Did you grow up hearing the Civil War was fought over states’ rights, not slavery? And how was the war referred to? Civil War? War Between the States? The War of Northern Aggression? Then you were exposed to the Lost…
On question of what to do with Confederate monuments, Americans are all over the map
While Americans are nearly evenly divided on whether monuments and memorials to the Confederacy should stay up or be taken down, there is even less agreement about what should be done with those monuments, according to new polling data from…
As the Confederate monuments come tumbling down, half of Americans still favor their presence
It’s no news flash that the presence — or sudden absence — of memorials to the Confederacy is a symbol of America’s divided politics today. Yet a new national study by Public Religion Research Institute puts some hard numbers on…
In Charlottesville, an effort to reuse bronze from Lee statue for new public art
A plan to melt down and ultimately reuse the bronze from the Robert E. Lee statue that white supremacists violently rallied to save in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017 is an inherently spiritual undertaking that should appeal to many people of…
The Capitol insurrection, the Lost Cause and the Confederate flag
On Jan. 6, 2021, I was in quarantine, recovering from COVID-19. As I read and watched TV to pass the time, I began to see early reports of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. I saw the events of that…
This progressive church reviewed its history and discovered it hadn’t ‘shown up’ very often on racial issues
Anyone entering the sanctuary of Highland Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky., for the first time will inevitably leave talking one thing above all — the beauty of the stained-glass windows on all sides of the English Gothic-style worship space. Look…
Saving our churches from Dylann Roof’s white Jesus
Dylann Roof, the white Christian man who murdered nine African Americans during the closing prayer of a Bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston in 2015, was back in the news recently after a federal appeals court upheld his conviction…
Baylor and Buckner remind us: We’ve not yet reckoned with our past ties to slavery
A special commission at Baylor University recently reported on its historical research about the university’s founders and their connection with slavery and the Confederacy. This follows on the heels of a discovery reported in September 2020 that R.C. Buckner, for…
Baylor, Baptists and slavery: A way forward
Last week Baylor University, the world’s largest historically Baptist university, released a study revealing the slaveholding and Confederacy elements of its history. The report, commissioned by the Baylor board of regents, considered the stories of Baylor’s founders and those memorialized…