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The Cross and the Confederate Flag
Moore to the Point ^ | June 19, 2015 | Russell Moore

Posted on 06/20/2015 12:35:53 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat

This week the nation reels over the murder of praying Christians in an historic African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina. At the same time, one of the issues hurting many is the Confederate Battle Flag flying at full-mast from the South Carolina Capitol grounds even in the aftermath of this racist act of violence on innocent people. This raises the question of what we as Christians ought to think about the Confederate Battle Flag, given the fact that many of us are from the South.

The flag of my home state of Mississippi contains the Confederate Battle Flag as part of it, and I’m deeply conflicted about that. The flag represents home for me. I love Christ, church, and family more than Mississippi, but that’s about it. Even so, that battle flag makes me wince—even though I’m the descendant of Confederate veterans.

Some would say that the Confederate Battle Flag is simply about heritage, not about hate. Singer Brad Paisley sang that his wearing a Confederate flag on his shirt was just meant to say that he was a Lynyrd Skynyrd fan. Comedian Stephen Colbert quipped, “Little known fact: Jefferson Davis—HUGE Skynyrd fan.”

Defenders of the flag would point out that the United States flag is itself tied up with ugly questions of history. Washington and Jefferson, after all, supported chattel slavery too. The difference is, though, that the United States overcame its sinful support of this wicked system (though tragically late in the game). The Confederate States of America was not simply about limited government and local autonomy; the Confederate States of America was constitutionally committed to the continuation, with protections of law, to a great evil. The moral enormity of the slavery question is one still viscerally felt today, especially by the descendants of those who were enslaved and persecuted.

The gospel speaks to this. The idea of a human being attempting to “own” another human being is abhorrent in a Christian view of humanity. That should hardly need to be said these days, though it does, given the modern-day slavery enterprises of human trafficking all over the world. In the Scriptures, humanity is given dominion over the creation. We are not given dominion over our fellow image-bearing human beings (Gen. 1:27-30). The southern system of chattel slavery was built off of the things the Scripture condemns as wicked: “man-stealing” (1 Tim. 1:10), the theft of another’s labor (Jas. 5:1-6), the breaking up of families, and on and on.

In order to prop up this system, a system that benefited the Mammonism of wealthy planters, Southern religion had to carefully weave a counter-biblical theology that could justify it (the biblically ridiculous “curse of Ham” concept, for instance). In so doing, this form of southern folk religion was outside of the global and historic teachings of the Christian church. The abolitionists were right—and they were right not because they were on the right side of history but because they were on the right side of God.

Even beyond that, though, the Flag has taken on yet another contextual meaning in the years since. The Confederate Battle Flag was the emblem of Jim Crow defiance to the civil rights movement, of the Dixiecrat opposition to integration, and of the domestic terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens’ Councils of our all too recent, all too awful history.

White Christians ought to think about what that flag says to our African-American brothers and sisters in Christ, especially in the aftermath of yet another act of white supremacist terrorism against them. The gospel frees us from scrapping for our “heritage” at the expense of others. As those in Christ, this descendant of Confederate veterans has more in common with a Nigerian Christian than I do with a non-Christian white Mississippian who knows the right use of “y’all” and how to make sweet tea.

None of us is free from a sketchy background, and none of our backgrounds is wholly evil. The blood of Jesus has ransomed us all “from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers” (1 Pet. 1:18), whether your forefathers were Yankees, rebels, Vikings, or whatever. We can give gratitude for where we’ve come from, without perpetuating symbols of pretend superiority over others.

The Apostle Paul says that we should not prize our freedom to the point of destroying those for whom Christ died. We should instead “pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding” (Rom. 14:19). 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.

(Russell Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, the moral and public policy agency of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.)


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: confederateflag; cross; crossofsaintandrew; dixie; saintandrewscross
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To: rockrr

are you certain? or have you been lied too?


21 posted on 06/20/2015 1:01:20 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: rockrr

Do you think the Confederate Flag should come off soldiers memorial in Columbia South Carolina?


22 posted on 06/20/2015 1:01:45 PM PDT by StoneWall Brigade
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To: iowamark
The Confederate battle flag was not widely displayed in the South until school desegregation became an issue in the 1950's and it became the flag of the segregationists.

Really? Did not know that.

23 posted on 06/20/2015 1:03:32 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: no-to-illegals

There are pictures....


24 posted on 06/20/2015 1:04:33 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: StoneWall Brigade

No.


25 posted on 06/20/2015 1:04:49 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: ImJustAnotherOkie

It strikes me with chagrin, as I have read extensively the AUTO BIOGRAPHY of Frederick Douglas. He as well as Booker T. Washington, or George Washington Carver, never imposed guilt, to make the WHITE RACE responsible, for the serious injustices wraught by a few. Obviously, there was MUCH wrong done, but as a WHITE person, by color, who once stood in the mirror wishing I could be BLACK, think I´d be GLAD that my ancestors were brought to the shores of America, rather than have to grow up on the Dark Contient. And that isn´t meant to be racist. I´ve been to Africa, and see that HUMAN NATURE is the same the whole Earth over, and people who don´t understand their CREATOR, and for what purpose they have been CREATED will either by villains, or slaves.


