Evangelical Christians and the Confederate Flag

Evangelical Christians and the Confederate Flag August 19, 2017

Meme from Facebook. Origin unknown
Meme from Facebook. Origin unknown

by Suzanne Titkemeyer

To everyone sharing that Confederate flag while claiming religious symbolism needs to know you are sharing fake news. The designer of the emblem himself, William Porcher Miles, stated several times that the diagonal β€œcross” and other elements of the flag were careful not to represent any official religion because there were Jews and others of different religions in the Confederacy and they wanted something that could represent anyone in the South no matter what the flavor of their religion.

The letters of the flag designer still exist debunking this, and there are mentions of it in history books written by scholars. They’ve debunked the idea of this meme pretty thoroughly through the years, using the existing letters of William Porcher Miles.

From Snopes.com:

β€œBut author John Coski, the historian for the American Civil War Museum in Richmond, Virginia, pointed out in his 2005 book The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem that the battle flag’s designer, William Porcher Miles, actually strove to avoid attributing any religious meaning to it.

In short, according to the man who was most responsible for promoting what we call the Confederate flag, it was an explicitly secular flag and its colors represented republican virtues. As I wrote in my book, others promoted the β€œSouthern Cross” for religious reasons and the flag took on religious meaning to many southerners even before the end of the war, but its original intent was not religious and its religious significance is primarily a 20th-century product.”

Please stop falling for Facebook memes that do not have a grain of truth. Search engines are your friends. Sharing fake news makes the world much dumber.

This is why a fully-rounded education devoid of religious influence in every subject matters. A little knowledge keeps folks from making spurious claims like this. Many times in Evangelical Christianity as long as the idea fits their own personal agenda they will accept it as the Gospel truth. How anyone can think that the symbol of a group that believes they are literally superior to another group of human beings has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus, no matter what they claim.

Sad that the men of the Confederacy were more inclusive than many American Evangelical Christians.

moreRead more by Suzanne Titkemeyer

Central America Does Not Need Evangelical Jesus

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Suzanne Titkemeyer is the admin at No Longer Quivering. She’s been out of the Quiverfull Evangelical world for nine years now and lived in the beautiful Piedmont section of Virginia before recently moving to the mountains of rural Costa Rica to teach English. If eye rolling was an Olympic sport she would take the Gold every time. She blogs at Every Breaking Wave and True Love Doesn’t Rape along with a photography blog of her days in Costa Rica – A Gringo In Costa Rica.


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