[Vision2020] Christ Church, neo-Confederates, tolerance

Moscow Cares moscowcares at moscow.com
Thu Jun 25 02:32:55 PDT 2015


Courtesy of today's (June 25, 2015) Moscow-Pullman Daily News with a special thanks to Nick Gier.

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Christ Church, neo-Confederates, tolerance
Nick Gier
Many people have the misconception that those who take issue with Douglas Wilson's Christ Church and New Saint Andrews College are condemning his religious beliefs. For me and many others this is simply not true.
In December 2002, I invited NSA faculty and students to attend the regional American Academy of Religion meeting, which took place on the University of Idaho campus in May 2003. (One year, 40 percent of the papers were presented by faculty from conservative evangelical schools.) Then NSA President Roy Atwood, however, said they had "better things to do," and our relations, fueled by heated debate about Wilson's booklet "Slavery As It Was," got worse and worse.
When over 1,000 people signed the full-page ad "Not in Our Town" in this newspaper in December 2003, the issue was not evangelical theology; rather, it was Wilson's slavery booklet, in which he and his co-author Steven Wilkins state: "There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world" (page 24).
Wilkins was a founding director of the League of the South, which has been declared a "white supremacist hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. LOS founder Michael Hill proposed an independent neo-Confederacy of 15 states would have the duty to protect the values of Anglo-Celtic culture from black Americans, who are "a compliant and deadly underclass."
The LOS organizes public protests in conjunction with the Council of Conservative Citizens, whose website decries "negroes, queers and other retrograde species of humanity." In his own manifesto Charleston shooter Dylan Roof stated that, after he started reading the CCC website in 2012, he "was never the same." He was particularly drawn to "pages upon pages of black on white murders," which convinced him he had to start a race war against all black people.
Two UI history professors took time from their busy schedules to refute the slavery booklet paragraph by paragraph. It was later discovered that 20 percent of the booklet was lifted verbatim from Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman's "Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery" (1974).
In an interview with The Spokesman-Review (Oct. 22, 2007), Wilson admitted "Confederate flags have adorned office and school walls at times." At a 2005 picnic attended by members of Wilson's organizations, the band Potato Head refused to entertain when they saw the Confederate flag prominently displayed.
Moscow's "intoleristas" proudly wear the name Wilson has given them, and now we have big name allies all across the nation. Wal-Mart, E-bay, Sears, Target, Etsy and Amazon will no longer sell Confederate flags and memorabilia. Although they have received last-minute rush orders, major flag manufacturers will no longer produce a flag that divides people along racial lines.
Alabama's governor has ordered four Confederate flags be removed from his state Capitol. A bill has been introduced in the Mississippi legislature to excise the Stars and Bars that stand prominently in the upper left corner of the state's flag. Unfortunately, South Carolina's legislators will have to muster a two-thirds vote to bring down this symbol of hate and bigotry that flies high over their Capitol. In stark contrast, the state flag and Old Glory flutter at half-mast.
In a 2007 essay "Take Down That Flag" in the Christ Church journal Credenda Agenda, Douglas Jones, Wilson's former right-hand man, argues the defeat of the Southern forces was obviously a sign of divine wrath. Instead of repenting, neo-Confederates boast about "their proud legacy and dwell on the sins of their accusers." Jones declares they should burn their flag and wear the ashes as a sign of repentance. How many neo-Confederates among us are ready to accept Jones' challenge?
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Stay tuned.

Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares"
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho
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