Tampa Bay sermons grapple with Trump shooting

As a group of women in immaculate suits filled the worn front pew of Historic Bethel AME Church on Sunday, they shook their heads in disbelief as they discussed the news.

“It’s like the world’s gone crazy,” said one congregant.

Less than a day after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a presidential campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the Rev. Kenneth F. Irby invoked Martin Luther King Jr. in his sermon at the century-old St. Petersburg church.

Reflecting on King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” written in the margins of a newspaper, Irby quoted King’s immortal line: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”

Then Irby asked, “Would you agree with me that 61 years later, that we are forced and faced with a harsh reality that violence anywhere is a threat to peace everywhere? The challenge of unchecked mental illness and unrestricted firearms is eroding the safety and the liberty of America.”

To a chorus of amens, Irby made clear that though he finds Trump a “divisive leader and immoral human being,” he absolutely condemned the attack. He asked the “proud Americans” in his church to pray for Trump and his family.

“This is yet still America, and you should have a right to rally, amen, and gather for political purposes,” he said. “Such violence should never happen. Nor should it be tolerated, for it undermines the genius of our country.”

Earlier Sunday, Rep. Mike Kelly, the Republican member of Congress who represents the district where the shooting unfolded and who was at the rally seated behind Trump, told reporters he was in a state of bewilderment. Kelly encouraged Americans to take a day, go to a house of worship and think of how each person can make a difference in bringing more civility to political discourse.

At churches around the Tampa Bay area, pastors addressed the events of the night before, some more subtly than others.

At Community Bible Baptist Church in Pinellas Park, some attendees subtly signaled their political affiliation. One man wore a Trump pin over an American flag on his lapel. In the parking lot, bumper stickers on one truck read “Trump 2024″ and “Defend the police, defund the media.”

Pastor John W. Brent Stancil said he did not change his planned sermon on the “foundational love of God” after the assassination attempt.

”We’re not reactionary,” Stancil said before the service. “If you’re reactionary, you’re like a ping pong ball when anything happens, swinging side to side.”

He said that to move past moments of national tension, people need to communicate without judgement or assumptions.

“Not all reporters are bad, not all pastors are good,” Stancil said. “We just need to talk to each other.”

Stancil opened a fiery sermon with a brief mention of Saturday’s violence. Minutes earlier after the church auditorium had filled with the happy buzz of families finding seats, the room grew somber when Stancil mentioned Trump.

”We pray for our country, we pray for our former president, pray for our current president,” he said. “We focus on what we’re called to do, and pray for those that do other things.”

Calls of “Amen” rang through the crowd, and some dropped their heads in prayer.

Later, the preacher described a “famine of the word of God.”

”You live in a confused world, you live in a dangerous world,” Stancil said, his voice trembling. “We have dismissed the word of God, therefore we have chaos and confusion.”

At Christ the King Lutheran Church in Largo, a pastor said the mood in the country reminded him of the 1968 protests over the Vietnam War rocking the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and King.

“I don’t think we’re at that level yet, but we’re closer to ‘68 than any other year since ‘68 that I can remember in my lifetime,” he said. He lamented the name-calling and mudslinging in today’s politics and brought it back to a point of his sermon, that Ephesians Chapter 1 calls people names too: “Saints, chosen, predestined, adopted and redeemed.”

At Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown Tampa, the mention was brief, as the lector asked the congregation to “Pray for former President Trump and those shot at last night’s rally, and for an end to gun violence.” The next prayer in the petition was for “all who are sick in mind, body and spirit.”

At Idlewild Baptist Church in Lutz, Pastor Eloy Rodriguez noted that it happened to be the church’s annual meet the candidates day. Several local candidates had tables set up in the lobby to meet with church members and talk about their platforms after the service.

“Of course we are doing this, providentially, just one day after one of the two major presidential candidates survived an assassination attempt,” Rodriguez said. “We need to pray for our nation, we need to pray for peace. ... We want to honor Lord Jesus in the way we interact in the public square.”

Rodriguez prayed for Trump and his family before saying the incident recalled the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

“I remember that, and other cases in history,” he said. “We don’t want to go back there. But this is a very different nation from 1980s. We are very divided, sadly. And we want to pray for the unity of our nation, for the spirit of God to come on our nation and to cause a revival that we will be transformed — that we will be lovers of the truth.”

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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