Pastor Recalls Evil at Columbine

Alan Landes will be installed as senior pastor of the Trinity United Presbyterian Church in Santa Ana at a 7 p.m. service Sunday.

Landes comes to Trinity from a church in Lakewood, Colo., near Littleton, where he counseled administrators and students at Columbine High School in April after 12 students and a teacher were slain by two teen gunmen who then killed themselves.

“I felt such a sense of pain” about the emotional chaos after the murders, he said. “There was an awareness that we were looking at something very evil.”

Landes said he was most impressed by the legacy of Cassie Bernall, 17, a born-again Christian who was one of the students killed.

For Christians, Bernall became a symbol of martyrdom after she refused to deny her faith to a gunman.

“She’s a throwback to the old martyrs of the 1st century,” Landes said. “It’s very significant that she was asked what she believed. She’s become a worldwide symbol of the Christian faith.”