I don't think the Church ought to dictate what people may or may not place on family graves, as if we were some sort of ecclesiastical Neighborhood Association. If the cemetery were flying the Confederate flag from a flagpole, or if the people in charge of the chapel wanted to place it in the chancel, I would probably think differently, but if the family decorates the grave with it, or allows it to be done by a third party, I think we ought to ignore it. We don't have a right not to be offended.

Bill Dilworth

Ironic that this is posted on the remembrance day for the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

We probably cannot prevent families from decorating graves as they see fit. So I guess leaving other mementos of a loved ones' life is also fine. Hmm. We might want to be careful about a policy like that.

Now, symbols change their meaning over time. First of all, the flag everyone thinks of as Confederate was one of many battle flags, and NOT the official flag of the Confederacy. That battle flag has now been appropriated by hate groups. Like it or not, that changes its connotation (the emotional response a word or symbol elicits) just as much as the connotation of the swastika was changed when adopted by the Nazis from East Asia and North American indigenous peoples (which was also ironic).

So there is a less offensive and more historically accurate solution. Stop misunderstanding the Stars and Bars. If one wants to denote the grave of a Confederate veteran, use the first official flag of the CSA, which does not bear the image we now associate with hate groups.

Nonetheless, any flag in this discussion is a flag of rebellion-- rebellion against the idea that humans should not be treated as property. That flag is now, especially, since the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the 1930s, associated with the Klan.

We do have a right to demand that our church-- which has a troubling history with slavery, the Confederacy, and the founding of the Klan-- does not appear to continue to endorse positions such as these.

If the cemetery's regulations don't provide for any regulation of such decorations, then it would be difficult to come along at this late date to address this issue, even though I agree that the Confederate flag is offensive. If, as I suspect is the case, the cemetery can regulate such things, then it should. Would, for instance, the cemetery say it cannot forbid a headstone carved with a racial epithet? I think not.

Eric BOnetti

Being a member of the Diocese of Virginia's Race Relations Committee, surely John B. Chilton is aware that what he saw was the result of memorial grave decoration efforts by local chapter(s) of the Sons or Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization like the Sons or Daughters of the American Revolution, which was chartered to locate, identify, and "honor" the graves of those who fell during the Civil War in the Southern States... and not just "Confederates," either!

Where the grave of a Confederate servicemen has been identified, a "Confederate" flag bearing a blue St. Andrew's cross of 13 stars (similar to the 13-cross St. Andrew's Cross on the shield of TEC,)is placed as a memorial decoration upon it on holidays. Graves which are unidentified with respect to Civil War service, belong to those who served in Federal forces, predate the Civil War, or are of a later date, all receive a modern U.S. flag.

No grave is "left out" of a very sincere effort to honor all of the Civil War dead. That's what such organizations and their chapters - Northern Federal and Southern Confederate -were formed and chartered to do - remember ALL of the fallen. For generations, this has been done in BOTH the North & South... exactly as the widows and mothers of fallen Confederate soldiers hoped that Northern women would remember and honor the Confederate dead who lay buried in the North... and as the widows and mothers of fallen Federal soldiers hoped that Southern women would recall and honor the Federal dead who lay buried in the South... forever.

Were the cemetery to have been in New York, the same flags would have been placed by the SOC/DOC's "Yankee" allies in Sons and Daughters of the Union chapters, who join in honoring the fallen of BOTH sides through the decoration of their graves, just as is seen in Virginia.

Perhaps what's actually needed is a TEC pamphlet explaining all of that to people who arrive at the churchyard when the church is closed? Maybe the respective historical society chapters, North & South would like to join in that project, too? Seems likely!

Blessings!
Rev. CW Brockenbrough

John Chilton--FWIW, I am totally with you.

My family has lived in the South since the early 1700s, and we know quite well what it means to "honor the Civil War dead." In my opinion, it's nothing the Episcopal Church should be a part of.

There are ways to honor the dead that do not involve using symbols that are indistinguishable from those waved by racists. Would anyone here argue that the Germans should plant Nazi flags on the graves of those killed in WWII? I suspect not....

Actually, as far as the Episcopal Church being involved with commemorating figures from the Late Northern Agression (as a friend's great-aunt insisted in calling it) this is pretty tame. All Saints' , Austin, has a stained glass window with a depiction of Robert E Lee in it; other parishes have windows that allude to Lee in one way or another. The pews where Lee and CSA President Jefferson Davis worshipped in at least two Episcopal churches are marked with silver plaques; St Paul's, Richmond used to drape a Confederate flag over Davis's pew, as well.

