U.S. Southern Baptists Repudiate Confederate Flag

Reuters ^ | 6/15/2016 | Reporting by Steve Gorman; Editing by Nick Macfie

[DH]

The U.S. Southern Baptist Convention adopted a resolution on Tuesday repudiating the Confederate battle flag as an emblem of slavery, marking the latest bid for racial reconciliation by America’s largest Protestant denomination.

[Wallace T.]

Churches affiliated with the SBC have supported missions for well over a century. No doubt the funds originally came from Confederate veterans, their wives, and later their children and grandchildren. No doubt some of the gifts to the Lottie Moon offering were made by supporters of segregation. Most of the monies went to support missions in nonwhite countries. How did their actions support Anglo-Southern culture?

Many denominations bear the heritage of their heritage. Perhaps the Russian Orthodox Church should renounce their heritage because of the Soviet regime. Should Lutherans denounce their German roots because of Naziism. Hitler himself claimed he was inspired by Luther's anti-Semitic rants. Renouncing the SBC's Southern roots is equally as absurd.

[Wallace T.]

Churches affiliated with the SBC have supported missions for well over a century. No doubt the funds originally came from Confederate veterans, their wives, and later their children and grandchildren. No doubt some of the gifts to the Lottie Moon offering were made by supporters of segregation. Most of the monies went to support missions in nonwhite countries. How did their actions support Anglo-Southern culture?

Many denominations bear the heritage of their heritage. Perhaps the Russian Orthodox Church should renounce their heritage because of the Soviet regime. Should Lutherans denounce their German roots because of Naziism. Hitler himself claimed he was inspired by Luther's anti-Semitic rants. Renouncing the SBC's Southern roots is equally as absurd.

[Mr Rogers]

“Should Lutherans denounce their German roots because of Naziism”?

Should Lutherans put Nazi symbols in their churches to proclaim their German roots?

““The resolution...calls for Southern Baptist churches to discontinue displaying the Confederate flag...”

Nothing very radical in that! It would not affect any SBC church I’ve ever been in, so what is the problem?

[outinyellowdogcountry]

Your post clarified something for me. All churches should condemn sin, regardless of the type while lifting high the name of Jesus, forgiver of sin and Redeemer of souls! It made me think that in light of the confederate flag, it doesn’t belong in church and to some people it does mean celebrating the sin of slavery. We don’t hold symbols of other sins in churches. Wait, we have lots of pot luck meals.

The tweet about keeping someone from becoming a believer, however it was stated, was contradictory to me, if you believe it is God’s choosing.

As far as the confederate flag in public display etc. I agree that it isn’t necessary to try and erase history. You are 100% correct that Black Lives Matter should be condemned due to the violence, death and mayhem they stand for. How many generations will it take?

[Wallace T.]

The Southern Baptist Convention itself has no authority over the individual, independent congregations and can only issue guidance. At most, the SBC or a state convention can expel a congregation from its fellowship. Since no one can cite an instance of an SBC church having a Confederate flag on their facility, the issue becomes: why bring it up in the first place?

The slaveholders are long dead, and most of the advocates of segregation are no longer with us. Baptist leaders like Jerry Falwell and W.A. Criswell, who advocated segregation in the 1950s, repented of their former advocacy in the 1980s. And both men are dead. This resolution represents a Christian version of feel good PC. It serves no legitimate purpose.

Further, there is no equivalency between the Nazi or Communist flags and the Confederate flag. The Nazi flag and the Communist flags represented totalitarian ideologies that engaged in conquest and mass murder. The South waged an unsuccessful war for independence between 1861 and 1865, and the honoring of that flag shows respect for the men who fought in this unsuccessful war. That is what numerous Confederate memorial groups have said repeatedly, and I am not inclined to brand them as advocating some hidden agenda.

[Mr Rogers]

The South was also fighting for slavery. Read what the states themselves said about why they were leaving the Union.

Georgia:

” The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party.”

Mississippi:

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery— the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.”

South Carolina:

“The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution.”

http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html

[Wallace T.]

Slavery was not the only issue. The Republican Party, as the successor to the Whigs, was a pro-tariff party. The South was overwhelmingly agricultural, a fact of life for both slaveholders and small farmers who owned no slaves. Their primary cash crops, cotton and tobacco, were largely shipped abroad, to England, France, and other European nations. (This differed from the Midwest and rural Northeast, where their main products, grains, meat, and fruit and vegetable crops, mainly went for domestic consumption.) Tariffs were established to protect domestic manufacturers, who were mostly in the Northeast, from lower priced foreign products. That drove up the cost of manufactured goods and brought up the specter of trade war. Southern agricultural goods competed with Turkish and Balkan tobacco and Indian and Egyptian cotton. England and France, if they decided to perform a trade war, could impose retaliatory tariffs on American cotton and tobacco and use competing sources. In fact, during the Union naval embargo, the European mills switched to the South's competitors.

In fact, Lincoln offered, as a peace gesture, not to interfere with slavery where it existed and promised to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in the North, as long as the Federal government could collect tariffs in Southern ports. For the first year and a half of the war, emancipation was not a war strategy of the Lincoln Administration.

Tariffs, as well as slavery, were primary issues that led to the Southern secession. After all, why would the large majority of Confederate soldiers come from non-slaveholding homes? Concern on the effects of high tariffs to their livelihoods, as well as patriotism to their native states, motivated Johnny Reb for the most part.

[Mr Rogers]

“Slavery was not the only issue.”

No, it was not. But it was certainly a significant part of the rationale for succession. It isn’t surprising that flying the Confederate flag in a church would interfere with the mission of the church...assuming someone can FIND a SBC church that has been flying the Confederate flag. I became a Christian in 1971 and a Baptist in 1977, and I’ve never seen it done.

Seems like a silly resolution to bring up, but I’d have found it hard to vote AGAINST it!

[StoneWall Brigade]

Ping

[SunkenCiv]

• Rand Paul: Confederate Flag "Inescapably A Symbol Of Human Bondage And Slavery" [06/23/2015]