By Bob Allen
Southern Baptist Convention ethicist Russell Moore says for the sake of the gospel the time has arrived to take down the Confederate flag.
Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said in a June 19 blog reprinted by the Washington Post that as a native of Mississippi, he is “deeply conflicted” about an emblem that in many ways represents his home.
“Some would say that the Confederate Battle Flag is simply about heritage, not about hate,” Moore wrote. Defenders also note the institution of forced slavery predated the Civil War.
Beyond that debate, Moore said, 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,” Moore said.
Moore said 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 Confederate Battle Flag may mean many things, but with those things it represents a defiance against abolition and against civil rights,” Moore said. “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.”
Moore said such 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,” Moore said. “White Christians, let’s listen to our African-American brothers and sisters.”
“Let’s watch our hearts, pray for wisdom, work for justice, love our neighbors,” he said. “Let’s take down that flag.”