Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church

by Kevin Sack

A sweeping history of one of the nation’s most important African American churches and a profound story of courage and grace amid the fight for racial justice—from Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Kevin Sack

Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. We meet unsung heroes, including Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Religion, Politics, Race, Social Justice, American History

480 pages, Hardcover

Published June 3, 2025

Reviews

[David Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

As an old white male, I have often been viewed as a safe audience for subtle and not-so-subtle comments about Blacks from my fellow Whites. For a while, I naively believed that many of these prejudices would fade as the lessons of the civil rights movement took hold and younger generations learned to eschew the bigotry of older white Americans. In hindsight, I should have recognized that, on the issue of race, those subtle and not-so-subtle comments were indicative of something in the American id that is fiercely resistant to the positive influences of religion, empathy, education, logic, and our founding documents.

I admit to being taken aback by the ferocity of the backlash from whites over the past 10 years. It is chilling to hear young Americans openly cheer comments from mainstream pundits and online celebrities that would once have been the domain of Jim Crow advocates and Klansmen. It is disconcerting to see the willingness of think tanks and entrepreneurial "thinkers and scholars" to expertly pull the levers of social media to appeal to the worst instincts of American whites.

I occasionally imagine that reading a single book (other than the Bible which doesn't seem to be helping) would help American whites to better understand the brutality, severity, and consequences of the black experience in America. This is one of the books. Expertly told and researched, the arc of African American life as told through the story of one our most venerated churches captures much of the cruel and vicious history that so many Whites would prefer to ignore or, sadly of late, perpetuate. However, far better than the barbarity the book exposes is the power, resilience, and strength of the African Americans who sought to harness the power of Christianity to carve out a place in American society, no matter how brutal the resistance.

[Karen Ashmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is said that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. After reading this book, you will see why. Blacks were lynched, tortured, disrespected and separated from their families at the hands of their white oppressors. They soon learned they could lead and be independent only in the Black church. So they fought hard for that right. It was attained in the south mainly through AME and Black Baptist churches (not Southern Baptist, a mostly white denomination in the Deep South).

This book not only documents the murders of nine Bible study members at Mother Emanuel AME church but also describes its painful past of intra and inter-denominational conflicts. You learn about Blacks separating from white churches to form their own Black churches but unfortunately whites would not release their oppressive control and mandated white overseers attend and control the church. Blacks did not have true control of their own church until Richard Allen and others founded the AME denomination with no white oversight.

And then, there was much intradenominational conflict as church leaders fought over power and control of the church. But the most important thing about black churches is the community and safe space to organize during the political upheaval of the civil war to fighting back on Jim Crow laws to being the core leaders in the civil rights movement of the 50s through the 70s.

One quote attributed to RoxaneGay, one of my favorite authors, is cited: White people “think racism is merely a vestige of a painful past instead of this (still) indelible part of our present.”

The murders of the Mother Emanuel Nine certainly proved that.

[Cyromia Hughes-Love · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is often times a sobering view of what happened the at Mother Emanuel but it was also a different yet enlightening view of the 9 lives lost that fateful night and the courage that it took for the survivors. This book also told the story of AME church and its history. I really enjoyed this book and I pray for the lives lost and their families. Thank you Mr. Sack for writing this book and telling their stories.

[Kenzie | kenzienoelle.reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

IG review: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMnjl0DgA...

I’ll never forget seeing the headlines about this mass shooting in my state. I hope this book serves as one way to honor those lost and the legacy of the AME church.

This is a book absolutely packed with history. From the macro history of the Black church in America and the AME (African Methodist Episcopal) church history to the specific history of Emanuel AME. Also some Charleston, SC history and personal stories of those lost on June 17, 2015.

The books opens and closes with the mass murders and aftermath but doesn’t dwell there and most of the book is focused on the narrative history highlighting the lives of so many men and women. So well researched. I definitely recommend listening to this audiobook as this is pretty dense!

Thank you so much to @crownpublishing for the free book! This one is out now!

