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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