“We call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters,” reads the resolution adopted Tuesday at the convention’s annual meeting in St. Louis.
Former Southern Baptist President James Merritt, who said he was the great-great-grandson of two Confederate Army members, helped draft that language, which included striking a paragraph that linked the flag to Southern heritage: “We recognize that the Confederate battle flag serves for some not as a symbol of hatred, bigotry, and racism, but as a memorial to their loved ones who died in the Civil War, and an emblem to honor their loved ones’ valor.”
The Baptists considered the resolution almost a year after nine people were murdered at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., by an alleged killer who posed for photos with the rebel flag. Pastor Dwight McKissic of Arlington, Texas, proposed the original language of the resolution in part to honor those victims.
It's a step, a start, a moment, but it is a welcome one. Of all the things we need to be separated by, this just isn't one of them. It's not.
We need to love, even on those things we disagree about. Nothing about that flag says love. Nothing.
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