By the mid-2000s I was on the road three Sundays out of almost every month, preaching in small-town pulpits anywhere from Florida to Alaska, Arizona to New Hampshire. Occasionally I’d slip across the northern border to conservative-friendly Canadian towns to regale congregations with stories of what a missionary does in the scandalous capital of their neighbor nation to the south. These stops almost always meant increased financial support for my work, but these congregations also relied on me to be their eyes and ears in the immoral swamp that was Washington. It worked both ways for me. Visiting folks in real-world America gave me a sense of the worries and preoccupations, the fears, the hopes, and the prayers of the people who faithfully sent me their $10, $20, $100, so I could do the work God called me to do. I never wanted to lose contact with these down-home evangelical Christians whose perception of politicians was a bracing contrast to my sometimes insulated life in the world known as “inside the Beltway.” These visits were my opportunity to listen to and understand the priorities and the concerns of those who lived in what they were sure the liberals called “the fly-over states.” This was most of America, populated by people who wanted their voices heard during more than election years.
A frequent stop on these weekend itineraries was bucolic Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the Bible Belt of the Northeast, famous for its concentration of Old Order Amish and their horses and buggies. My time there always offered me an antidote to my frenetic, frantic, and combative Washington world. Over a twenty-year period, I had recruited many supporters, pastors, and even volunteers from the Lancaster area, just a two-hour drive from my ministry headquarters.
On October 3, 2006, I was in my office when I got an urgent call from one of those longtime Lancaster donors, Glenn Eshelman. His voice was shaking as he told me five Amish girls had just been murdered in a schoolhouse down the road from him. The perpetrator was the son of a woman who worked for his company. The milk delivery truck driver had stormed into a one-room schoolhouse, ordered the boys out, and lined up the remaining ten girls—then, systematically shot them. Five survived, five did not. The gunman then shot himself.
I told my secretary to cancel my appointments for the day, and I jumped into my car and drove to Lancaster County. As I turned off the highway, the beautiful countryside was drenched with rain. My mind reeled at the thought of an act of such horrific violence happening in a place so serene and seemingly untouched by modern problems.
In contrast to the simplicity of their Amish neighbors, Glenn and his wife, Shirley, had created a state-of-the-art, two-thousand-seat theater called Sight & Sound Auditorium that produced live musicals based exclusively on Bible stories. Since the auditorium opened in 1991, more than a million people had bought tickets to see their shows. I arrived at the vast complex, usually a site of wonder and happiness, now the central location for those to mourn and try to come to terms with this innocence-shattering experience. Hundreds of Glenn’s employees, most of whom knew somebody tied to the tragedy, gathered in the giant auditorium, many weeping on each other’s shoulders. I offered words of consolation, then invited the grieving assembly to bow their heads and pray for the loved ones of the girls, the comfort of their families, the healing of survivors, and the family of Charles Roberts, the man who had single-handedly created this immense sorrow. I thought of my own encounters with this version of tragedy: the lasting effect of the suicide of my mother’s first husband; the murders of two Capitol Hill police officers in 1998 who were shot when I was in the building; and the murders of Drs. Gunn and Slepian. It seemed to me that gun violence wasn’t just a social problem; it could be a spiritual and theological one. I wondered if our community might be too cavalier about lethal firepower.
Glenn took me to the home of Terri Roberts, the killer’s mother and his employee. Marie, the shooter’s widow, and their three children had taken refuge there from the media storm. Marie had been at a prayer meeting when her husband was in the schoolhouse. When she returned home, she found four suicide notes he had written to her and the children. Her husband had called her from inside the schoolhouse, in a panic, to say he was angry with God because their own baby daughter had died despite their prayers. Marie called 911, but police were already at the scene.
Marie sat, pale and unable to speak. As it grew dark, there was a knock at the door: Amish elders, representatives from the community that had just been grievously injured by the loss of five beautiful children, stood outside. Terri’s husband, Chuck, welcomed them in and tried to express his sorrow and contrition. They had come, the eldest member said, to share their love and forgiveness, assuring Chuck, Terri, and Marie that the community understood it wasn’t their fault, and they forgave them. Chuck, a retired police officer, broke down sobbing and one of the elders took him into his arms and held him.
I had never seen such pure Christlike love and caring in my life—the nobility of these grieving men, still reaching out with compassion to the parents and wife of the person who had perpetrated such a heinous crime. I carried away with me that day a greater reverence for the miracle of God’s grace and the power of forgiveness. It took me back to an earlier time, when Jesus’ words more directly informed my conscience: “Blessed are the merciful . . .”
When I left Lancaster after attending the funerals for some of the girls, I realized that, rather than having done the Eshelmans a favor, they had given me an extraordinary gift. This was one of many moments when I stepped out of my familiar world and encountered Christ among us, in simplicity and humility. I spent so much of my time enmeshed in power politics that too often the balance between my Christian ministry and sheer ambition was tilted to a dangerous degree. I returned to Washington humbled by the compassion and mercy I had witnessed. The working of God’s healing grace was demonstrated directly in the midst of this unfathomable tragedy by those who would have the most reason to turn their backs in despair. I contrasted this with the way I had felt during Matthew’s and Cheryl’s illnesses all those years ago, and realized even now that I would have a long way to go to approach the goodness of what I had seen in the Amish of Lancaster. I needed to find that level of grace.
I wish I could say I took those lessons to my mission field on Capitol Hill, but the compassion and Christlike care amidst the suffering in a little community in Lancaster County didn’t translate easily to where I spent my time—in a cauldron of often manufactured conflict meant to score points for one side or the other. Democrats and Republicans, progressives and conservatives just didn’t share the same sensibilities as the Amish. Sadly, or cynically, I could only justify my return to bare-knuckle partisan behavior by convincing myself Washington was “different,” that the innocence of the Amish would be trampled by the folks who populated my mission field. Lancaster did cause a stirring in my heart, though: I couldn’t forget the forgiveness, the acceptance, the human understanding and divine grace, the esteem of one human being for another, and I longed for it to be part of my own spiritual experience. My faith had in too many ways become something other than Christlike. Instead of being a conduit of unmerited favor and kindness, as I had learned Christianity should be long ago at Elim Bible Institute, mine was now a cudgel for beating ideological opponents into submission. I began to consider just how much politics had corrupted my faith and marred my Christian witness.