History Repeats We Never Learn

Our colonial forefathers expanded into the wilderness building homes, fortifications, and churches. The stockades were constructed for communal safety and most times this place of refuge also contained storerooms for food and gunpowder. Homes and churches were located outside of the fortification and at risk for raids from Native Americans.

These frontier homes, crops, and barns were protected with the weaponry owned by each individual family. On Sundays during the church service, the meetinghouse would post armed guards at the door to defend the worshippers inside from attacks.

As our nation grew and became more civilized, attacks became a thing of the past. The Colonies became a nation, the Constitution became the law of the land, and freedom to worship became an accepted ideal. Churches evolved into bastions of safety without fear of intrusion from government or other enemies.

There came a time when we slipped back. Churches became targets for violence, targets for the lashing out of racism, and the bull’s eye for intolerance. It was a time when the color of a person’s skin was more divisive than the person himself/ herself. Churches were no longer safe. Burning of these sanctuaries and killing tainted the country.

Although those tensions have eased, we are still faced with a similar problem. There are folks with different ideas of religion and culture that are selecting some houses of worship, schools, and gathering places as places for killing, destruction, and to further their agenda. These acts of violence has now made it necessary to place armed guards at locked doors again, to keep those worshippers inside safe from the evils without.