the rix mix

wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Unitarian minister at the start of his great career.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. - An unemployed man accused of opening fire with a shotgun and killing two people at a Unitarian Universalist church apparently targeted the congregation out of hatred for its support of liberal social policies, police said Monday.

Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV said a signed, four-page letter written by Jim D. Adkisson, 58, was found in his small SUV in the church parking lot. The gunfire punctuated a children's performance based on the musical "Annie" Sunday, killing two and wounding seven.

"It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that and his stated hatred of the liberal movement," Owen said at a news conference.

The only positive thing I can say is that tragedies like this tend to sensitize a few more ordinary people to bigotry, a terrible cost for a little progress. It doesn't much matter to me how religious right "leaders" react, but how Knoxville reacts. This angry, demented man could have followed another line of crazy reasoning & opened fire in the Presbyterian Church right next door, or at a Burger King, or as he had threatened, at his wife. He became obsessed with what that particular UU Fellowship represented. But it's what happens when eliminationist rhetoric - the violent language of the right wing, marinates in the heads of people like Adkisson. What nasty blowhards like Malkin, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, & hundreds if not thousands of local radio talk show hosts & newspaper columnists think is a big joke to suggest, others take with deadly seriousness.

There are 14 UUA congregations in Tennessee (NJ has 21). Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church isn't in competition with the Southern Baptists, but they're not a fringe cult meeting in secret. American UU's have been around a lot longer than our current variety of fundamentalists. UU's gravitate toward progressive causes because they've become a denomination of principles & religious self-reliance rather than doctrines. But then, so do Methodists, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, etc. who derive progressive principles from their own doctrines & scripture. I have to approve of a church that has its Sunday school children singing "Tomorrow" instead of about being meek & perfectly obedient.

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