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mother Emanuel is an important, moving read. Kevin Sack was deeply embedded with Mother Emanuel family after the 2015 massacre. The writing reflects that. For me, diving deeper into the lives of the Morher Emanuel family was missing from the narrative. That doesn’t distract from how important this book is.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Impeccably researched and exhaustive in detail, this history of the iconic African Methodist Episcopal Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston is bookended by the horrific shooting of nine people during a Bible study in 2015. This massacre is only the latest episode of racially motivated violence suffered by Mother Emmanuel’s congregants over its 200 year history.

Among many things I learned:
(*) Early Methodists were staunchly anti-slavery, but Southern Methodists eventually won accommodation from the general conference.
(*) The AME church in Philadelphia began when white Methodists at St George’s confronted black Methodists during a service in 1787 and tried to force them to relocate. The black Methodists walked out; Richard Allen bought a building and formed a new congregation. The clergy at St George’s were given jurisdiction over the new church and sold the new building at auction—Allen bought it a second time and severed ties with the Methodists.
(*) The evidence that Denmark Vessey led a slave revolt is shockingly thin. It is much more probable that white Charlestonians scape-goated him out of paranoia similar to that of the Salem witch trials.
(*) Sack only recounts a few instances of Jim Crow era vigilante violence, but even that made my stomach turn. A future pastor of Mother Emmanuel, BJ Glover was hospitalized by law enforcement officers for not saying “sir” when applying for a driver’s license.

[Sharon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. My interest in this book stems from having been down the street from Mother Emanuel AME on the night of the shooting, and also, since then, knowing that many people in my life who could potentially remember what happened do not. This book is a feat. I did not expect it to be a sprawling history of AME churches. My guess is that most writers who would have attempted such a story would have tried to tie a bow or two. Sack makes plain from the first page to the last page of the epilogue that nothing is tidy about the past, present, or future of Mother Emanuel, or of race relations in the U.S.

[Andy Belanger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sad and hopeful. Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina, the notorious site of a shooting by a racist in 2015, has a storied 200-year history. Kevin Sack tells much of it, warts and all. A biography of a building, its pastors, its congregants, its tragedies, its triumphs and its role as a spiritual beacon for an important community in South Carolina.

[Ralph Plagman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The 200 year story of Mother Emanuel, the Charleston AME Church where nine at Bible study were brutally murdered by Dylann Roof in 2015. It is a story set against the backdrop of race relations from the antebellum South to the present. I highly recommend this beautifully written book.

[Naomi Bayer · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciated this book, the level of detail made it a difficult book for me to get through. The history of race in America told through the lens of one African-American church is a familiar one and one that should never be forgotten or ignored. The book brought to mind Abyssian Baptist Church in Harlem and Allen AME in Queens, two churches that i have long and deep associations with.

[Madison Carter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never rate non fiction unless it’s a clear, unquestionable 5 stars. I really recommend this book.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

My favorite part of this book is the afterword. The author recounts a conversation with Melvin Graham Jr, a relative of one of the victims. Mr Graham’s thoughts about forgiveness (in the context of his loss as well as for every human) are worth serious contemplation. If you don’t read every part of this book, I encourage you to read this part.

I am conflicted about this book. The author bookends his extensive research with the harrowing recitation of black Charlestonians’ murder and the trial of an unrepentant white suprematist and mixed state reparations. This section of the book is excellent. The author champions the victims and is duly skeptical of the post-trial reactions of the Charleston and SC community.

Overall, this book provides significant scholastic insight into the post-Civil Rights era, Southern Black pathos. It touches on everything from distrust of the medical system, systemic judicial and civic injustice and under representation, the effects of gentrification, the historic and modern role of AME churches, the ebb and flow of reparations for slavery in SC, the modern dismantling of civil rights, the insular nature of local communities, among many other topics I haven’t seen in my exposure to black history nonfiction.

My complaint is that the table of contents would indicate this book’s focus is primarily AME churches and the South’s interplay with slavery and reconstruction. I don’t walk away with that impression. Probably 65% of this book is that. The remaining content feels like a previously written condensed treatise about the founding of the Methodist Church as well as a high school level recitation of Civil War history. All very interesting but tangential in my opinion. I also think the author could’ve provided a better understanding of the modern day SC dichotomy of racism and how that shaped the killer’s motives. (Because Lexington County is not like Charleston County, let me tell ya).

