“Our investigation is looking at everything,” Chief Hampton mentioned. “Nothing is off the table.”
Growing up within the culturally conservative exurbs of Cherokee County, north of Atlanta, Mr. Long “brought his Bible to school every day,” mentioned Darin Peppers, 51, town director for First Priority of Metro Atlanta, a highschool evangelical group. He performed a field drum throughout morning reward conferences of his Christian youth group at Sequoyah High School, Mr. Peppers mentioned.
According to at least one faculty yearbook, Mr. Long led a weekly gathering of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. “I really feel like God is wanting me to be a leader in the church so I felt like this would be a really good opportunity to exercise some of those principles,” the yearbook quoted him saying, “and also just reach out to our campus with the gospel.”
A Rise in Attacks Against Asian-Americans
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- Eight folks, together with six ladies of Asian descent, had been killed within the Atlanta massage parlor shootings. The suspect’s motives are underneath investigation, however Asian communities throughout the United States are on alert due to a surge in assaults in opposition to Asian-Americans over the previous yr.
- A torrent of hate and violence in opposition to Asian-Americans across the U.S. started final spring, within the early days of the coronavirus pandemic. Community leaders say the bigotry was spurred by the rhetoric of former President Trump, who referred to the coronavirus because the “China virus.”
- In New York, a wave of xenophobia and violence has been compounded by the financial fallout of the pandemic, which has dealt a extreme blow to New York’s Asian-American communities. Many neighborhood leaders say racist assaults are being overlooked by the authorities.
- In January, an 84-year-old man from Thailand was violently slammed to the bottom in San Francisco, leading to his dying at a hospital two days later. The assault, captured on video, has grow to be a rallying cry.
In latest years, Mr. Long and his household had been lively members at Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Ga. He was baptized there as an grownup in 2018, in keeping with a now-deleted Facebook submit by the church.
The church is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention and put itself on a listing of church buildings which can be “friendly” to the mission of Founders Ministries, a bunch throughout the denomination that has criticized what it characterizes as a leftward drift inside evangelicalism.
Crabapple’s bylaws embrace a prolonged passage on marriage and sexuality that condemns “adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, polygamy, pedophilia, pornography, or any attempt to change one’s sex.”
The church’s lead pastor, Jerry Dockery, preached a sermon about gender roles in September, drawing on a passage in 1 Timothy that instructs ladies to decorate modestly and to “learn in quietness and full submission.”
