Confederate Flag as Symbol

The shooting deaths of nine people in a historically black Charleston church at the hands (allegedly) of a white supremacist has sparked a debate over the place of the Confederate flag in our nation.  My friends (Facebook and otherwise) have weighed in with their strong opinions on either side of this issue.  Here’s my two cents.

The Confederate flag is a symbol.  The study of the interpretation of symbols was a major feature of my doctoral studies, so I know a thing or two about the subject.  Symbols develop over time: this is the diachronic (“through time”) nature of a symbol.  Take for example the expression “the President’s car” (words are a type of symbol, by the way).  In the days of Teddy Roosevelt, the President’s car was a railroad car.  In the days of Barak Obama, however, the President’s car is an armored limousine.  Same symbol, different meaning.  In the same way, the meaning of Confederate flag symbol has changed over the years.  Some people are discussing what the Confederate flag meant when it was created; these discussions often focus on the meaning of the Confederacy that it represented.  Such diachronic analysis can be interesting, and sometimes even helpful.

The other way to analyze symbols (according to Ferdinand de Saussure, a founding guru for linguistic and symbolic studies) is synchronic (“with time”) analysis.  That is, what meaning(s) does a symbol have at the time that it is being used?  How do different groups of people understand the meaning of the symbol?  Diachronic study of a symbol may help us understand how the symbol became what it is, but synchronic examination gets to the heart of the matter.  That’s what I’ll do here as I consider the Confederate flag.

Symbols can have more than one meaning.  That is both a powerful feature and a potential risk in the use of symbols.  The risk is that you may use a symbol to express one meaning, but people will understand it in a different way.  Here are two examples.  First, imagine that Johnny pulls Sally’s pigtails on the playground at grade school.  Sally thinks he’s being mean and complains to the teacher, who marches a confused Johnny to the principal’s office.  Johnny tells the principal that he pulled Sally’s pigtails because he likes her.  The wise principal then explains to Johnny that while that may be what he meant to express, that’s not the message that Sally got from it.  If he wants to tell Sally that he likes her, he should find a different way to do it.  Here’s another example.  Right after the attacks on 9/11, President Bush said that “this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take a while."  I’m confident that he used the word “crusade” to mean “a major effort to change something,” as www.merriam-webster.com defines it.  However, the word/symbol crusade also refers to the wars that European Christians fought against Muslims during the Middle Ages.  Understandably, the word raises hackles in the Islamic world, and the President offended many Muslims when he used it.  The Bush administration had to do a lot of damage control because of an unintended insult since people understood the word in different ways.

All of this brings us to the use of Confederate flag, and what it symbolizes for different people.  As I see it, it has at least three different meanings, depending on which people you talk to.  It’s the same thing as Johnny and Sally interpreting the hair-pulling differently, and President Bush and leaders in the Islamic world using the word “crusade” differently.  When you use the symbol of the Confederate flag, not everyone views it the same way you do.

First, particularly in the South, the Confederate flag symbolizes southern heritage and culture.  It is more than a reference to the Confederacy of the 1860s; it’s a symbol of what it means to be a southerner.  It’s akin to the cowboy as a symbol of the West.  In the same way, I have a sticker of the Dutch flag on my car to express my ethnic heritage.  Understood this way, the Confederate flag is a source of pride and self-identity.  For people who understand the flag like this, attacks against the flag are attacks against their culture, their values, their way of life.  Of course they won’t like it.

Second, the Confederate flag symbolizes a rebellious, free spirit.  This is the Confederate flag on the General Lee from “The Dukes of Hazard,” for example.  It is a way to assert your independence from the government, corporations, or anything else that tries to tell you how to live your life.  Just like Bo and Luke Duke refused to do what Boss Hogg and Sheriff Coltrane told them to, some people use the Confederate flag to say that you can’t tell them what to do.  Tell these folks that the Confederate flag is bad, and they’ll think that you want to suppress their freedoms.

