I grew up in the south and was educated in the south and was taught southern history from a White southern perspective.
To get around the racism issue, even in the 60’s, the “War between the States” was described not so much in terms of slavery, but “states rights”.
Even in Augusta, there was during the time of slavery a move away from it. There were slaves, indentured servants and freed slaves. One of the oldest black Baptist Churches in the south, Springfield Baptist Church in downtown Augusta, was founded by freed slaves during slavery.
It is true that people like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson were looked upon sympathetically, not from the slavery perspective, but the broader states rights and/or military acumen.
Monuments to these people were based upon their courage. Almost every southern town has monuments to their Confederate Dead.
My former parish in Augusta, the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, established in 1810, had an assistant pastor who was/is a world famous southern poet, Fr. Abram Ryan. He was known as the “Priest Poet of the South” but more accurately of the “Confederacy.” He was there from 1866 to 1868 and gave poetry reading to have the church’s “new” Jardine Organ shipped from docks in New York to the Church which had been delayed by the war which prevented it from being installed in the church for its dedication in 1863, during the height of the war.
A monument to Fr. Ryan stands on Green Street in front of St. John United Methodist Church which is in front of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity. Should that monument and the organ Fr. Ryan had shipped to the church be removed and/or destroyed?
But lets get to the title of this post. What we are seeing with confederate monuments is being spread to anyone who is associated with colonialism as well as the civil war. Christopher Columbus, Saint Juniper Serra, George Washington, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, the Liberty Bell, etc have been or could be victims of America’s Taliban.
Many of these statues, no matter who they are, are also works of art.
Secularists in America are truly secular Puritans similar to the Puritans at the founding of our country or during colonial times. They are imbued with Protestant sentiments although many of them may claim to be “nones.’ They are the ones that are the iconoclasts.
Secularism is the USA’s biggest religion or well on the way to it. Puritanical secularism is a particularly virulent form of it. But Protestant Puritanism is our heritage which has morphed into secular Puritanism.
18 comments:
Father these people are straight up Maoist Red Guard thugs.
And you wonder how long before Augusta National will be a target of the protesters? It is, after all, located on Washington Road, and we know our first president had an estate called Mt. Vernon, and of course there were slaves there. If you are so fortunate to enter the grounds at its regular entrance, you are driving down Magnolia Lane---ut-oh, magnolias, connotation to the plantation era? And then the name "Masters". Oh no, another association with the antebellum era. Maybe we will have to go back to the old "Augusta National Invitational Tournament", the named used before the name "Masters" was officially adopted in 1939. But that is a mouthful! I suspect furthermore in Augusta, and of course lots of other cities, we'll have to change a lot of street names, right? What about Wheeler Road in the Hill section of Augusta? Was that named after Confederate General Joe Wheeler? How about Walton Way? George Walton, signer of the Declaration of Independence? Did he own slaves? Of course we have to change the name of Fort Gordon and Gordon Highway in Augusta---Gordon was a Confederate general. Gotta go! The two and a half mile long John C. Calhoun Expressway in Augusta (doubtless one of the world's shortest expressways)? It perhaps should never have been built, splitting the Harrisburg neighborhood in Augusta, but since it is there, well. better rename that too.
In the meanwhile, we keep hearing "Black Lives Matter", yet I don't see any of these huge protests marching to the nearest abortion mill, where far more black lives are snuffed out than by the police. What gives?
They are tearing down art which we are incapable of producing today, and have lost all appreciation for monuments celebrating those who fought with honor and bravery for losing and even wrong causes.
I await their tearing down the Iwo Jima monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and MLK statues for lack of true blackness, the latter due to him being portrayed always dressed as a white man. I would add U.S. Grant, but they have already erased him.
What they are seeking is making remembering what happened yesterday a thought crime. I got a kick out of the Babylon Bee headline of 'Ghostly image of George Orwell seen hovering over Nation saying, "I told you so." '
Bob,
Useful idiots in the ranks of the Catholic clergy applaud the iconoclasm while ignoring the abortion mills murdering black babies each day.
Bob,
Useful idiots in the ranks of the Catholic clergy applaud the iconoclasm while ignoring the abortion mills murdering black babies each day.
Fr. Allan McDonald -
First, I don't think that it is accurate to say of Confederate heroes that, "Monuments to these people were based upon their courage." The vast majority of the monuments were erected decades after the war with a tremendous spike between 1910 and 1920 when Jim Crow laws were being enacted, and another spike in the 1950s and 1960s amid the Civil Rights Movement. These monuments were erected in a vain attempt to boost white pride and maintain white control in southern society.
Second, I don't think the Puritans are the predecessors of today's secularists, and the similarities are almost non-existent, apart from a touch of iconoclasm. What they were aiming for was what they considered "pure" worship.
"This year the Zwinglian, or Calvinian Faction began to be first known by the name of Puritans, which name hath ever since been appropriated to them, because of their pretending to a greater Purity in the Service of God, than was held forth unto them (as they gave it out) in the Common-Prayer Book; and to a greater opposition to the Rites and Usages of the Church of Rome, than was agreeable to the Constitution of the Church of England." (Peter Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Or, the History of the Reformation, (London: H. Twyford, T. Dring, J. Place, W. Palmer, 1661), p. 172.) Any good Puritan would tell you that love is the fulfilling of the law
Most of today's secularists don't begin with any concept or, needless to say, practice of religious worship. Most, I suggest, don't act of of love, either. Most of today's Protestants would not be at all comfortable with the destruction of monuments, though many would, like me, favor either relocating them to museums or ensuring that the full story of a confederate "hero" is made plain at the monument site.