Paige, just to play devil's advocate, let me point out that racists also use the Cross, both in its burning and, um, unlit varieties. Abusus non tollit usam - just because something can be misused does not mean that we can't use it.

Bill Dilworth

Yes, there are much worse examples. A couple years ago went to a cathedral in a southern diocese for Holy Week services. As I looked around, I observed stained glass windows illustrating the sacraments. I was stunned to realize that every one had CSA officers in them! Since this edifice was built in the 1950's, the images of glorious Confederate forefathers was definitely intended to be a statement about God's blessing on peculiar southern institutions.

What was it that Dr. Martin Luther King said?

"The content of their characters," wasn't it?

Didn't the Inquisition get into trouble by trying to read the minds and hearts of other human beings, finding that being human themselves, they couldn't actually do it, then proving how very human they were by embracing unspeakable methods to cover up their own human "failing" and to force people to "confess" instead?

Granted, the gents in the bed linens aren't difficult to figure out, what with all the screaming, swearing, and violence. My point was only that the ladies with the flags are a different case in that they're one side of a two-party alliance which had and has nothing whatsoever in common with the "Macy's White Sale refugees." For openers, they pre-date them; additionally, North or South, they don't subscribe to either racism or revisionist history.

Granted, the church windows mentioned are... well, they're weird, but not singular; 1960-64 was the Centennial of the Civil War and they might relate to that.

But my point was only that it's awfully difficult to know another person's heart and soul when they're standing right in front of you. Judging the dead isn't any person's job, which makes changing the flags - or terminating the old alliance of North & South by which the graves are all honored equally - a tricky bit of business if you mean to come out on the morally "right" side of the matter.

Everybody's clear, for example, that there were black Confederate soldiers? (No, they weren't slaves.) Everybody's quite certain that they know exactly what those men's preferences would be?

The matter has arisen before; so have those questions. At that time, it was felt that the dead themselves knew what they were doing and had equal claim to their choices being respected - whatever they were - the same as any other deceased person.

If that's no longer representative of the society's or church's values, then perhaps more rules will be applied. But if that's no longer representative, they won't be rules that anyone should be proud of having to apply.

Blessings!
Rev CW Brockenbrough

I was about to argue that this is a problem so obvious that it shouldn't require a top-down directive, but apparently I'm wrong! I agree, perhaps there ought to be at least a diocesan-level approach. I worry about something coming from the national church, as it is so clearly directed only at southerners. One of the beauties of A123/143 is that assumed a national level of sin, given how many northern episcopalians were involved in the slave trade. I would hope that the individual diocesan responses to A143, like that of Virginia, would give rise to reflection on the matter!

But clearly something must be done. For those who find confederate flags either unimportant or a quaint reminder of honorable ancestral history, I would hope that all it takes by way of counter-argument is to remind us these are efforts to commemorate a war fought to maintain literal human bondage.

Since 1865, many have tried to either re-write that history (black confederate soldiers? A convenient myth that has been widely and authoritatively disproven;) or have carried the tradition forward in more covert ways—Jim Crow laws and segregation, legal or otherwise. The confederate battle flag is a symbol both of that original fight to maintain slavery and later a very recent symbol, within our lifetimes and often still today, of the fight to keep as many remnants of slavery alive as possible. Ignorance of that history is only an excuse for so long before yes, indeed, one can read into the hearts of those who are still fighting the lost cause.

Phil Gentry

I would guess that I would defer to those who are upset about the stars and bars and say that they should be removed. I would also suspect that, in a churchyard, I would, for reasons of equality, suggest that the 50-star current US flag also be banned. This would be the "depressing" and "lowest minimum" solution. I might ask, then, if the intent would also be to remove (if present) the military gravestones to which every deceased veteran (be they union or confederate) has a right to under our civil law? The confederate gravestones are distinctive and recognizable. Should those also be excised? If so, is the church willing to defy federal law on the matter? Would such publicity serve us well?

On the other hand, I think that, for me personally, the insistence on the removal of recognizable confederacy marks (flags or stones) would be just one more vain attempt to "sanitize" what was an horrendous and extremely bloody chapter in our history. It might also remind us that not all of those divisions are even yet, 150 years later, resolved. To put both the current US and the Confederate battle flags together in the one cemetery could be for us a reminder that all of our best and worst intentions ultimately come to nothing in the grave. Not a bad sentiment for a Christian cemetery.

