The Cross and the Confederate Flag

An ungodly sight:  the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House remained, per state law, at full staff while the national and state flags were at half staff this week for the victims of the Charleston shooting.

Since the horrific shooting in Charleston last week, the uproar over the presence of the Confederate battle flag on governmental premises in various Southern states has exploded across the airwaves and the blogosphere. As a native Southerner whose ancestral lines stretch back to 17th-century Maryland and Virginia, the descendant of slave-owning planters and Confederate soldiers, your Head Trucker could write a long and nuanced post about all that, from several different points of view; but I content myself with simply presenting this excerpt from an essay written this week by Dr. Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention:

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.

And that, if you are a Christian, says it all, I think. The full text of Dr. Moore's essay is here.


P.S. - Just last week, the Southern Baptist Convention at its annual meeting issued a call for civil disobedience against same-sex marriage.  Southern Baptists, as you may know, split off from their Northern brothers on the issue of slavery in 1845.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.  Sigh.

Why Everybody Says "Thank God for Mississippi"

Everybody in neighboring states, that is; Mississippi makes them look good by comparison.  Fifty years ago, as your Head Trucker well recalls, and perhaps even forty years ago, this would not have been news at all in most parts of the South:  just bidness as usual.

Yet though times have changed drastically for racial equality across the length and breadth of Dixie, there are even yet some pockets of resistance, as in Crystal Springs, a small town near Jackson, the capital of Mississippi.



If they feel that way about the blacks, just imagine how they feel about the queers.

Jesus Was No Bartender

Found at Joe.My.God:  Jesus did not turn water into wine at the wedding of Cana, you ignoramuses:



Which reminds me of a favorite joke my late husband told me:  There are three things Baptists don't recognize.  They don't recognize the Pope, they don't recognize the Jews, and they don't recognize another Baptist in the liquor store.

This video is no parody, guys, but totally for real. And I am surrounded by this kind of thinking (if you can call it that) here.  Of course, it doesn't stop with the grape juice fetish.  Miss Thing Rev. Grice also says The Wizard of Oz is "one of the most God-hating movies that there is," and not because there's a witch in it:



(He hates the movie, but he sure knows all the lyrics and all the steps, don't he? And has the dialogue down by heart.)

Now don't go sending nasty notes to that preacher, he's very small fry and not at all exceptional in his views for this part of the world. I post these vids just to show you boys up there in the blue state wonderland how common and ordinary this approach to life and this concept of Christianity is for millions of people. They are not all bug-eyed, jackbooted fascists, but rather are sadly ignorant of the facts of history and science and even grammar; and are sadly a majority of everyday working people who just don't know any better - but think they know all that matters.

Even more unfortunately, the folks who crowd the fundamentalist churches on Sunday are used for political gain by the real thugs, the slick, smooth, sophisticated ones, who are hellbent now, it seems, on making a theocracy out of a democracy, and all for the ultimate gain of the wealthy.

What's truly incomprehensible is why all you ever hear about on the news shows or in the blogosphere are the firebrand politicans and preachers, and never the sensible, rational ones. Which is why so many people on the liberal end of the spectrum - a majority of the young, I think, and a lot of the middle-aged - now equate all of Christianity with fundamentalism. And that's just not so. This is exactly the same logical fallacy - yes, I mean you, smug reader, with all your college degrees and friend lists and that vaunted "cultural awareness" you are so proud of, whatever that means - it's the exact same stupid thinking as my fellow Texans commit when they assert that all Muslims are terrorists.

Twisted thinking is not the exclusive property of the Right; nor is snobbery or tribalism.  We liberals and gays are human beings just like they are, and subject to the very same human failings.  Which is very important to remember:  we are all one human family, and nobody gets it right all the time.  Not even you or I.

But whether you are a believer or not, you should at least recognize that there is a Christianity that does not depend upon ignorance or literal interpretation of scripture. As witness this very fine sermon, "Brush with Grace," by the Rev. Buddy Stallings - a Mississippi transplant whose accent I love, natch - vicar at St. Bart's Episcopal in Manhattan.  You can read the sermon there, but I strongly suggest you click on the first little round button to the right of the text and listen to it instead.  You might just like what you hear:  a thoughtful, even humorous, Christian message that does not require switching off your brain first.

