San Diego synagogue shooting: Suspected gunman was churchgoer who allegedly used faith to justify attack

Suspect's church and evangelical pastors condemn attack on Jewish worshippers

The suspected gunman who allegedly killed one woman and injured three other people at a synagogue is thought to have been a right-wing Christian who spoke of biblical justifications for his crimes.

John Earnest allegedly entered the Chabad of Poway synagogue in California on the last day of Passover and fired at least eight rounds before fleeing with 50 unused bullets, prosecutors said.

In a seven page letter, by a person identifying himself as Mr Earnest, he allegedly used several antisemitic tropes to explain his motives, including the claim that Jewish people were guilty for killing Jesus Christ and the belief in a white genocide conspiracy theory.

He has pleaded not guilty to murder and attempted murder at his first court appearance.

Mr Earnest’s alleged use of his Christian faith to justify the shooting has led to soul-searching within the Orthodox Presbyterian Church of which he was a member.

In a statement following the attack, the Escondido Orthodox Presbyterian Church in California condemned the attack.

“We deplore and resist all forms of antisemitism and racism. We are wounded to the core that such an evil could have gone out from our community,” the statement read.

“Such hatred has no place in any part of our beliefs or practices, for we seek to shape our whole lives according to the love and gospel of Jesus Christ."

The shooting has also attracted the attention of other Presbyterian churches who expressed concerns about the use of Christian theology in the letter.

“John Earnest assented to and articulated a Christian theology of personal salvation with a degree of clarity that should make us squirm,” said reverend Duke Kwon, a pastor at a Presbyterian church in Washington.

“The problem is that what he believed about personal salvation, according to our tradition, could have been enough for him to be saved, but it wasn’t enough to save him from embracing antisemitic and white supremacist beliefs and perpetrating hateful violence and murder.”

Reverend Mika Edmondson, a pastor in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, expressed similar concerns.

“If the gospel we preach comfortably coexists with white nationalism, we are not preaching the whole gospel,” he wrote.

Mr Earnest’s alleged letter claimed the attack was planned shortly after the Christchurch mosque shooting, in which 50 Muslim worshippers were killed, and took credit for a fire which was set at an Escondido mosque in the weeks following that shooting.

It was published under the username “JohnTEarnest” on the far-right message board 8chan, where the alleged Christchurch shooter also published his manifesto and a livestream of the attack.

Following the attack, Mr Earnest’s family said they were “shocked and deeply saddened” by the shooting and said their son was “informed by people we do not know, and ideas we do not hold”.

“To our great shame, he is now part of the history of evil that has been perpetrated on Jewish people for centuries,” they said.

The shooting at the Poway synagogue came six months to the day after 11 worshippers were shot dead at a Pittsburgh synagogue, which is believed to be the deadliest attack ever on a Jewish community in the US.

Other recent attacks on religious communities in the US have included the shooting of 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017; nine worshippers at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015; and six people at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in 2012.