The Cross and the Confederate Flag

Russel Moore – The Clarion-Ledger

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….

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 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….

A protester holds a sign asking for the removal of the confederate battle flag that flies at the South Carolina State House in Columbia, SC on June 20, 2015.(Reuters)

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.

I’m Black and I Don’t Want the Confederate Flag to Be Banned

Kay Smith – ChicagoNow.com

We rally around an emblematic action to make ourselves feel better about ourselves, rather than to accept that the cornerstone of racism from which this country was founded has never been replaced with one of racial reconciliation and more importantly, adjudication.

So we set our eyes and efforts on eliminating the “real villain,” the Confederate Flag.  We focus our efforts here instead of focusing our efforts on the ways that what it represents threads itself throughout our inequitable school and criminal justice systems which do more to promote the ignorance and perceptions of Black criminality that people like Dylan Roof believe as fact….

However, as a Black American who is growing uncomfortable with the increasing number of crimes against Blacks, I would like for everyone who desires to rally behind this flag –  despite what is done in it’s name, to wave their Confederate flags as high as possible…. Let it brandish them as the terrorists that people who look like me are assumed to be. I can’t speak for anyone else but I would prefer to know who you are, and to recognize you for what you are, when I see you coming.

Sky Eyes, who supports keeping the Confederate flag outside the State House, argues with opponents during a rally to remove the Confederate flag in Columbia, South Carolina on June 23, 2015. (Reuters)

No More Confederate Flags

The Editorial Board – Los Angeles Times

For those who romanticize the Old South, the red, white and blue crossed bars of the Confederate battle flag symbolize a lost way of life, framed in a nostalgia for a time that was, supposedly, one of honor and pride and glory. For most Americans, however, that flag was and is the symbol of a violent uprising to defend the indefensible institution of slavery. It is the banner of white supremacy.

Seldom has the flag seemed more objectionable than in the aftermath of the slaughter of nine African Americans at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., last week and the arrest of a young man espousing white supremacist views….

On Monday, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley joined the movement to persuade the state Legislature to remove the flag from the grounds of the Capitol. That is a welcome step by a powerful political figure in the state … But all the states of the old Confederacy should ensure that the flag is removed from government buildings and grounds, consigning it, as President Obama suggested, to museums.