By Andrew K. Boyle

In the time it will take for this to reach print, much more will be known about the July 20th shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Details, recordings, emails, and relationships will be exposed; a narrative about the life of James Holmes before that fateful day will have been finalized as a way of recording for posterity sake, and closing the book on this event. As of now, in the fog of the aftermath, the true unspeakable horror and true evil of the person and event have not yet been softened by the passing of time nor by the construction of a tale seeking explain it away.

Having this event happen in the general vicinity of where I now live has afforded me the opportunity to see the reaction of the local community. Aside from the sadness and shock natural to such an event, there is -- at large -- a great confusion and sense of hopelessness among the citizenry of the Denver metro. There is a palpable sense of confusion, foreign to the American experience, pervading the state and the nation in the shadow of these killings. This sense of helplessness has been fed by some disgustingly partisan national media coverage.

The morning after the midnight shooting, George Stephanopoulos took to the set of Good Morning America to announce a possible Tea-Party connection based upon the name of the shooter -- to be proven false after a simple Google search yielded the fact that the octogenarian James Holmes listed as a Tea-Party member in Colorado was not the 20 something taken into custody at the theater. Before lunch time the airways were split between on the scene updates and the ever self-righteous New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg demanding something be done about guns in this country. Experts have already compared this madman to past evildoers, and unraveled piles of useless speculation as to how events like these could possibly be avoided. In short a circus has unfolded, exploiting the victims of one deranged individual, with self-serving national figures all vying for their moment in the center ring.

The reaction to this tragedy is best understood when contrasted with the reaction to the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building 17 years ago, both nationally and locally, to see the trajectory our country has traveled upon.

First, it must be said that neither a past nor present America, no leader, political party nor local community bears any responsibility for the actions carried out by James Holmes nor Timothy McVeigh. Both men were deranged, homicidal maniacs, and individually are completely responsible for the evil they unleashed upon society and for the lives they took. There is nothing society could have done to stop either, for they are both men who simply desired to watch the world burn.

In the aftermath of the bombing in Oklahoma City, there was some attempt to make the event political; that McVeigh was a right-wing nut job, and that he may represent a larger than expected portion of society. This attempt, not entirely dissimilar to what we have witnessed recently, what quickly squashed in the Oklahoma City case because of the reaction of the citizens of the Sooner State. It was not the result of a counter media campaign, but instead the potential politics of the bombing were quickly squashed by the actions of the citizenry in mass.In the donation of blood, batteries, meals, hours, equipment and the like, the unmistakable goodness of the people of Oklahoma quickly overshadowed the darkness of McVeigh. In the sorrow and the mourning of the state, the evil of the day was identified as something real, but also something distinct and at odds with that society.

In the weeks that followed the bombing, the people of Oklahoma were a testament to, and a shining example of the American Religion as described by Ben Franklin around the time of the founding of the Republic. When asked by a European what the American Religion was, Mr. Franklin explained to him that the American Religion was quite simple; there is a God and each individual was responsible for working out their own response to God. This statement best explains the individual and corporate actions of the citizenry of Oklahoma following the bombing. There was neither confusion nor muddying the simple unadulterated evil of the day. This simple statement of truth birthed an optimism among the citizen which allowed the events of that day to be buried beneath the actions of people working out their own relationship with God. There was no doctrinal statement of theological significance proclaimed by the people of the Sooner State, nor by the federal government, but the societal reaction proclaimed the faith of the people much louder.

Today, the shootings in Aurora happen in a culture that has changed much since 1995. The sum total of our politics, our culture, our churches, our institutions, our systems and most importantly our citizenry, has made obscure and obsolete the notion of an American Religion. It should be no surprise that absent the faith required for an American Religion to exist, the evil of the Aurora shootings is harder to identify, and the response of the citizenry is much less hopeful. In the hyper-politicization of the events, a clear and loud testament is proclaimed that America is today a different people than 17 years ago. We are a people unsure of the darkness we face, and less hopeful of the future. We lack the faith incumbent on a nation with a religion, and as such find the evil in our midst to be much greater than it used to be. We are more tolerant of persons exploiting a tragedy, and are more willing to believe that it was a lack of regulations that spawned these unfortunate events. In short, we look less like Americans and resemble more the frightened residents of Gotham City, desperate enough to support slogans of "change" in hopes they will beckon our own Batman.

It is the great hope for America that the faith of the Sooner State displayed in April of "95 can be rediscovered among the citizenry struggling to identify the evil of July 2012. It will not come from a national decree of doctrine, but will come from freeborn people with the courage to identify the events in Aurora as an evil incompatible with the soul of America. It was not proof that America is a bastion of violence, but merely proof that evil still exists. That no government actions could stop such an event, but that a people unified under the American Religion will always overcome the actions of evildoers. It is not the darkness of the present night that we identify ourselves, instead we hold fast to the hope that is certain in a coming dawn. To summon Reagan, this is our chance to prove once again, that it is forever morning in America.