I give this work 4 stars though because it will stick in your craw. The potency of the AME church and the added value that the author brings to scholarship about modern Black communities in the south are well worth the time.

A minor quibble: I don’t know if the narrator of the audiobook is simply a computer applying phonetic approximations or someone who did not do his research, but each and every Charleston name was mispronounced (with the exception of Lesesne), and the reading of NAACP as N,A,A,C,P was jarring. If this matters to you, I would avoid the audio.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fascinating and SO long. I learned a lot, would love it as a podcast with each chapter as an episode.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Page 136 my edition

Branch churches in the antebellum South helped normalize a culture of Sunday morning segregation – first involuntary, then voluntary – that has persisted across America for the better part of two centuries… Four of five U.S. churchgoers still attend services with congregations that are predominantly one race.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina is where the white supremacist, Dylann Roof, murdered nine Black parishioners in a Bible study class in the evening of June 17, 2015.

This book is an examination of this church and Black churches in general across America. The Black church started to form in the late 1700s from white missionaries, who converted Black people to Christianity. The Methodists were a branch of Protestant Christianity that originated in England. They went to America to gain converts.

Methodists were abolitionists. When they moved to the American South during the slavery era, they faced many challenges to their abolitionist ideals from the entrenched white supremacists. Eventually, white Methodists in the South had to abandon their abolitionist dreams.

Page 55-56

Slave religion, and the Black Christianity that developed from it, bolstered notions of self-worth and collective identity despite conditions that sapped the soul.

It was at this stage, prior to the Civil War, that Black churches started to form. Black members would not condone any compromise to white supremacy in the church. There were a number of freedmen (men and women) who had acquired their freedom of the bondage of slavery and did not want to accommodate Southern supremacy within the Methodist Church.

Page 56 Eddie S. Glaude jr.

Out of Black religious life emerged a conception of Black national identity. It also enabled them to view themselves as bound together, as in communion with one another.

Page 56

Designed to serve uniquely Black needs, Black Christianity became culturally distinct from white Christianity.

Over time, the Black Methodist church became entirely separate from the white Methodist Church. It had its own governing body. The white Methodist church came to adhere to the Southern supremacist status quo, namely slavery.

Eventually, the Black church came to be feared as a gathering place for Blacks to foment rebellion – and to acquire knowledge. This was feared by whites, who, in South Carolina, were outnumbered by Black people.

Page 74

Even before Richard Allen and Absalom Jones [of the Emanuel Church] founded their congregations, each envisioned the Black church as a vehicle for social welfare and activism. In rebuttal to the white church’s insistence that deliverance awaited them in the next life, their churches would intervene for Black believers in this world as well… it demanded that Christ’s example be followed in caring for the poor and sick and in denouncing injustice.


Page 131 in 1834

The [South Carolina] legislature helped enact a law that forbade teaching enslaved people to read.

In the Black church, Black people found empowerment and solidarity. This only grew after the Civil War (1861 – 65).

Page 165 the grand transformation in American churchgoing

By the end of Reconstruction [in the 1870s] … most practicing Black Christians [would] self-segregate into churches under their own control and governance, establishing the Black church as the central institutional force in African-American life.

Increasingly, more so after the collapse of Reconstruction, the Black church’s orientation became more and more activist with preachers advocating for justice, (page 182) labor protection, land ownership and public schooling – would be addressed in the political realm, not the spiritual one.

And there was much that required activism, with Jim Crow being introduced and enforced either by law or violence across the South. Segregation became a way of life, leaving Black people marginalized – unable to vote, underfunded schools, no legal representation… The only sanctuary was the Black church.

Page 237

Inside Emanuel’s walls, men and women could be simply that, men and women unsubordinated by the whim of the dominant caste. They could lead and hold positions of authority in ways that the public and private sectors did not allow.

Page 216

In November 1900, some fifteen hundred Black Charlestonians packed the Emanuel Church to call for the firing of a white police officer who had shot and killed a Black suspect.

The author also discusses some of the short-comings of the Black church. It was hierarchical and male-dominated and persists to this day, but women have always had a prominent grassroots participation that is not always recognized. There have been increasing cases of monetary corruption and harassment – much like the white church.