Third, the Confederate flag represents racism, particularly the dominance of whites over blacks.  This is the Confederate flag of the KKK and other white supremacy groups.  It is equivalent to the Nazi swastika and a burning cross on someone’s front lawn.  It is used by whites to tell blacks that they’re better than they are, and that if you get too full of yourself there will be consequences to pay.  When you display the Confederate flag, some people get the message that you’re racist.

As you read my three descriptions, there may be one or two of them that you disagree with or don’t understand.  When I was in seminary, my roommate from Alabama was flabbergasted when I told him that some people in Pennsylvania display the Confederate flag.  Coming from the south, he interpreted the flag in the first way: a symbol of the South.  Why would northerners use it?  I believe my Pennsylvania neighbors typically understand in the second way: as an expression of freedom and rebelliousness.  As I’ve said, the tricky thing about symbols is that they can mean more than one thing.  I can’t tell you that I’m “right” and you’re “wrong” in how you understand the Confederate flag.  It has all of these symbolic meanings.

If you attack the Confederate flag because it is a symbol of racism for you, others will believe that you are attacking Southern culture.

If you use the Confederate flag to express your independent spirit, some people will think you’re a Southerner (as my seminary roommate did).

If you display the Confederate flag because you’re proud of your heritage, other people will understand it as a racist statement.

Again, none of these meanings for the symbol of the Confederate flag are “right” or “wrong.”  They are all ways that people understand it.  Just as Johnny needed to understand how Sally felt when he pulled her hair, and just as President Bush probably should have put more thought into using the word “crusade,: we would all do well to think of the message other people receive when we attack or defend the Confederate flag.

Church and Community

When a community changes and a church doesn’t change with it, it will wither and die.

During the 1950s and 1960s, major US cities experienced “white flight.”  For a number of reasons, residents of predominantly white city neighborhoods moved out to the suburbs, while more racially diverse families moved in as they left.  Many of churches that had been geared to ministry with the people who used to live in the neighborhood didn’t make the shift.  They continued to focus upon the few remaining white families in the community, and upon the members who drove back in from the suburbs on Sundays to worship at their “home” church.  Over time, these churches faded away as the old members put down roots in their new communities, and as they became less and less relevant to the lives of the people around them.

I once had a conversation with a pastor from Florida who served a church like that.  The all-white congregation in a Haitian neighborhood was struggling to get by, and its days were numbered.  It had not even occurred to the pastor (until I suggested it to him) that the church could do things like offer a Bible study in Creole (the Haitian language) to become connected to it neighbors.  They only knew how to do ministry with the kind of people who used to live in the community.

Two years ago, our mission team was hosted by the First Presbyterian Church of Jamaica in Queens, a church that responded to its community change very differently.  Jamaica used to be a predominantly white neighborhood: Donald Trump was baptized and grew up there.  As the community changed, the pastor didn’t want to accept any of the new people into the church.  So they kicked him out and got a pastor who would.  First Church Jamaica is now a thriving, growing church, home to people who were born in 40 different countries.  It is a “seven days a week church,” with dozens of programs and ministries that deepen faith and make a difference in its community.  (The Donald hasn’t shown up for decades, by the way.)

Our community is also changing, but in a different way.  It will never be the farming community that it was a generation ago.  Farms that have become housing developments will never go back to being farms again.  When we call it “the old Klein farm” instead of “Kings Ridge,” we close our eyes to the reality taking shape all around us.  Old Union is no longer a little country church.  We are a church in a bedroom community.

The only question is: what are we going to do about it?  Will we focus our ministry only upon the families that have lived in these hills for generations, or will we welcome and reach out to our new neighbors?  Will we be like the church in Florida that had no clue how to serve and share good news with its community?  Or will we be like the church in Jamaica, Queens, and be a church that makes a difference in the lives of all our neighbors?.

Little Old Ladies in Training

If you are not a little old lady, God wants you to become one.

A couple months ago someone wanted the people of our church to pray for her because “the little old ladies at Old Union really know how to pray.”  And they do.  Not all of our little old ladies are little.  Some of them are men.  But the little old ladies of Old Union bring years of devotion and love for God into everything they do.  Our church would not be the spiritual powerhouse that it is without them.

