Shot in the back.
Getting into his car, after Sunday Services, Pastor Tim Remington was shot in the back. Just one day before that, he opened in prayer for Ted Cruz at a rally at the Kootnei County Fairgrounds. At last report, Pastor Remington was expected to recover from his injuries.
Details about any motivation of this would-be assassin are sketchy, but the police are now looking for a suspect and (as of the time of this writing) he is still at large.
The photo of the suspect, released in the news reports, corresponds to the Linkedin profile of one Kyle Odom, whose education includes Flight Equipment Technician (USMC — 2006-2010) and Undergraduate Researcher (University of Idaho, 2013-2014). Listed interests and causes offer little additional insight, and are pretty vanilla — health, animal welfare, environment, and he also supports a few agencies that emphasise disaster relief and aid to the poor. For those reasons, I’m not expecting the ‘Right Wing Extremist” angle to gain much traction here.
The fact that this followed only one day after the well-attended Cruz rally does make one wonder whether there was any political motivation. But naturally, correlation is not causation.
As for pastor Remington himself, he is reportedly very active in his community, in the words of his own church after the incident:
“We just want to be here for everyone in our congregation. Be here for our pastor. We are going to go to the hospital and wait for the word to make sure he is okay. He opens his home to people. He takes them in and lets them live in his home. All the people society has turned their backs on, he reaches out to them”
Besides The Altar Church, he is listed as the Director of Good Samaritan Rehabilitation. The bio on his church website sums him up this way:
Now his life consists of Victim Offender Mediation, Family Mediation, Drug and Alcohol Counseling, Critical counseling, Idaho Character Council, executive member of the Community Christian Coalition, and Director of Good Samaritan Rehabilitation drug and alcohol residential facilities. In addition he is the Senior Pastor of The Altar Church in Coeur D’Alene which he and Cindy began 18+ years ago in the Silver Valley.
Tim and Cindy have been blessed with four children, and over three hundred people have lived as a part of their family in their home.
If this were a black pastor, certainly some would raise an alarm about “yet another racial hate crime”. If it were a synagogue or mosque, people would assume it were a crime of religious intolerance. What about that “other” option?
We do not yet know what prompted this shooting, whether it a personal grudge, politics, or something else. But should we at least begin to consider whether the over-the-top anti-Christian rhetoric plays any contributing role in such incidents? We know for certain it has before.
The “shocking” position of Chick-fil-A owner (whose religious conviction prompts him not to open his doors on Sundays) to believe in traditional marriage resulted in nation-wide outrage and protesting, at the end of which, Floyd Corkins shot a security guard. Because he bought into the outrage, and took drastic action.
Are there others? Perhaps. How would we know? We’re too busy advancing the boilerplate narratives — like race — to even bother to learn the details. And without knowing the facts, how can we possibly hope to develop meaningful solutions?
