Open Letter to Sean Hannity and a Reflection on a UU Upbringing

There was a religious flavor to the tragic killings in Knoxville, TN -- and I don't just refer to the Unitarian Church in which the murders took place.

The killer, Jim Adkisson, appears to have felt called upon to defeat a great evil -- liberals -- in order to save his nation and to remove the source of his personal pain and suffering. He also appears to have been a deeply unwell man susceptible to suggestions others are able to read as hyperbole and bluster.

Religion Dispatches received two very different responses to the shooting: One in the form of a letter to Sean Hannity from Candace Chellew-Hodge, a pastor at Garden of Grace UCC in South Carolina; and one from religious studies scholar Laurie Patton, a personal reflection on the values she learned as a young Unitarian Universalist.

Below you'll find an excerpt from each:

Candace Chellew-Hodge

"If the Left succeeds in gaining and retaining more power, the well-being of future generations will be at greater peril. I fear (our children) will inherit a nation that is less free and less secure than the nation we inherited from the last generation. It is therefore our job to stop them. Not just debate them, but defeat them." -- Sean Hannity

Dear Sean:

I found these words on page 11 of your book Let Freedom Ring. This book, and similar ones from your conservative colleagues Bill O'Reilly and Michael Savage, was found in the home of a man who read those words, internalized those words, and then loaded his shotgun. He took 76 rounds of ammunition with him to a place of worship -- a place where he knew he could do his job to stop and defeat some liberals. At the Unitarian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, Jim Adkisson, a fan of yours, killed two people, wounded five others, and left an entire congregation and country shaken by his actions. Actions prompted, as he testified in his own written notes, by the ideas contained in your words.

I don't know if you remember me, Sean... Read More.

Laurie Patton

On July 27th Jim D. Adkisson walked into the Unitarian Church in Knoxville Tennessee, where the children were performing the play "Annie," and opened fire. I can't imagine what it might have been like to be a child in the church that day. A summer of learning and theater descended in a single second into violence and death. When the shooting began, some were so incredulous as to think it was part of the play. Mr. Adkisson had left a letter in his car stating, among other things, his hatred of the liberal movement.

Forty years ago, in the summer of 1968, I was also a Unitarian Universalist child. I was raised with the "Church across the Street" curriculum, where several Sundays a year, we visited the members of other religions in the area. We wouldn't have put it this way then, but we were taking part in something like our own miniature version of the Pluralism Project. Every Christmas we lit the Chanukah candles, sang Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and had a seminar on the Winter Solstice. It was not, as some scholars would say, "confined to a single orthodoxy." But it gave me the commitment to openness and inquiry that makes up the core of my scholarly identity today.

Unitarian Universalism also taught me about human rights, civil rights and gay rights... Read More.

Comments

[BigRube]

Those were two very very good letters. I do hope that Sean will read them and wake up. Sean and all of these so called conservative talk shows have no idea what they are doing to this great country of ours. Alot of them are very intelligent but very ignorant. If these conservative talk shows can't control their mouths then this country is going to be in a world of hurt in the future.

[DingoLily]

the next letter will blame the Bible for 911.

how completely absurd.

[KJZebra]

Okay, let's blame the actions of an unhinged lunatic on some (literal) voices he heard or a book he read.

Makes sense. Hell, Columbine was the result of violent video games.

[doctorwang]

You don't see a correlation between the books he read and the note he left?

[LRM216]

None whatsoever. He was a very sick despicable man who killed and wounded. Unfortunately, they are legion. His illness didn't not begin, nor did it end, because of a book he had read. He was a grown man, not an impressionable 9 year old.

[luziannagirl]

I accidentally ended up listening to Hannity last week. In the few minutes he was on, he ranted that "we attacked Osama bin Laden because he didn't cooperate with weapons inspectors looking for WMD's and he supported terrorists, what's so hard to understand about that? " And he put through a cheerleading caller who pronounced him (Hannity), a "great American". And kept going. Never corrected himself at all.

Now, how many of Hannity's listeners mistakenly think, based on Hannity's mis-information, that we went to war with Iraq having ANYTHING to do with Osama bin Laden?

That one rant was chock full of mis-information, and it reached the ears of a couple dozen million Americans. And Hannity does this for a couple hours a day, five days a week, year in, year out. What Hannity and the others do is yell "Fire" in a world theater crowded with nearly 7 billion people. After the crushing stampede, it doesn't matter it was all a trick.

There should be a law against what these Talk Radio Traitors are doing.

[doctorwang]

Two powerful letters........I hope Hannity reads them.

[ranchosx]

i don't think he will read them. he doesn't care.

[oncethere]

Or take any responsibility for the hatefulness of his speech. When you have a radio show fantically dedicated to the "defeat" of liberals that goes out to millions of people, you need to take some responsibility for it's message.

[liberalgirl31]

There are two very good books out right now about the use of hate speech by the radical Right:

Outright Barbarous by Jeffrey Feldman

Shock Jocks by Rory O'Connor

They cover the hateful and often violent rhetoric spewed by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Dinesh Dsouza, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Don Imus, and John Gibson. They also suggest what progressives can do to fight back.