Baptist Seminarian Jonathan Harris opposes the removal of Confederate monuments. He writes for the Abbeville Institute, and recently shared an interesting piece about his experience in trying to reason with protesters who wanted to remove the Silent Sam statue at the University of North Carolina (which was eventually toppled by a mob in 2018). Harris’s article is poignant for many reasons, and demonstrates that the issue at hand is much larger than historical statues and public art.
It reminded me of my own experiences in New Orleans back in 2017, when our own Confederate monuments honoring Robert E. Lee (dedicated 1884), Jefferson Davis (1911), and P.G.T. Beauregard (1915) were under attack – rhetorically and physically – and eventually removed by the city government. To this day, they are hidden away in a shed in a city junkyard.
Shortly thereafter, there were some Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod members (even brother pastors) who imputed racist motives to me, and wanted to have me defrocked for being present, vested, and for conducting prayer services, and imploring the Lord to spare us from violence, at the Confederate monuments. Peaceful monument supporters were being menaced and assaulted by mobs of violent Antifa activists. I was genuinely worried about the situation. Some of my own parishioners were present at the vigil to save the monuments.
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My brethren who self-righteously went on the attack against me should be ashamed of themselves. By sitting on the sidelines, or in some cases, siding with the vandals and radicals, they were unwittingly helping to advance an anti-Christian agenda.
I know of a few people – decent Christian folks – who lost jobs after being doxxed by anonymous anti-Christian and violent Antifa thugs. Not because they are racists or Nazis or any of the other false, accusatory buzzwords spouted by monument detractors, but simply because they did not support the removal of these veterans’ memorials, priceless pieces of public art, and historical antiquities.
Their bosses were cowards who caved to the likes of violent college students, not unlike the three leftist activists from Tulane University who recently allegedly attempted to set fire to a student’s dorm (a member of Young Americans for Liberty) and who are being charged with arson. Is this the kind of society they want? When they do not stand up for people who were wronged, they are incentivizing more of the same.
We Lutherans cannot support mob violence and iconoclasm any more than Luther could support it when he returned from exile in the Wartburg to castigate Karlstadt and his misguided mob of social justice warriors who were self-righteously tearing down statues. We are people of law and order and tradition; we are the conservative reformation.
When things were very tense, when the police were ordered to stand down, when mobs were chanting and closing in and throwing bottles at peaceful people – where were the clergy? Where were the blessed peacemakers? Where were the pastors on the other side who supported the removal of the monuments? Where were the men with the moral authority to call for peace to prevail?
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I’ll tell you where they were: they were virtue signaling on social media from their comfy couches and plotting against those of us who were willing to get our hands dirty.
When will people finally get it? When monuments to Lincoln and Washington are being torn down? When any historic remembrance prior to Year Zero has been thrown into the Memory Hole?
The same people that want these monuments removed, the same politicians who look the other way as masked thugs terrorize people in the streets, these same people do not consider babies in the womb to be persons, and they advocate violence not only against those children of God, but also against Christians and conservatives and libertarians – and even moderates – who disagree with their iconoclasm.
Dr. Brion McClanahan (also of the Abbeville Institute) and I discussed the topic of these monuments on the Tom Woods Show. Those who would question our motives would do well to listen.
Regardless of one’s opinion about the War Between the States, this current clash over the remembrance of history and the use of violence to advance a socialist political agenda is actually a battle in a much older war. My Christian brethren of every political persuasion would do well to consider which side they are fighting for.
