I read today in the headlines that there was a shooting at a church in Tennessee. I thought something like this, though not in these exact words: “That’s weird, in the South, churches are usually in the business of inciting violent hatred; they’re not usually the target of it.”
When I actually read the news story about it though, my prejudiced thought seemed to be vindicated: this was far from a stereotypical southern Evangelical church: it was a progressive, liberal, ACLU-supporting, Unitarian Universalist church. Very much a target for crazy gun-toting hateful people in America.
UPDATE:
Yahoo News: Man Shot Churchgoers Over Liberal Views
On the flipside, Topher noted in the comments that when you hear “violence in a church in the South” the first thing you might logically think of is church burnings, which have been linked to race, robbery, and just general malice.
It’s interesting that you should say that, because my perception of southern churches is still heavily impacted by visions of “black” churches being burned; churches that generally are NOT about violence.
There’s another big hole in my logic. :)