Local Unitarian Universalist Reaction to Shooting

Local Unitarian Universalists are reacting to this weekend's tragic shooting.

The minister of Chattanooga's Unitarian Universalist Church says his church has experienced violence in the past. He says someone fire bombed the church back during the Civil Right's Era but he says he's never seen a tragedy like this in his church.

Members of the Unitarian Universalist Church lay flowers in front of the Knoxville building where seven people where shot Sunday, two killed.

Police say Jim Adkisson targeted the church because he couldn't find a job and because of his dislike of the liberal movement.

"Well it appears that church had received some publicity in the recent past in regards to it's liberal stance on things and that is at least one of the issues we believe that caused that church to be selected," Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV says.

"We are a liberal religious community, this church has no creed, it's a non creedal faith," Rev. Jeff Briere says.

And it's a faith that Reverend Jeff Briere, who heads the local Unitarian Universalist congregation, says will not be altered after Sunday's shooting.

"This fellow is not going to make me feel like a Jew in Nazi Germany in 1935, I am not going to put my tail between my legs and hide," Briere says.

Briere found out about the shooting early Sunday morning. Police say Adkisson struck during a children's production of the play Annie, and now Briere, and the parents in his congregation, are trying to figure out how to educate their children about Sunday's adult tragedy.

"Well you don't want to scare them but on the other hand you don't want to overprotect children from the real world," Briere says.

A world that changed for Unitarian Universalist's everywhere on Sunday, especially here in Tennessee.

"Can you forgive Jim Adkisson for doing what he did?" We ask. "Sure forgiveness is a necessary human ingredient, if we don't have forgiveness we'll never be able to get beyond this event," Briere says.

And if you'd like to learn more about the Chattanooga's Unitarian Universalist Church you can log onto their website - www.uuc.org.