Southern Baptist’s Russell Moore: It’s time to take down the Confederate flag

[struggle4progress]

This opinion piece is by Russell Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

... The flag of my home state of Mississippi contains the battle flag as part of it, and I’m deeply conflicted about that. The flag represents home for me. I love Christ, church and family more than Mississippi, but that’s about it. Even so, that battle flag makes me wince — even though I’m the descendant of Confederate veterans ...

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. The moral enormity of the slavery question is one still viscerally felt today, especially by the descendants of those who were enslaved and persecuted.

The gospel speaks to this. The idea of a human being attempting to “own” another human being is abhorrent in a Christian view of humanity. That should hardly need to be said these days, though it does, given the modern-day slavery enterprises of human trafficking all over the world ...

In order to prop up this system, a system that benefited the Mammonism of wealthy planters, Southern religion had to carefully weave a counter-biblical theology that could justify it (the biblically ridiculous “curse of Ham” concept, for instance). In so doing, this form of Southern folk religion was outside of the global and historic teachings of the Christian church ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/06/19/southern-baptists-russell-moore-its-time-to-take-down-the-confederate-flag/

[Cartoonist]

1. Not so!

The gospel speaks to this. The idea of a human being attempting to “own” another human being is abhorrent in a Christian view of humanity. That should hardly need to be said these days, though it does, given the modern-day slavery enterprises of human trafficking all over the world ...
-

The Bible speaks to this. Slavery is OK as long as the slaves are from a neighboring country. Other rules apply, but slavery is condoned by the Bible. Change that, then we can talk about a Christian view of humanity.

[struggle4progress]

3. No gospel says slavery is OK as long as the slaves are from a neighboring country;

and "the Bible" is a collection of books, some based on earlier lost books

[Cartoonist]

4. So?

You want to seperate the Old Testament from the New? I'm OK with that. Show me a church that will.

[struggle4progress]

5. Lots of Christians make a point of distinguishing the two. This might be overblown, of course,

because Christianity originally arose as a strand of Jewish thought, incorporating trends in that religion; and Judaism seems to have ancient interpretative traditions, suggesting one shouldn't read the old Jewish texts in a mechanical manner, without thinking about what one reads. One has a collection of books written at different times and reflecting social situations at time of composition; this is not a new view, but it is informative. If one wants an allegorical reading, for example, of the story telling how Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery, instead of murdering him as they originally planned, perhaps one can view the story as reporting a social transition from war-as-murder to war-as-enslavement, in which case the invention of slavery might be regarded as an ethical leap forward in war-making

[cbayer]

6. That's right! All christian and jewish people support slavery!

They have to because somewhere in the bible it says so!

[cbayer]

2. Good for him.

I cringe every time I see it.