"these are efforts to commemorate a war fought to maintain literal human bondage."

Well, no. It was a war fought to preserve the Union. It wouldn't have happened without slavery, but it wasn't really about slavery. Lincoln himself is famous for saying that if he could preserve the Union without freeing a single slave he would do so. Not all the slave states seceded, and the Emancipation Proclamation didn't affect slaveholders in those states that remained in the Union (or, for that matter, Confederate territory that was held by the Union, like New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana). Nor is the North free from the guilt of slavery, seeing that the cotton grown by slave labor in the South went to Northern factories.

But be all that as it may, where does it end? The Stars and Stripes led men into battle in wars fought primarily for territorial acquisition, although covered up with patriotic sloganeering, in the Mexican and Spanish-American Wars. It led them into battle in World War I, fought for a whole slew of ignoble reasons disguised as a struggle for liberty. Nor are other wars "clean" at heart - Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan come to mind. Most of the people who fought and died (and are still dying) on the American side of those wars did so under the impression that they were doing so in defense of their homes and family, and in order to spread democracy. They thought they were doing the right thing, no matter how mistaken we might think they were. When someone puts an American flag on the grave of a soldier from one of those wars, are they endorsing the reasons that led to the conflict? Does a disapproval of those wars require that we forbid the decoration of the graves of those soldiers who fought in them?

Bill Dilworth

Paige, just to play devil's advocate, let me point out that racists also use the Cross, both in its burning and, um, unlit varieties. Abusus non tollit usam - just because something can be misused does not mean that we can't use it.

Bill Dilworth--there are some symbols that are just so poisoned by their associations that they cannot be divorced from those contexts. I would argue that the swastika and the Confederate flag are two of those symbols.

Given how badly some of its adherents misuse it, the cross may well be headed in that direction. Time will tell.

Robert E. Lee is the Confederate version of Erwin Rommel. Both were honorable, courageous and highly skilled warriors. Both are worthy of study and emulation by future soldiers. But both served unjust regimes, and if it were up to me I would not like to see either of them in a stained glass window.

I wish to respectfully make a few points as a teacher of history.

Rev. Brockenbough-- Sir, we will never know how many African Americans served in the Confederate Army, if any. Regimental records listing African Americans who claimed to be "soldiers" from 1861-1865 often saw that word crossed out and some version of the term "servant" inserted instead. It was not until March 23, 1865 that the CSA formally approved the enlistment of "slaves" in exchange for their emancipation, one bare month before war's end. This is nothing more than an indication of the desperation of a Confederacy that was attempting to both acknowledge the calculus that a pool of perhaps 2.7 million white males was exhausted, even ignoring the numerous exemptions for overseers/owners of slaves.

Nonetheless, that has nothing to do with the discussion of the decoration of graves with the Stars and Bars in an Episcopal cemetery in 2012.

Mr. Dilworth-- Lincoln's proclamation you cited was from his first inaugural on March 4, 1861. The context of this is important. At that point, seven states had seceded. It was strategically vital that Lincoln use this occasion - in which he held that he was the president of ALL 33 states- that he not only attempt to dissuade the Upper South and so-called "Border States" from seceding but attempt to get those who had left to reverse course. Lincoln was also trying to calm rebellious mutterings from northern "copperhead" Democrats, especially along the strategically vital Ohio River in the so-called "Butternut" regions. Lincoln also said, "I hope to have God on my side, but I MUST have Kentucky." And the fact that he makes a point about slavery shows the illogic of claiming that the Civil War was NOT about slavery to the Confederates.

Nonetheless, that ALSO has nothing to do with the discussion of the decoration of graves with the Stars and Bars in an Episcopal cemetery in 2012.

Peace to all,
Leslie Scoopmire

oops, in that next to the last sentence, I omitted the words "to the Confederates" after the word "slavery." Sorry.

[Correction to comment made. - ed.]

Ms Scoopmire, I believe you are mistaken. While Lincoln does speak of his disinclination to abolish slavery in his first inaugural address, the line about preserving the Union without freeing a single slave is found in his letter of 22 August 1862 to Horace Greeley.