Thankfully, little space was devoted to Dylann Roof. He exemplifies the persistence of white supremacist thinking in the U.S. Roof was lured into hate, amplified by extremist and far-right websites on the internet where he spent much of his time. During his trial, he showed absolutely no remorse for what he had done. And once again, this illustrates the persistent gun culture existing in a country that allows, almost without restraint, the purchase of all types of firearms. Technically, Roof should not have been allowed a weapon, but he easily found a way to circumvent this.

The author reviews the aftermath in Charleston of this horrible event. Prior, Charleston was becoming a popular tourist area, but as the writer states (page 329) “the [tourist] economy relied on a romanticism of the past… Old times now were not forgotten.”

Throughout this, and for centuries prior, Black people have maintained a (page 339) “moral superiority over racial superiority”.

This is a powerful rendering of the racial and church history of the United States.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Few people beyond South Carolina’s Lowcountry knew of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston—Mother Emanuel—before the night of June 17, 2015, when a twenty-one-year-old white supremacist walked into Bible study and slaughtered the church’s charismatic pastor and eight worshippers. Although the shooter had targeted the first AME church in the South in order to agitate racial strife, he did not anticipate the aftermath—an outpouring of forgiveness from the victims’ families and a reckoning with the divisions of caste that have afflicted Charleston and the South since the earliest days of European settlement.

Mother Emanuel explores the fascinating history that brought the church to that moment, and the depth of the desecration committed in its fellowship hall. It reveals how African Methodism was cultivated from the harshest American soil and how Black suffering shaped forgiveness into both a religious practice and a survival tool. Kevin Sack, who has written about race in his native South for more than four decades, uses the church to trace the long arc of Black life in the city where nearly half of enslaved Africans disembarked in North America and where the Civil War began. Through the microcosm of one congregation, he explores the development of a unique practice of Christianity, from its daring breakaway from white churches in 1817, through the traumas of Civil War and Reconstruction, to its critical role in the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. We meet unsung heroes, including Denmark Vesey, the former slave whose aborted rebellion plot led to his hanging and the destruction of the original church; Rev. Richard Harvey Cain, Emanuel’s first pastor after the Civil War, who also won election to Congress during Reconstruction; Rev. Benjamin J. Glover, who served simultaneously as pastor and a crusading NAACP leader during the 1960s; and Rev. Clementa Pinckney, a respected state legislator, whose 2015 murder inspired President Barack Obama’s memorable “Amazing Grace” eulogy.

At its core, Mother Emanuel is an epic tale of perseverance, not just of a congregation but of a people who withstood enslavement and Jim Crow and all manner of violence with an unbending faith."

Beautifully researched and written. Fascinatingly different responses: some calling for forgiveness, some for retribution.

[Joseph J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Goodreads and Crown for my copy of this important book. Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston S.C. stands as a landmark to African-American Christianity and faith based activism in this country. Tragically on June 17, 2015 it was the blood soaked site of testament to the ongoing depths of racial hatred and racist rooted violence when a Confederate flag, gun obsessed 20 year old entered a Bible study group and assassinated nine people, including Pastor and S.C. State Senator Clemente Pinckney and eight (mostly elderly) innocents. This shocking act would capture the world's attention, bring down Confederate flags and symbols across the nation (although one was carried into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021) and give rise to public and theological debates about Christian forgiveness in the face of evil. It would prompt the first African American President to publicly intone the lines of Amazing Grace. Kevin Sack's new book marks the tragic 10th anniversary of this act with a hard to read account of the killings, a history of Mother Emmanuel and black history in Charleston through two plus centuries, and a reflection on Christianity, forgiveness and human character. This is at time not easy reading, from the slaughter ten years ago to the violent bigotry which assaulted even black "men of the cloth" during the past over two hundred years. But-as the back to power administration in Washington D.C. targets teaching history from the classroom to the Smithsonian-as we have (had)learned history is often uncomfortable and shocking. This book is especially powerful and NEEDED NOW, as too many forget ten years ago and Mother Emmanuel, and almost eight years ago and Charlottesville. Indeed, Pinckney's political reputation and playbook in the state senate should make this a handbook for today's fractured politics. Always informative, and at times unpleasant (re: this country's history and embrace of violence) this is an important book especially as some in power seek to literally whitewash history of the unpleasant.

