One Way to Honor the Dead: Get Rid of the Flag of Treason and Slavery

Last updated on: June 18, 2015 at 8:40 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

One Way to Honor the Dead: Get Rid of the Flag of Treason and Slavery 2015-06-18T20:40:07-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Union Forever!

This is a part of our heritage that must continue to be acknowledged and for which restitution must be made.

On a day that a terrorist murdered African-Americans at prayer only one flag should flay at half-staff, Old Glory, and not the flag of murder, rapine, and slavery.

The terrorist attack in South Carolina is one of many that have been perpetrated against the African-American community in American history. It is not an isolated event by one lone person. Americans have been murdering African-Americans at prayer for centuries. The church where the gunman attacked a Bible study had to worship underground for decades, because it opposed slavery in a slave state.

I love history and I reject the idea that people should be judged for “sins” they did not understand or based on information they did not have. Moral understanding takes time and even “simple” concepts like love and justice require humanity centuries to understand even dimly. The Christian church should not have used torture, ever, but it is understandable given the Roman culture they inherited that they did. We learned and thought about our own faith and the church rejects torture.

The problem for the slave holding South is that the church of Jesus Christ had rejected slavery globally by the time of the Civil War. Paul had set up the moral and theological principles that, if followed, made slavery economically nonviable and morally indefensible. He undercut the roots of Roman slavery and Christian nations gradually abolished the practice. Slavery became ever more marginal and rare until “race based” slavery, a new and even more evil perversion, became dominant in the American hemisphere. White slaves (and there were a few) ended up emancipated early, but African slaves stayed in bondage for centuries. After they were freed, terrorist organizations like the KKK kept African Americans from the rights that the newly ammended Constitution gave them.

It is true that a few Christian theologians defended race based slavery. It also true that the global church hated it. Texas had trouble winning recognition as a sovereign nation because it allowed slavery. Sam Houston, no great friend of slavery, had to cut off the slave trade and make anti-slavery noises greater than he could deliver to make most of Christendom see his new Republic as anything but odious. The USA was widely viewed as hypocritical and our moral witness in the world was ruined because of slavery.

We must never forget that the heart of the Republican Party came from Evangelicals opposed to slavery and polygamy. Lincoln, whatever his own religious views, ran a campaign of Sunday School lessons and appeals to the moral conscience of the nation.

I am proud of friends like Russel Moore who are leading the ERLC and the Southern Baptist Convention to repent of their aberrant support for slavery and segregation. It never represented the consensus of Christian thinking and has been a blot on an otherwise good group.

We can do nothing to comfort the families. We should avoid politicizing this moment if we can except in one area: the time is long past to tolerate the symbols of rebellion and human bondage. I call on the Party of Lincoln to remove Confederate symbols from any flag or location where it does not represent the history of the place (like a battlefield). It is grossly offensive that citizens of this Republic would be forced to enter any building flying the flag of slavers, traitors, and terrorists.

The flag of the rebellion against the Union, a rebellion that centered in the right to own human property, is a symbol of a movement that does not deserve our sympathy or consideration. There were American slaveholders like Washington who deserve our praise for the good they did while we condemn the evil they tolerated, but we should not continue to give any honor or place to the flag or symbols of men who wished to tear down Washington’s flag, sack his city, and place in bondage again the slaves he freed after his death.

The Party of Lincoln should not honor the Cause that murdered him.

We did not know yet for sure what motivated this particular terrorist. We do know that his terrorism took place in a state where Lincoln’s party has been too soft on the symbols worn by the the terrorist who killed Lincoln.

Enough is more than enough. Take down that flag.

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