Commentary
Was the Nashville school massacre of March 27 an anti-Christian hate crime?
We don’t really know—partly because the Nashville police have so far not released a manifesto and other documents that might provide clues to the motivation of the suspect, 28-year-old Audrey Hale, killed by police after breaking into The Covenant School, a small Christian academy serving elementary grades in Nashville, and firing 152 rounds that killed six people, three of them children aged 9.
It seems that Hale was once a student at Covenant. Police and others have said that she identified as transgender and wanted to be called by the man’s name “Aiden,” as well as have others refer to her by masculine pronouns. Police investigating the mass-murder have said that Hale harbored “resentment,” possibly against the school. Its sponsoring church, Covenant Presbyterian, is affiliated with the theologically traditionalist Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) and declares on its website that it adheres to the “abiding validity of the moral law (Ten Commandments).” The PCA opposes same-sex marriage and is scheduled to vote in June whether to approve a petition to urge states and the federal government to “renounce the sin” of permitting transgender surgical and hormonal procedures for minors….