Re. The Confederate Battle Flag
August 15, 2015
The Executive Committee, SBC
901 Commerce Street
Nashville, TN 37203-3699
Dear Sirs,
We are writing in regard to what is apparently the Southern Baptist Convention’s stand against our Southern heritage and the Confederate Battle Flag. At least, prominent members of the SBC have been outspoken in this regard. As a result, an increasing number of organizations have joined suit, and perhaps as an unforeseen result, Confederate monuments and gravesites are being plundered and defaced, and our Southern heritage has been devalued.
In a rebuttal to what has become the majority view of the Southern Baptist Convention, Pastor Edward DeVries, a member of this organization, issued the following statement:
“So the attack by our denominational leadership is not only an attack against my ancestors, it is also an attack against the men and women who birthed our denomination and established many of its critical institutions,” he said. “It is a direct attack against the character and the godliness of our fathers and heroes in the faith.”
As Southerners, (and cousins) we celebrate our own personal heritage, as numerous members of our family tree have been ministers of the Gospel; most Baptist ministers of one persuasion or another.
Our own 4x great Grandfather, Isom Peacock, a Missionary Baptist, and Revolutionary Soldier, founded and pastored the first Baptist congregation in the State of Florida in Nassau County; Pigeon Creek Baptist Church, a church which is still in existence.
His son-in-law, our 3x great Grandfather, Ryan Frier, a Primitive Baptist, founded and pastored Bethel Baptist Church, a racially-mixed congregation, prior to the Civil War. Though Rev. Frier, and his family were of the pro-union sentiment, his sons were forced to fight for the Confederate cause when the Union Army invaded, and began burning nearby towns.
Ultimately, Bethel Baptist Church split into two factions; one white and one black. These two small churches evolved into congregations of mega-proportions, and First Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist congregation, and Bethel Institutional Baptist Church, both located in Jacksonville, Florida continue to impact thousands of souls in the Northeast Florida area. (Each of these two Baptist churches, by the way, celebrate their heritage, and name our kinsman as a founding father).
Time and space would fail us to mention Rev. Nathaniel Walker, a Revolutionary War soldier, and founder and pastor of the Healing Springs Baptist Church in South Carolina, Henderson Frier, the father of Ryan Frier, a veteran of the War of 1812, and a co-elder with him at the Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Georgia, our Cousin, Lazarus Dowling, a former Confederate soldier, who taught Sacred Harp music to the people of Hoboken, Georgia, and “Gen.” Henry Dowling, our gg Uncle, one of the last surviving veterans of the Civil War, the National Commander of The United Confederate Veterans organization as WWII drew to a close, the final resident of the Georgia Confederate Soldiers Home in Atlanta, and a Church of Christ minister.
To broaden our scope a bit, and perhaps to add to your knowledge, General Robert E. Lee, CSA was the great grandson-in-law of our first President George Washington, (as Lee’s wife, Mary Custis Lee, was the great granddaughter of Martha Washington). Gen. Lee was a devout man who, after the war, bent his knee at the altar next to a black man and accepted communion; thus acting as a role model for the entire congregation of the church which he attended.
In 1861, just as hostilities were imminent, the U.S. Congress approved the Corwin Amendment, a document which President Lincoln favored, and which guaranteed the right of the Southern states to continue the practice of slavery; should they agree to cease and desist in their determination to break free of the Union.
While the practice of slavery cannot be defended, as no defense exists for it, the South’s refusal to accept this provision, and defer from their decision to secede, should make it altogether clear that there were greater issues than slavery which contributed to hostilities between the North and the South; issues such as the tendency of the federal government to intrude into the internal matters of its separate states, (a practice which continues to this day), and a disproportionate taxation on Southern products.
In terms of our Southern heritage , and the flag which represented our brave men on the field of battle :
The majority of Confederate soldiers were poor farmers and miscellaneous artisans of other trades, and never so much as owned a slave.
A significant number of freed blacks wore the Confederate gray and distinguished themselves in battle.
The common soldier was devoted to home and family and revered the battle flag; making no connection between it and the practice of slavery. Hundreds of thousands of our brave Southern soldiers fought, and died under what they characterized as “The Grand Old Flag.”
The use of the Confederate Battle Flag by the Ku Klux Klan, and other militant groups, and the resulting perception of the battle flag by the public is unfortunate. The murders of nine of our black brethren in a South Carolina church by a crazed gunman is even more despicable, but neither circumstance has anything, whatsoever, to do with our Southern heritage, or the Confederate Battle flag.
We believe our American heritage and traditions rightly include the presence of the Southern battle flag. The more so, given the realization that, considering certain justifiable criteria, The Declaration of Independence, set a precedent for the dissolution of a people from the country to whom they previously owed their allegiance; a concept which the South understood, and affirmed in its decision to separate from the Union. (Should it be thought strange that this short-lived government chose a symbol such as “The Stars and Bars” to represent their military’s heroic exploits on the battlefield, as their predecessor had chosen “Old Glory” to represent its own)?
It is nothing less than admirable, (though perhaps paradoxical to them who practice political correctness) that our own federal government made the decision to name United States military facilities, (such as Ft. Jackson and Ft. Lee) after Confederate generals, and that at the 1938 reunion of Union and Confederate veterans at Gettysburg our own President Franklin Roosevelt praised the patriotism and conciliation of both parties to the conflict.
We, as Southerners, are the descendants of those who fought, bled and died under two flags; that of the fledging United States, and that of the Confederate States of America. The blood of just and honorable men, and women run through our veins, and without them we would have been denied the wherewithal to live, and move, and breathe on this earth. The disproportionate, and inimical reaction to the crime of a mad man, in that the flag, monuments and grave markers of our Southern ancestors are dishonored and abased, not only insults our ancestors, but us, their descendants, as well.
We believe the representatives of the State of South Carolina, descendants of those brave men who fired the first shots of The War Between the States have, in the name of political correctness, dishonored their own ancestors by removing the Confederate Battle Flag from a place of prominence on their Capitol grounds. We also believe that the Southern Baptist Convention, and/or representatives thereof, are close to denying their own Southern heritage, (the first word in the title of this denomination) by disavowing the honorable and rightful place of the Confederate Battle Flag in the annals of American history.
We urge the Southern Baptist Convention to defer from political correctness and to differentiate between the improper use of the Confederate Battle Flag as a symbol of hatred, and its proper role in American society; a symbol of Southern heritage, and a conflict between warring parties, each persuaded that the cause for which they fought was altogether just.
Sincerely,
William McDonald, PhD Mrs. Kimberly Hogan
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