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It is often sadly noted that the racial divide in America is nowhere more noticeable than in worship. Blacks attend black churches, whites pray alongside whites.
On Sunday morning, with the crime scene tape stripped away from its front fence, Mother Emanuel church in Charleston was reopened for its first service since its pastor and eight of its congregation were shot dead by a racist.
When the service ended an hour and a half later and the congregants began to make their way down the front stairs, they were greeted by a sea of Charlestonians, mostly white, who prayed with them through the service, standing on the road in 40-degree heat.
Many wept as they launched into a spontaneous rendition of "Amazing Grace", a hymn written by a repentant English slave ship sailor.
The young man who said he attacked the church during a Bible study meeting in order spur racial enmity could not have failed more demonstrably.
"I'm not surprised," said Maude Brown, 65, raising her voice a little to be heard over the singing.
"We have our bumps and our bruises, but this is Charleston. We are a family."
During the service around 400 Mother Emanuel congregants wept and sang and even laughed.
At one point the Reverend Norvel Goff, standing in for the Reverend Clementa Pinckney, who was shot dead with his congregants on Wednesday night by the stranger they invited into their midst, warned mourners that should he see anyone doze in the stifling heat he would turn to Genesis and "read slowly".
But mainly he spoke of thanks and redemption.
He thanked South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley for her support, and he prompted long and thunderous applause when he thanked police who had so quickly brought the alleged gunman to justice.
"A lot of people expected us to do something strange and to break out in a riot," he said. "Well they just don't know us. We are people of faith."
He called on congregants to turn to hug those around them and reassure them that "it will be all right".
The instruction was followed not only in the church but on the hot street outside, where volunteers handed out water and emergency services tended to those hit too hard by the heat.
Reverend Goff demanded that the nine dead be honoured with service to justice.
"The blood of the Mother Emmanuel Nine requires us to work until not only justice in this case, but for those who are still living in the margin of life, those who are less fortunate than ourselves, that we stay on the battlefield until there is no more fight to be fought," he said.
Outside Miss Brown said she had woken on Thursday morning "with a darkness" about her following the massacre for which Dylann Roof faces trial, but that the service had left her uplifted.
"We've got sad days behind us and more sad days ahead," she said. "But you can't be walking around with this man in your head."