The ex-roommate and I were discussing this very point the other night:  why do you never hear from the rational, kind-hearted, well-balanced people?  As he said, maybe the Democrats and the Episcopalians (and all the other decent folks of every political and religious persuasion) are just too nice to raise their voices, make themselves heard.  They are rarely to be found screaming their message on street corners for the TV news cameras, so they just aren't covered.

Instead, all we hear are the ranting, foaming extremists.  Which is a great pity, your Head Trucker thinks.  Because that silence of the decent gives the foamers enormous power.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

See also a poem called "Hangman" that your Head Trucker just ran across.

What America Do You Believe In?

Andrew Sullivan has another fine post today on official torture practices of the previous administration:

Here is what one FBI agent said he saw at Guantanamo (and God knows what went on there after the FBI walked out of the program):

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food, or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."

If you believe that America cannot survive without doing this to human beings, then what exactly is the America you believe in?

Compare all this with the hysterical reaction of James Dobson to the idea of hate crimes legislation and gay marriage in the clip I posted yesterday.

Sullivan also picked up on the Southern Baptist Convention's statement against torture - my, how convenient of them to take a stand on this, now that the political winds are shifting. Where the hell have they been all these years while Bush & Co. were committing their crimes without a murmur of criticism from the Christian right? Statement by Richard Land, president of the SBC's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission:

"It violates everything we believe in as a country," Land said, reflecting on the words in the Declaration of Independence: that "all men are created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

"There are some things you should never do to another human being, no matter how horrific the things they have done. If you do so, you demean yourself to their level," he said.

"Civilized countries should err on the side of caution. It does cost us something to play by different rules than our enemies, but it would cost us far more if we played by their rules," Land concluded.

The Southern Baptist Convention is America's largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.2 million members in over 44,000 churches nationwide.

What exactly is the America you believe in?

Dallas First Baptist: The OTHER Protest

You know, I'm a believer, but I'm really tired of taking this crap off the Christianist bullies. But we don't have to take it anymore, do we?

Last Sunday, about a hundred Dallas gays and straights protested at First Baptist Church, and you can see why. According to the Dallas Observer blog,

this is the church fronted by Pastor Robert Jeffress, the author of Hell? Yes! who said Mormon Mitt Romney was a member of a "cult" and who, in September, said that
"Christians are uniquely favored by God, [while] Mormons, Hindus and Muslims worship a false god." And in the 1990s, he said that homosexuality causes "the deaths of tens of thousands every year through AIDS." He's super-tolerant. Then again, Jeffress has done quite a bit for the gay community: In 1998, while he was pastor at the First Baptist Church in Wichita Falls, he protested the library's carrying such titles as Heather Has Two Mommies and Daddy's Roommate, which only served to make them more popular.

According to the Dallas Morning News,

Dr. Jeffress acknowledged that "Jesus never used the word homosexual." However, he said, Christ condemned homosexuality by affirming Old Testament truths and by upholding God's plan for human sexuality – "one man and one woman in a marriage relationship."

In next week's sermon, Dr. Jeffress said he will address homosexuality again, including the assertion that "God wired me differently."

(Honk to the Dallas Observer; go to their site to see a slideshow of more pics from last Sunday's protest.)

It's no surprise that the LGBT community will protest at First Baptist again this Sunday, November 16. Edge Dallas gives the details for both weekend demonstrations:

National gay rights protest. Dallas City Hall, 1500 Marilla Drive Saturday, Nov. 15, at 12:30 p.m. JoinTheImpact.com.

Protest rally about First Baptist Church of Dallas’ publicly displayed anti-gay messages. First Baptist Church of Dallas, 1707 San Jacinto. Sunday, Nov. 16, 10 a.m.-12:30 p.m.

BTW: The quotation from Matthew 19 in the church sign at top of this post reads like this:

Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?"

"Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate."

Which for some Christians might seem to support a certain position on the gay thing. Ah, but here's the rest of that passage. Me, I got over letting the Bible or the Church stand between God and me years ago. God is bigger than both of them. You can draw your own conclusions on what the real point is here:

"Why then," they asked, "did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?"

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, and marries another woman commits adultery."

The disciples said to him, "If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry." Jesus replied, "Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. For some are eunuchs because they were born that way; others were made that way by men; and others have renounced marriage because of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it."