26 posted on 06/20/2015 1:05:09 PM PDT by rovenstinez
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To: Republican Wildcat
Your post does not compute with the actual moral climate of the very Christian leadership of the Confederate men at arms--nor with the fact that over the generations, South Carolina has provided a moral climate, where there was markedly less criminal victimization of her Black communities than in any other State.

The stoned killer in Charleston represented nothing traditional in the South; nothing cohesive or rational. Look into the eyes of any of the pictures posted on the Web, today. He looks like a B movie image of a possessed child. Why would anyone want to disparage their own heritage over the actions of such an obsession driven mental case? Do you really want to insult the Christian witness of relatives of the victims--something truly moving--by suggesting by implication, that this crazed miscreant actually represented any of the cultured people of South Carolina?

27 posted on 06/20/2015 1:05:50 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: rockrr

take up too much bandwidth .... so I’ll be quiet ... (smile)


28 posted on 06/20/2015 1:06:42 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: rovenstinez
villains, or slaves

obama's or moslems?

29 posted on 06/20/2015 1:08:20 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: Republican Wildcat

Yep and SUV’s kill people in the middle of the night when your asleep.


30 posted on 06/20/2015 1:09:48 PM PDT by Vaduz (women and children to be impacted the most.)
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To: Ohioan

I am not the author of the piece - it is, however, going viral - and the points raised need to be discussed. There is also nothing in here where he is arguing the killer represents the people of South Carolina (who, after all, just elected a black U.S. Senator in massive landslide), so I’m not sure what it is you are getting at with your comments.


31 posted on 06/20/2015 1:11:20 PM PDT by Republican Wildcat
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To: AnAmericanMother
See James McPherson's book, Why They Fought. He was or is a professor at Princeton, hardly a bastion of slavery.

As a "Red-diaper baby" (Communist seed) who hangs with the Communists at Pacifica Radio and other notorious nesting grounds, McPherson is hardly a bastion of anything, except maybe orthodox Marxism-Leninism. He was Clinton's heyboy historian for quick quotes supporting Clinton's social policies and politics, and he and fellow Marxist historian Eric Foner (of Columbia University, the original "little Red schoolhouse") rewrote the guidance and docenting materials for visitors to the national Military Parks like Gettysburg, to inculpate and blacken the Confederate side and their cause, because that was part of Clinton politics, which relied heavily on "booger-man" demonization of the white South and its heroes.

As you say, McPherson is hardly a champion of the old Lost Cause, but even he gets flanked by this new breed of demonizers and segregators, whose battle cry sounds a lot to me like "Crackers to the back of the bus!" And I'm from Indiana, myself.

32 posted on 06/20/2015 1:11:55 PM PDT by lentulusgracchus ("If America was a house , the Left would root for the utermites." - Greg Gutfeld)
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To: rockrr

Heard it calling ... There is a way to ‘judge the heart’ ...


33 posted on 06/20/2015 1:12:42 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: Republican Wildcat

I am a great lover of American history and a Civil War buff. I am humbled by the patriotism and courage of the soldiers on both sides of the conflict during America’s “Second War of Independence”. Yet, I do believe that Bro. Moore has made a valid argument to a certain extent.

The most compelling point he made, at least to my thinking, was the passage from the Apostle Paul who said we should not use our Christian freedom to hurt or destroy the faith of others.

Rightly or wrongly, fairly or unfairly, logically or illogically, the Confederate Battle Flag has come to represent slavery and racism. Personally, I don’t see that flag that way, but I do understand why others may. And so, why should I, as a Christian, do something that hurts the spirit of some of my brothers or sisters in Christ?

However, having said all that, I believe it is none of my business what is on South Carolina’s flag or Mississippi’s flag - that is up to the people of those individual states. If they want to take it off or leave it - that’s up to them.

Also, I know that the United States flag is offensive to some - especially on college campus’s across the country. The Cross of Christ is also offensive to some, yet I would never deny it.

Again, I think it comes down to what the people of that state want to do.


34 posted on 06/20/2015 1:12:52 PM PDT by rusty schucklefurd
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To: rusty schucklefurd

Good post Rusty - sums it up nicely.


35 posted on 06/20/2015 1:14:46 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: rusty schucklefurd

messaging is not much more ... than a ‘profound affect’ of ‘you’ve never been!’ Today the past is ‘good-bye’?


36 posted on 06/20/2015 1:15:42 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: no-to-illegals

I’m not sure that I catch your drift.


37 posted on 06/20/2015 1:16:48 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: rockrr

there is a way ... don’t doubt the ‘heart’


38 posted on 06/20/2015 1:17:50 PM PDT by no-to-illegals (Do what is Right ... It causes liberal heads to explode!)
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To: Republican Wildcat
As the picture in the thread above shows, even the early 20th century KKK used the US flag, not any Confederate flag.

For example, the Confederate battle flag was only incorporated into the Georgia state flag in 1956, following Brown v. Board of Education.


39 posted on 06/20/2015 1:18:57 PM PDT by iowamark (I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy)
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To: StoneWall Brigade; wardaddy; stainlessbanner; rustbucket; LeoWindhorse; lentulusgracchus
And no mention of St. Andrew's Cross?

This man is unqualified to speak on our behalf. Just another voice jumping on the MSM bandwagon, stoking the coals of racial division.

40 posted on 06/20/2015 1:20:06 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
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