Conservative Christians and Martin Luther King

You may have noticed, as I have, that certain reformed and evangelical Christians have an anachronistic love for the antebellum South. Though liberal Christians and even the unbelieving culture in America have largely put aside racial bigotry (at least in theory, in form, and in profession), we in the conservative wing of the Christian church have not done so well. Our failure is reflected in the refusal by some to acknowledge that black slavery, in both its theory and practice was immoral, and that the Civil War was the judgment of God against our nation for our national sin. Black slavery was immoral and God judged us for it. We are still suffering the after-effects of that judgment to this day. More unsettling is that our witness for Christ has likewise suffered and continues to suffer for our sin in this matter. But we have not yet learned repentance. I cite as an example -- and only as an example -- an issue of Credenda Agenda (Vol. 9, No. 1, c. 1997) entitled "True Defiance: A Memorial for Black Confederates." The lead article, written by Douglas Wilson, is ostensibly about the revision of history by today's academics. The relativists in academia would never, of course, call attention to the fact that southern blacks were Southerners, many of them loyal to the ideal of the Southern aristocratic society. Wilson seeks to correct this omission by calling attention to the service that blacks rendered -- bravely and loyally -- to the South during the Civil War (which Wilson predictably labels the "Southern War of Independence"). There is, unfortunately, a subtext. Toward the end of the article, Wilson interjects the modern mantras of the Southern apologist: "The war was over the meaning of constitutional government, the nature of federalism, the life of republics, and the definition of civic liberty." Yeah right. He also tips his hat to the sin of racism, while exhonerating the South from all blame in the matter: "We must recognize the racism that has afflicted many in the South since the war is the fruit of the Reconstruction, not of slavery and the war." Wilson continues, quite humorously in my opinion,

Those southern whites who today despise blacks, far from showing on-going resistance, are continuing to submit to that humanist nightmare which was first imposed at Reconstruction.

Thus does Wilson throw his little fagot on the fire of rebellion against the Federal government. If only Lincoln had not been elected, perhaps we never would have had FDR, the 60's, and Roe v. Wade. Wilson ends his article with this summary, which more or less shows the real motive for the article:

But we are convinced that we will not understand the current civil conflicts which surround us until we go back and learn the truth about the War Between the States. Until we get that particular history lesson straight, we will continue to get every other subsequent history lesson wrong. The battles we fight today are simply a later stage in the same war.

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We cannot hope to fight the good fight now while repudiating those who fought the same fight earlier.

Wilson's penultimate paragraph relates the well-meaning advice coming from his milquetoast critics:

But still the apparently reasonable advice is offered to us. "give it up. Let it go. Stop fighting old battles. Quit tilting at windmills. Just accept the past. Let's just do what we can now. Don't inflame old wounds. Just let it go."

Wilson would, of course, carry on the struggle. The criticism Wilson doesn't mention -- perhaps he has never heard it -- is that we should tackle the history from the opposite angle. We -- as a nation, as slaveholders, as the Christian Church -- were wrong. Not because the modern-day relativists have declared us wrong, but because we committed grievous sin against God and against the image of God. Wilson and those like him are not nobly tilting at windmills, they are basely defending those who resisted God's law and demeaned those whom God loved. Rather than defend the immoralities of the past, we ought to put on sackcloth, sit in ashes, and murmur our contrite apologies. Repentance, not defiance, is the order of the day. It is way past time we learned that.