[Steve McFarland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many emotions were brought out from this book, and yeahhhhh after reading this we should have went to the mattresses for this horrific crime. This along with the mass shooting of Black people in a supermarket in Buffalo in 2022 have been loss to endless, meaningless culture wars, and an outright refusal of Black history.

Next time a white politician uses “woke” as a joke or an insult I’ll be thinking of the oldest victim Susie Jackson who was shot 10 times using hallow bullets, or Pastor Pickney who welcomed the killer with the seat next to him.

For this to happen a day after Trump came down the escalator in 2015 is something that even the finest griots could not create. But rather than examine this moment we have chosen to reject and my only question is “who does that serve?”

This last paragraph left me utterly disgusted:

“Emanuel has continued to receive threats over the years. Longtime members who were instructed as children to close their eyes in prayer no longer feel safe doing so. The church has formed a security ministry and charged it with thwarting any future attack. Until in-person services were temporarily suspended by the Covid-19 pandemic, a uniformed Charleston police officer stationed himself at the rear of the sanctuary each Sunday and parked his marked car conspicuously in the lot that Dylann Roof had used. A squad of hand. selected congregants, some with police or military backgrounds, have received tactical training and carry concealed handguns in the House of the Lord. Additional surveillance cameras and monitors have been installed, and strangers are required to announce themselves over an intercom before being buzzed into the locked fellowship hall.

The doors of the church are no longer always open.”

[Ph. D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ten years in the making, Mother Emanuel is a disturbing, uplifting, magnificent chronicle. The struggle of Emanuel A.M.C.to achieve freedom and equality in the face of unrelenting resistance and outright horror is the struggle of all of us who call ourselves American. Until we are all free, none of us are free.

It's about forgiveness, yes. It's also about repentance and restoration. White America has a long way to go, and it starts with those in power taking an unflinching look at how they are complicit in the continued subjugation of those who are not.

In his epilogue, the author makes it clear that a white person can't fully understand the Black experience. "I have endeavored to tell the congregation's story in a way that reciprocates that respect [that he was shown], recognizing that my own race, background and privilege make it impossible for me to experience or understand it in the way that African Americans do. To that end, I have compensated in the only way I know how, in the way I have been trained, by putting in the work: by reading and interviewing voluminously, by relentlessly pursuing and adhering to the facts, and by thinking and writing with as much humility, empathy and care as I can summon."

May we all put in the work. Reading and reflecting on the history of Mother Emanuel is a good place to start. The work continues when we act for justice, for ALL.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars

This is an exhaustively researched and masterfully written history of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, but it achieves much more. It's a view of the genesis and growth of the AME denomination in the US, a look at the state of slavery in SC and the establishment of a rigid and brutal white supremacist state, the brief period of hope during Reconstruction, and then a century of Jim Crow and segregation. It's painful to review all this history and then how long and painful it was to achieve some semblance of racial justice, only to have it all smashed by the terrible massacre of nine beautiful souls on June 17, 2015. The aftermath of that event has been a mixed blessing for Mother Emanuel. The Church is now a tourist destination and has had an infusion of cash for maintenance, but membership is dropping as it is for most churches in the US. Kevin Sack takes a complicated story with many elements and is able to place in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and the state of Black Americans today. But his humility and sensitivity to the victims and members of Mother Emanuel is blended with his expert reportage. He spent 10 years on this project, falling in love with Charleston and moving there along the way. The Epilogue: On Forgiveness and Race is a moving finale.

[Debra Hines · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins and ends with the shooting by Dylann Roof of 9 black worshippers at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. But it's so much more than a story about the murders. Sack traces the history and influence of the black church, and the AME church in particular, in America through 2 centuries, and helps us understand how it contributed to the resilience and resistance of the black community, especially during the civil rights era and specifically in Charleston, SC. I found this book absolutely fascinating and totally inspiring and find that once again, I am in awe and respect of what being black in America has cost so many. I cannot understand the racism and the lack of understanding of what it has meant to be part of a caste that for centuries was denied basic human, political, and economic rights, and the struggle that is still required for equity and respect by these resilient and proud people. Meticulously researched and insightfully written, this book will appeal to anyone who loves history and wants to learn more about the role of the black church in America. It should humble every white person and make them think long and hard about how we conduct ourselves morally and politically and who we support, and how we atone for so many horrors of the past and inequities of the present.