Okay. However, I thought you were referring to public statements by Lincoln about slavery, and of course in his first inaugural he expressed the same sort of sentiments. The contents of that letter to Greeley-- poor man-- were not originally public. So-- in August of 1862 the war was going very badly indeed for the Union. This was approximately a month before bloody Antietam, which was the closest thing to a non-debacle for the Union army, and Lincoln is STILL trying to keep the Border states in the Union. The Border States' secession would have strengthened the CSA population by 2.6 million as well as greatly expanding the agricultural and industrial capacity of the South. Maryland's geographical proximity to DC is obvious, but Missouri and Kentucky's abundant natural resources-- including lead and coal-- as well as their mules and horses and other livestock, are also obvious.

I don't think arguing over which particular quote or many Lincoln made disavowing his own abolitionist sentiment changes the point that I made.

Lincoln's evolving views on slavery and abolition are admirable covered in Eric Foner's recent book The Fiery Trial. I recommend it highly to enable one to place Lincoln's devloping opinions upon a timeline and in context.

"I don't think arguing over which particular quote or many Lincoln made disavowing his own abolitionist sentiment changes the point that I made."

I wasn't arguing with you, Ms Scoopmire - I was trying to clear up which words of Lincoln's I had in mind when I wrote my comment. I'm not sure there's much room there to argue.

I wish I could post a photo here, but I'll summarize:

A friend of mine painted a big confederate flag on a piece of canvas. In between the stars and bars it says:
"Dear fliers of this flag, I would never use this symbol to show my respect for the South, because I have no friend whose skin is black who sees it as a symbol of love and equality."

I love the South and it is my chosen home. But this about sums it up for me, as some other posters have said. Sometimes a symbol can be corrupted or associated with evil beyond the pale, beyond redemption of that symbol (at least in living history.) It's not about political correctness- it's about a societal wide wound (from which many, many still feel great agony.) I think we should be willing to give up something that causes so many pain.

Jonathan (and others) would you feel differently about the use of the (first) national flag of the CSA? As far as I know the Klan et al have never used it, nor have I ever seen it on the back window of a pick-up truck? Illustrations here: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flags_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

Yeah, I dunno, that's a good question. It probably wouldn't ignite the strong feelings that the other seems to illicite (one way or another,) in so many people.

I wonder (and honestly, not to make any kind of direct correlation,) do modern Germans, for example, (who are much closer in relation to the time period of WW2 than we are to the Civil War,) honor their war dead? I assume it can't be with flags and such, as I understand those symbols to be illegal, but how do they honor those who died as their fathers,brothers, loved ones, etc., while avoiding the very real and very painful symbols associated with the regime those men died for? Does that make sense? If they do, somehow, it might be a model for a reconciling away to address that painful but real part of our history in ways that aren't hurtful to the many still affected by the symbols associated with it.

I don't know what the Germans do over there, but I stumbled across some information about what we did with German POWs who died in our custody during the war and were given military funerals. In some cases the Army used the black, white, and red flag that Germany used alongside the Nazi flag from 1933-1935 (before that the colors had been the same as on the German flag today). That would seem roughly parallel to using the first national flag of the CSA. But sometimes they actually used Nazi flags. If you scroll down the page here you'll see a photo: http://www.theincidentmovie.com/germalpowfunerals.htm

I also came across a post on a military buffs' board that claimed the remains of dead German soldiers returned to German were allowed military funerals with the Nazi flag until 1950, but I don't know if that's correct.

Jonathan, a quick and dirty survey of photos of Germany's national mourning day shows that Germans don't go in for decorating their graves with flags, but instead use wreathes with ribbons in the national colors: red, black, and gold. Wikipedia says that red, black, and white - which were the national colors during the war and at other times in German history -
are almost exclusively used these days by the Far Right and monarchist parties (as well as some sports organizations founded before World War I). So even though the national colors during WWII were red, black, and white, WWII veterans' graves and memorials get wreathes with ribbons in the present-day national colors.

As you pointed out, Germany actually outlaws any symbols associated with the Nazi regime. I also learned this evening that the Celtic cross is banned in Germany (!).

One last note about fascist symbols... While the use of the Japanese flag, with the red sun disk on a white field, was severely restricted during the US occupation, those restrictions were lifted in 1949. It didn't officially become the national flag until 1999. There are still those inside and outside of Japan who object to its use, but it's generally accepted. Photos of memorial ceremonies at the Yakusuni Shrine (where Japanese war dead are enshrined) show it's used there. Even the battle flag, with its sixteen rays spreading out from the central disk, and widely associated with the Japanese Empire, is used at Yakusuni.