If you really want to understand what is going on, go to black lives matter dot com. It has nothing to do with helping blacks, and has everything to do with using blacks to make our country pro-gay and Marxist. They want to do away with the nuclear family, and to live by a pro-gay village model. This will NOT help black families. Most black leaders agree that having no father figure in the home is what leads to most of the problems in primarily black neighborhoods. All communities suffer with this to some extent, but it is more prevalent in black communities.
Most people are clueless about what the organization really stands for. The fact that the Democrat Party has sided with this organization says a lot about what that party has become.
I believe it should be remembered that statues are both works of art and public property.
Should I or anyone else be able to enter a public art gallery and destroy or damage an art work because I am offended by the life and beliefs of an artist who lived 200 to 500 years ago?
What about the racist views of the early great feminists, like Margaret Sanger and Marie Stopes and other early feminists? Some of these early feminists also believed in eugenics; some were fine with the sterilization of the disabled and certain numbers of black women and other inferiors.
What about addressing KKK women's rallies? Or writing gushing letters of praise to Adolf Hitler right up to September 1939? And on and on...
What would happen to any individual who vandalized a statue or plaque commemorating the great Ms Sanger or Ms Stopes?
I saw on TV today a woman in London employed by the government as an adviser on race relations.
The BBC journalist asked her for her opinion about the toppling of statues of Winston Churchill.
She honestly replied:
"Some regard Winston Churchill as a racist and some do not. As for myself, I have yet to meet and talk with Mr Churchill."
As they say, you couldn't make this stuff up!
TJM, how true, concerning blacks murdered in the abortion mills. Blacks make up maybe a third of the population of Georgia but account for 55 percent of all abortions in the state---at least (probably higher as sometimes there is not data on abortions by race). The black abortion rate in Georgia is far higher than the white abortion rate. So where is John Lewis? Martin Luther King 3rd? Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms? Why aren't they leading marches to the abortion clinics? Especially Lewis, who is said to be a "civil rights hero"---yes, he supports civil rights if you make it out of the mother's womb. I can't think of a single abortion restriction he has ever supported--not a one. Maybe Lewis got his theology from the Rev. Warnock at Ebenezer Baptist Church here in Atlanta. The Reverend is running for Johnny Isakson's Senate seat (one now held by Kelly Loeffler) and of course the Rev has the endorsement of abortion "rights" groups...the Atlanta paper had profile of the Brown death at the Wendys here 9 days ago (which led to the burning of the Wendys) and noted that Mr. Brown had been in trouble since the age of 10---he had been on probation for 5 years. But the way the media tells the story, you would think he was as pure as the snow. Resisting arrest, eh, not such a good idea!
Maybe “Father” Kavanaugh will denounce Nancy Pelosi for her failure to denounce her father for erecting a statue to Robert E. Lee when he was mayor of Baltimore in 1948!
Would you think it queer if I referred to this militant secular socialist leftist agnostic mob a caliphate? I also thought of the destruction of those Buddha statues by the Taliban, and the destruction of Syria’s ancient artifacts by ISIS in the formation of their caliphate. The angry mob could have followed civil channels to have objectionable statues removed. That follows an orderly democratic process. My rationale is that the angry mob did could not gain enough support to follow that route. Instead they follow the Taliban, ISIS (or politically correct ISIL) , the German Nazi’s and the Italian Fascists. The fact that they were endorsed and supported by one of America’s leading political parties is frightening .
A bill has been introduced in the Georgia House, HB 1212, to get Confederate monuments off state and local government property and allow them just in museums and battlefields. Looks like even George Washington could not have a statue on the grounds because he owned slaves. Comments?
From BLM adherent Shaun King.
He makes no distinction between what is on public property and what is on private property. Stained glass windows depicting the Blessed Virgin are generally not found on public property. He uses the word "all," so what exactly is being advocated here?
YES.
ALL MURALS AND STAINED GLASS WINDOWS OF WHITE JESUS, AND HIS EUROPEAN MOTHER, AND THEIR WHITE FRIENDS SHOULD ALSO COME DOWN.
THEY ARE A GROSS FORM WHITE SUPREMACY.
CREATED AS TOOLS OF OPPRESSION.
RACIST PROPAGANDA.
THEY SHOULD ALL COME DOWN.
— SHAUN KING (@SHAUNKING) JUNE 22, 2020
Well, Jesus wasn't white.....
We made him white in our image.
Maybe reversing this blasphemy is in order...
Anonymous said... "Well, Jesus wasn't white....."
What color was He the last time you saw Him?
You mean they did not have cameras in the days of Christ's earthly ministry?!?
So the next great divide in Christianity will not be abortion, same-sex marriage, ordination of women, the meaning of the Eucharist, or the number of sacraments, but whether Jesus was white, black, yellow, brown, or mixed? Wonder how we will use scripture and tradition to resolve that issue?!?
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