Video: Bishop Mark Beckwith on Breaking the Curse of Orlando
By Kevin Coughlin
Hundreds held hands and sang songs by candlelight Wednesday on the Morristown Green, and heard eloquent clergy members try to find hope in the tragedy of Orlando.
There were tears, and entreaties to counter hatred with love. And there was anger, at the violence that took 49 innocent lives at a gay nightclub over the weekend.
“We’re here to say, the curse cannot continue,” thundered Episcopal Bishop Mark Beckwith, at an interfaith service at Morristown’s Episcopal Church of the Redeemer.
“There is no reason on God’s green earth that anyone, legally or illegally, should be able to use an AR-15, for any reason,” Beckwith said, to rousing applause.
Authorities initially described the semi-automatic rifle used by the killer at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub as a legally purchased AR-15. Subsequently, the weapon was determined to be a Sig Sauer MCX rifle.
“A magazine [of ammunition] can be replaced in the blink of an eye. No one needs such a firearm. We need to reduce their availability… or some deranged person is going to get one and use it,” said the Bishop, citing a litany of mass shootings: Newtown, San Bernardino, Charleston.
He urged listeners to avoid constitutional arguments and polarizing “gun control” language, and frame the debate as a public safety issue.
Photographs of the Orlando victims ringed the packed church. Mayor Tim Dougherty, who delayed summer travel plans to attend, took a turn reading aloud victims’ names and biographies on the Green.
A procession quietly marched there from the church, assisted by a significant number of police.
Participants carried glow-sticks, candles and signs with pictures of the slain, concluding the evening by singing “We Shall Overcome.”
The Morris Area Clergy Council was well represented, with speakers from local Buddhist, Episcopal, Jewish, Methodist, Mormon and Presbyterian congregations.
Redeemer has a large LGBT membership, and Rector Cynthia Black, who flew home from a religious retreat in Florida for the service, thanked the wider community for expressing its “solidarity and love.
“This is Morristown at its best,” Black said. “This congregation of Redeemer thanks you, this lesbian thanks you, this child of God thanks you, for your witness by being here tonight. We cannot let hate win.”
A similar vigil was held on the Green three years ago, after the massacre of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT.
The Rev. Alison Miller of the Morristown Unitarian Fellowship spoke at both gatherings. She found comfort in Wednesday’s turnout, which numbered about 350 in the church, according to clergy estimates.
“This has brought together so many different types of people,” Miller said. “What I see here tonight is a cross-section of the community coming together.”
She exhorted the crowd to keep alive memories of the victims, “and what they meant to the people who cherished them, until finally our legislators understand that things must change.
“And we have the power to make that happen,” the minister insisted.
Outstanding event. Thanks for your song; so well done; hope you’ll record in some way — perhaps add to YouTube? Also, Bishop Beckwith…very inspiring.