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South Carolina AME churches keep extending welcome a year after massacre

A few weeks after a young white gunman killed nine people at a Bible study at Emanuel African Methodist Episco­pal Church in Charleston, another young white man walked into a Bible study at another AME church in South Carolina.

This young man did not seem to understand why his unexpected presence at Campbell Chapel, 100 miles away in the coastal town of Bluffton, unnerved the regulars that Wednesday evening.

It was as if he hadn’t heard about Dylann Roof and his intention to start a race war. The young man’s awkward body language, sighs, and eye rolling only made the congregants more nervous as they tried to focus on scripture.