event some sort of attack or natural disaster occurs at the church.

“Now, even the number of negative e-mails we get is minimal. But we know that there are people out there who are emotionally disturbed, and that they can appear and do that kind of damage,” Hudson said. “But being a liberal Christian church as well as historically and visibly ministering to LGBT people, when you hear of something like this [shooting in Knoxville], it certainly gives you pause. While we recognize that this is a tragedy and we grieve for those who have suffered, we have to hope it is an isolated incident. Still, we always have to be prepared, and we are.”

Like the Cathedral, Hamilton and Hallman said they know their churches could be targets, too. But so far, neither church has ever been faced threats of violence.

Hamilton said his church has never been afraid to be outspoken on controversial issues. Horizon UU recently hosted a screening of the film “For the Bible Tells Me So,” about LGBT Christians and their families, and that church members participate each year in the gay Pride parade

“We are definitely out there,” Hamilton said, “but we haven’t gotten any threats. And we certainly wouldn’t stop what we are doing, even if we did get threats.”

Hallman said her church also has a large LGBT population, and that in her 21 years at First Unitarian, the church has never had “any disruptions at all. I think that is pretty amazing, as far as churches go.”

Still, Hamilton said, like the Cathedral, he knows his church must also be prepared.

“This was one crazy guy, one man poisoned by hate,” Hamilton said. “But it’s not like he really acted alone. It’s part of a subculture of fear and hatred, certainly against the LGBT population, but also against all things liberal.”

Both Horizon UU and First Unitarian were among the hundreds of churches around the country that held vigils on Monday evening to remember the dead and honor the wounded. And Hallman said her church began receiving calls almost immediately from people asking what they could do to help. She said the Unitarian Universalist Association has already send a trained disaster response team to Knoxville, along with the association president, to help the church and its community begin to cope with the tragedy.

But Hallman also said she knows recovery won’t be easy.

“I was so grieved that day when I heard what had happened, for so many reasons,” Hallman said. “First there is that personal shock of hearing that something like this had happened, and the shock because of the connection you have with your sister church. But the truly difficult part for me is that this happened in the sanctuary.

“The sanctuary is where we go to be safe, to be at home and worship in freedom. It is just so shocking, beyond the violence and the rest, to have that sanctuary violated,” she said. “That’s one reason we had the vigil Monday night, when they were also having a vigil in Knoxville, because we felt we had to be there in our sanctuary that night and reclaim it as a safe place so that we could help [the Knoxville congregation] to be able to go back in when the time comes and reclaim their sanctuary as a place of safety and trust.

“They will have to go back eventually, and it won’t be an easy thing to do,” she said.




This article appeared in the Dallas Voice print edition August 1, 2008.