[James Veliky · Rating 5 out of 5]

“ Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.
This was what Jesus taught his disciples.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
( “Love in Action” sermon, 1962-1963)

“We have come over a way that with tears has been watered.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.”
- James Weldon Johnson
Lift Every Voice and Sing

This is the story of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal(A.M.E.) Church in Charlestown,S.C. where nine congregants were massacred on June 17,2015.
For a comprehensive review I would refer you to the NY Times Book Review by Randall Kennedy on June 15, 2025.
This is a history book about the massacre and its aftermath, but it is a history book like none other. It is also a history of the church and its succession of leaders from the arrival of the first slave ships to the present day. It has rightly been called a masterpiece. How could the families of the victims forgive the killer? Kevin Sack shows us that the answer to that question lies in unraveling the history of this church and its powerful leaders over two hundred years. This book should come with a warning label that cautions the reader that they will not be the same after reading it.
Thank you to Kevin Sack and his team. You are great.

[Sharon Hardin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing, important, and readable book about slavery and race in the South built around one church, Emmanuel AME in Charleston. This is the church where a white supremacist joined a small Bible study group in the church basement one night and at the end started firing on them, killing 9 and wounding others. The author spent years in research and interviews, ultimately moving to Charleston to finish it. The book is dense with characters and events and observation and history, minutely backed by pages of notes and bibliography. And yet it is fascinatingly readable. As a United Methodist, I was interested in the history of the church's founding and affiliation with the newly formed African American Episcopal Methodist church, with its bishops and interconnected conferences and districts. I led a pretty sheltered childhood and teens and I honestly did not understand the deeply entrenched historical prejudicial and belittling treatment of Black people in the United States. While my understanding and heartbreak have certain grown, this book would have been invaluable in that process. I hope it will be widely read and appreciated.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extended history of Mother Emanuel, one of the best know historically black churches in America. It is located in Charleston, South Carolina, which is known for it's plethora of beautiful churches, and it is also the location of a mass murder by a white supremacist in June, 2015 that occurred during a Bible study.
The author covered the trial of the mass murderer and that was his inspiration for learning more about the history of the church itself.
The book, published a decade after this shooting brought the church into the national news, tells the story of how Mother Emanuel has been at the forefront of the struggle for racial justice since it was founded by enslaved and free African-Americans in 1817. The book details many things about Chalreston that I did not know, including a large population of free mixed race people--the impetus for the creation of the church was when it became illegal to educate blacks.
Most interestingly he recounts the history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, placing it within the tragic saga of the South and memorably illuminating the efforts by African American Methodists to maintain their religious commitments in the teeth of cruel adversity. He traces the sobering evolution of Methodism from an abolitionist denomination to one that accommodated and even championed slavery, and he chronicles the brutal repression of Black worship by authorities who feared that religious observance might camouflage insurrectionist conspiracies. He depicts the figures who were exiled from the state by dint of laws that prohibited the teaching of literacy or freedom of assembly absent white supervision.
On balance, things do not look good. Racism and white supremacy are openly celebrated right now, and this book chronicles the pushing back on that within a Christian framework. It is not an easy read, but it does make you think. If banning books is about shielding America's racist past, then this will be on the chopping black for sure.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this and it disappeared, strangely. Anyway.

This is, for starters, quite well-written and seems deeply researched to me. I’ve been to Charleston and made a point of stopping by Mother Emanuel, which made me that much more interested.

There’s a lot about the history of the AME Church, virtually none of which I’d known, and background on the nine people who were killed there, along with that of survivors and family members. What I thought especially interesting was a chapter on forgiveness—members of the victims’ families famously forgave the killer at the bond hearing, which was remarkable, obviously. Sack spends some time talking about forgiveness in the Black religious tradition, then considers it from multiple angles, including philosophical and personal points of view (not every family forgave, incidentally; their voices are heard too).

