The Confederate battle flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents a defiance against abolition and against civil rights. The symbol was used to enslave the little brothers and sisters of Jesus, to bomb little girls in church buildings, to terrorize preachers of the gospel and their families with burning crosses on front lawns by night.
That sort of symbolism is out of step with the justice of Jesus Christ. The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire. White Christians, let’s listen to our African American brothers and sisters.
Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our shared history with them. In Christ, we were slaves in Egypt ”” and as part of the Body of Christ we were all slaves too in Mississippi. Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors.
Let’s take down that flag.
Read it all (emphasis mine).
I do believe it is time. The poet laureate of the post Civil War South, Abrham Joseph Ryan wrote that it should be forever furled. But here is the rub. The most racist thing on the South Carolina Statehouse grounds is not the battle flag, but the statue of Ben Tillman. Yet, people have no clue how evil he was; only that he founded Clemson which has a really good football team. There are four things we in SC need to shed: the Lost Cause, the Constitution of 1895, Ben Tillman, and thinking because Clemson has really good football teams, Ben Tillmans bust should be considered just part of our history. FYI, I grew up in Texas, not SC but when I first came here in 1975, I nearly had a heart attack when I saw Tillman’s statue on the Statehouse grounds. Further, FYI, my great great grandfather was in the 7th SC Infantry at Gettysburg (and other places). His Colonel was my wife’s great grandfather.
Maybe this flag needs to come down. Or not.
But why when we have a odd young man from Eastover SC, whose parents gave and took away a gun, who drives to Charleston to join a Bible study group, stays an hour, obviously contemplates not doing what he came to do and then did it, hands himself in without much struggle — is the flag over the capital at work here, or is it something we yearn after to alter a course that had nothing much to do with it?
I wish there was a week long moratorium on anything but lamentation, powerful forgiveness–if the Holy Spirit grants it–and the initial silence of the friends of Job in the face of unspeakable violence.
Then let people turn to the flag and to gun control and to societal this and that.
Amen, #2. Thank you.
Although I must say, #1, I didn’t know anything about Ben Tillman until you mentioned him. His speech of 1900 is a shameful episode. Just contrast this with the reaction of Charleston, 115 years later, to these murders. It’s a different world, and thank God for that.
I completely disagree. The flag is an honest representative of our history — which included the repellent practice of slave-owning, but also many many marvelous things, the fruit of which we have seen this very week in South Carolina. I am not proud of our slave-owning past — it was a wicked and sinful practice that began [again, after having been almost entirely eliminated] in 1620 in Jamestown with the arrival of a captured slave ship. We continued it — owning human beings in order to use their lives to make our lives materialistically comfortable [for the same reasons we abort babies today] — for more than 200 years and it was a great sin for which we have and will pay a price for the rest of the South’s existence. God has judged us, and we will continue to experience the consequences of our culture’s sin forever, until the South as a culture and region is ended.
But eliminating that flag will do absolutely nothing to cause our slave-owning past to disappear, nor will it assuage guilt, nor will it cause others to feel better about what was done to their ancestors, nor will it cause the Mr. Roofs of this world not to shoot people in cold blood. It will — very very very temporarily [until they move to the street names and the monuments and everything else] — cause liberals to be very briefly happy and triumphant, and it will, of course, serve as a lie and a deconstruction of history [including *other* things that liberals wish to strip from our history which they do not like or approve of but which they prefer not to share openly at this time]. But other than that — the lie, and the brief shining flickering moment of happiness for liberals — its removal will accomplish absolutely nothing.
People misuse and abuse items — including historical items and symbols — all the live-long day. They take symbols that are complex and layered and claim them for their own pet cause all the time. One thinks, for instance, of the Bible — which has been abusively used for centuries about this or that pet cause. Obviously none of us will agree to eliminate the Bible because it is a [false] “symbol of hate.”
Blaming the Confederate flag on that man is like blaming the short skirt for the rapist. It is irrelevant. He is a murderer. He killed because he wished to kill — not because there was a confederate flag flying on the grounds — or because a street name was named after a Confederate General. Or because of the legacy of slavery. Or because of Republicans. Or because of people wishing to continue their Constitutional right to own guns. Or any number of a myriad of other Blame-The-People-With-Whom-I-Disagree reasons.
It’s hard for me to describe just how appalled I am at the rampant race-baiting, political hay-making, and rank calculation in this talk. It’s no different than conservatives bringing up Obama in the midst of all of our grief over this horrendous, unspeakable act. Russell Moore and Rod Dreher — picking over the bones of dead people in another state in order to bring up things *they* don’t like or approve of at this moment and urge their particular political point.
Nice.
If South Carolina blacks wish to bring up the Confederate flag — and some of them have — then other South Carolinians may talk with them about it and share their concerns with deconstructing our state’s history for a very dubious flicker of fine feeling and guilt-soothing.
Although I doubt that lawmakers will resist the moral blackmail that will be inflicted on them, I hope very much they do, since of course, it won’t stop with simply the Confederate flag flying on the grounds amidst other flags. The urge to deconstruct history — both the good and the bad parts — in the South is constant and never-ending amongst deconstructionists because they hate *everything* — *all of it* — that the South has represented.
[blockquote]But why when we have a odd young man from Eastover SC, whose parents gave and took away a gun, who drives to Charleston to join a Bible study group, stays an hour, obviously contemplates not doing what he came to do and then did it, hands himself in without much struggle—is the flag over the capital at work here, or is it something we yearn after to alter a course that had nothing much to do with it?[/blockquote]
Well — for most of them, it’s about [i]seizing the opportunity[/i]. You know — making hay while the sun shines about the death of nine innocents.
Thank you for your words, CSeitz.
Who is politicizing what already? “Russell Moore and Rod Dreher—picking over the bones of dead people in another state in order to bring up things *they* don’t like or approve of at this moment and urge their particular political point” is spot on.
I concur with #2.
A member of my parish participates in the Sons of Confederate Veterans. I am sure that when he looks at the confederate battle flag in the confederate-era cemetery here, he isn’t thinking even for one second about murdering or abusing any descendants of slaves.
The thing about this horrible shooting is that is it so unusual, an aberration in today’s society which everyone condemns.
Regarding the flag: Just let it go. Why is that so difficult? “But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours should become a stumbling- block to them that are weak.”