Atlanta Shootings, Evangelicals & the Korean War

On March 16, 2021, Robert Aaron Long, a white Southern Baptist man, murdered eight people in the greater Atlanta region, six of whom were women of Asian descent: Suncha Kim, Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Yong Ae Yue, Xiaojie "Emily" Tan, and Daoyou Feng. In May, a grand jury indicted Long with the following crimes against Kim, Park, Grant and Yue, the four women of Korean descent who were murdered at two spas in Fulton County: four counts of murder, four counts of felony murder, five counts of assault with a deadly weapon, four counts of possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, and one count of domestic terrorism. The county's District Attorney Fani Willis plans to pursue the death penalty and hate crime charges against Long, based on the law that took effect in the aftermath of Ahmaud Arbery's murder. Long's charges read as if he had been a man at war - which may not be far off the mark, when we examine the transpacific and religious context of the Atlanta shootings.