Anyway, extremely worth reading. I couldn’t help thinking that the grants, including from the NEH, to write this work wouldn’t be given today thanks to the evil nihilism of Trump, Musk, and their minions. I’m not so big on forgiveness, myself. 😉

[Mark O'brien · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a valuable book, but don't expect a fun read or a fast read.

It's about the Charleston, S.C. church where a white supremacist in 2015 joined more than a dozen black people in a Bible study, then mowed them down with a gun. To me, the most interesting part covers what happened to the church, its parishioners and Charleston after the massacre, but that section doesn't begin until about page 300. Sack does a great job explaining so many events and emotions; the former New York Times reporter basically embedded himself in Charleston after the killings and now is a permanent resident there.

He spends the first 300 pages on the church's founding and the pathological racism that is so much a part of South Carolina's DNA. Good history and interesting sidelights about how white men of God used the Bible to defend slavery and avoid offending the biggest donors in their churches.

[Riet · Rating 5 out of 5]

De aanleiding voor dit boek was de moord op 9 kerkgangers in de Emanuel kerk in Charleston in 2015. De moordenaar een blanke jongen van 21 jaar. Het boek begint en eindigt wel met deze schietpartij, maar daartussenin is het een prachtig geschreven verslag van de rol van de Christelijke kerk in de slavernijtijd en daarna tijden de Reconstructie en het Jim Crow regime en de Civil Rights beweging. De schrijver heeft enorm veel onderzoek verricht en interviews gedaan. Het gaat in dit geval om de Methodisten kerk in vooral het zuiden van de VS, in South Carolina om precies te zijn.
Vlot en boeiend geschreven. Het boek geeft je ook meer begrip voor de manier waarop de ex-slaven en later de Afro-Amerikanen met het geloof omgaan. Een aanrader voor wie van geschiedenis houdt.

[Antoinette Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hope everyone reads this book. Beautifully written—the author captures the history of the South through the history and story of this one church and its people and he does so through meticulous research and with a great deal of empathy. At the same time, the history of the South is a history of incredible and unrelenting violence against Black people so truthfully it took me several months to finish this as I often needed a break from the violence & heartbreak. But I hope that doesn’t scare people away. The author takes such tender& respectful care with the stories he’s been entrusted to tell.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a perfect choice for me during Black History Month. Sack structures a narrative of racial injustice around a fairly recent atrocity within an historic church. The combination of the forgiveness and grace demonstrated by survivors combined with the years of discrimination and hardship behind building the church are powerful. I lament not having read this book before my recent visit to Charleston. It would have made my trip even more meaningful. My takeaway from reading honest accounts of black history isn't shame but resolve to build stronger, better - the purpose of reading fact based history.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

My AudioFile review:

MOTHER EMANUEL
Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church
Earphones Award Winner
by Kevin Sack | Read by William DeMeritt
Contemporary Culture • 15 hrs. • Unabridged • © 2025
William DeMeritt's commanding performance is the perfect complement to Kevin Sack's tenth anniversary tribute to the 9 slaughtered members of Charleston's Mother Emanuel AME Church. This work is also a tribute to the rich and inspiring story of the Black church in America--a story laden with hope and hardship. Sack focuses mainly on the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME), a denomination that has persevered since shortly after the Civil War, through Reconstruction and Jim Crow, through lynchings and bombings, through the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. A former newspaper journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, Sack plumbed enormous numbers of scholarly accounts and primary texts to create this masterful history of endurance, which is brought forth by DeMeritt with somber resonance and emotional intensity. S.G. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2025]

Trade Ed. • Random House Audio • 2025
DD ISBN 9798217077885 $27.00

Library Ed. • Books on Tape • 2025
DD ISBN 9798217078189 $95.00

[Don · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed and epic history of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Starting with the heinous by a white supremacist (I refuse to say his name.) on June 17, 2015, the author then goes to the beginnings of both the christianization of both free and enslaved Blacks and Mother Emanual itself. Richly told, well researched and a story of perseverance, resiliency, and forgiveness. I was drawn in quickly and astonished at points even though I am well aware of some of the events and the intersection and politicization of religion and race in this country.