SOURCE: BlackChristiannews.com
He came here first, to the front door of this historically black church 15 miles east of Louisville.
A white man tried to enter the First Baptist Church of Jeffersontown on a fall afternoon, not long after its Wednesday noonday Bible study had ended.
Surveillance video showed the man — later identified by police as Gregory Alan Bush — banging on the doors, which have been kept locked ever since a white supremacist killed nine black people at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.
First Baptist administrator Billy Williams still shudders to think what might have happened if he had heard Bush, 51, knocking. “I would have welcomed him in,” Williams said.
Instead, Bush, who had a black ex-wife and a history of domestic violence, left the church and drove to a nearby Kroger supermarket, where police say he gunned down two African American shoppers.
The Oct. 24 Kroger shooting was quickly overshadowed by the discovery of pipe bombs mailed to more than a dozen critics of President Trump and a rampage at a Pittsburgh synagogue that left 11 people dead. But the burst of racial violence in Jeffersontown has left this church and the predominantly white community around it deeply shaken.
That dread was still palpable on a November Sunday, as more than 200 church members arrived for the 11 a.m. service. A security guard waited outside, atop the steps to the brick church, which was founded 185 years ago by free blacks and freed slaves.
Inside, light streamed through the stained-glass windows as worshipers held hands and prayed. “Please don’t let the spirit of fear dominate our lives, but have a spirit of love that conquers fear,” the minister intoned.
Ushers smiled and greeted visitors. The choir sang. The minister preached. But there was one chilling difference about this Sunday service.
Before the Kroger shooting, which is being investigated by the FBI as a possible hate crime, church officials had been opposed to any of their 1,600 members bringing firearms into the sanctuary. But after it, Williams sought permission from First Baptist’s pastor, the Rev. Kevin L. Nelson, to ask members who work in law enforcement or have permits to carry weapons to bring their guns inside the church during services and Bible study.