The suspected gunman was a regular churchgoer
John Earnest is suspected gunman who killed one woman and injured several others at Chabad of Poway, a synagogue in California. The suspect who fired at least eight rounds before leaving the synagogue is believed to be a right-wing Christian who attempted to justify his crimes by referring back to the Bible.
In a letter, by John Earnest, he included several anti-Semitic references in an attempt to explain his motives, within these was the claim that Jewish people were held responsible for killing Jesus Christ, and also he enforced the belief in a white genocide conspiracy theory.
In his first court appearance, he pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder.
The suspect was a member of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church who commented on the attack stating, “We deplore and resist all forms of antisemitism and racism. We are wounded to the core that such an evil could have gone from our community.
Such hatred has no place in any part of our beliefs or practices, for we seek to shape our whole lives according to the love and gospel of Jesus Christ.”
The shooting has also alarmed members of other Presbyterian churches who were unable to comprehend the use of Christian theology in the letter.
Reverend Duke Kwon, a pastor in a Presbyterian church in Washington, said, “John Earnest assented to and articulated a Christian theology of personal salvation with a degree of clarity that should make us squirm.
The problem is that what he believed about personal salvation, according to our tradition, could have been enough for him to be saved, but it wasn’t enough to save him from embracing anti-Semitic and white supremacist beliefs and perpetrating hateful violence and murder.”
Pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Reverend Mika Edmondson, shared similar views and stated, “If the gospel we preach comfortably coexists with white nationalism, we are not preaching the whole gospel.”
John Earnest’s letter had specified that this attack was planned following the Christchurch Mosque shooting, where 50 Muslim worshippers were killed. The letter also showed the shooter taking credit for a fire which was set at an Escondido mosque in the following weeks after the Christchurch shootings.
The suspects family spoke out and said they were “shocked and deeply saddened,” when commenting on his white supremacist views they stated that he was “informed by people we do not know, and ideas we do not hold.”
“To our great shame, he is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries,” they continued.
This shooting in Poway synagogue came six months after 11 worshippers were shot dead in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, believed to be the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States.
The US have endured other attacks on religious communities including the shooting of 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Texas, 2017; nine worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, 2015; and six people at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in 2012.
Navkiran Bains
