Five years ago on June 17 2015 a young white man, hoping to “ignite a race war,” interrupted a prayer service in “Mother Emanuel Church” in Charleston SC, one of the oldest African American churches in the country, drew a gun, and began shooting. His violence took 9 lives.

In the days that followed, the country learned more of the faith and goodness of those murdered that day—guilty of nothing more than “praying while Black”—and of how, in different ways, their faith had inspired them to lives of service and ordinary decency.