Young families are great.  Everyone likes the energy and optimism that they bring, and they give us hope for the church’s future.  But our seasoned, spiritually mature members have spent years in the Lord’s presence, seeking his will and offering their lives to him.  They provide a faith foundation and a spiritual strength that guides younger Christians and undergirds the church’s activities and fellowship.

There are no shortcuts in becoming a little old lady.  It takes decades of time spent every day in prayer and Bible reading.  It takes years of worship and decades of fellowship with fellow disciples.  But eventually, perhaps when your hair is gray and your joints creak, you become a little old lady.  You become the most powerful resource that our church has in its service to God.

If you are a little old lady, you may think that your years of usefulness in our church are over.  You can’t teach Sunday School anymore because you can’t keep up with the children.  You can’t sing in the choir because your voice has given way.  You don’t have the stamina to help with the church dinners.  You can’t go on mission trips or take meals to the homeless shelter.  But when you became a little old lady, you became one of the most important, most valuable members of our church.  You can lift us up in prayer.  You can seek the Lord’s blessing for our church as we seek to honor him.  You can show the rest of us, in your words, your deeds, and your very demeanor, what it means to be a child of God.  Without that, our church is nothing.

If you are not a little old lady, don’t be discouraged.  Because you are part of Old Union, you are a little old lady in training.  As you spend time with the little old ladies around you, their wisdom and maturity will rub off on you.  As you worship and serve and seek to follow God, you will gradually get better and better at it.  You will learn how to love others by encouraging them with your prayers and kind words of support.  And eventually, by the grace of God, you will join the elite ranks of the little old ladies of Old Union Church.

Why Encourage?

Ever since January 18, when God gave Old Union Church its theme verse of 1 Thessalonians 5:11, we have been considering ways to live up to our calling to “encourage one another and build each other up.”  Last month I asked you to consider the ways you have experienced or offered encouragement, as inspiration for how we can grow from what we are already doing.  Next month, I’ll suggest ways that we can learn more about the community around us, so that we can offer encouragement and up-building in ways that will touch their lives.  But before that, I’d like to ask a simple question:

Why do we reach out to our community?

We may provide outreach as a congregation for at least three reasons.

1. RECRUITMENT: We may reach out to our community in order to attract new members to our church.  We want our church to continue as a viable institution, so we need new people to fill our pews and help to pay the bills.  On top of that, it makes us feel better to see new faces on a Sunday morning…especially if they are the faces of young families.  The name of our now-defunct “Church Growth Team” captures essence of this mindset.  It is a selfish motivation for outreach: our focus is on how we can benefit from our outreach efforts.  It has nothing to do with the love for others to which Jesus calls us.  It is about getting other people to take care of us.

2. PITY: We would never call it this, of course.  We give it other names: “taking care of those in need,” or “sharing our blessings with people who have none.”  The PC label for this attitude is paternalism.  When this is our motive for outreach, we give the message that we are better than the people we are helping.  Their lives are such a mess that we can’t imagine how they will get by without us.  We pat ourselves on the back because we have chosen to help them.  This sort of outreach almost always comes with a message: “I’m better than you.  You need me.”  We may be helping those we reach out to, but it generally comes at the cost of a piece of their dignity.

3. SERVICE: When our outreach is based on an attitude of service, we are blind ourselves.  Our actions are motivated by our love for the other, flowing out of the love of Christ.  When reach others as true servants, we give no thought to ourselves: how we may benefit from our service, how we compare to those we serve, or how the other person may be indebted to us because of our service.  It is a self-giving act, following the model of Jesus Christ, who emptied himself out of love (Philippians 2:7).

It is difficult to reach out to others as an act of service, because it requires us to forget about ourselves.  We may gain nothing, or even lose out, from our outreach, but we don’t care.  We care only about that other person, and about the love God has for them.  Outreach-as-service is a high and difficult calling.  With God’s aid, are we up for it?

How to Encourage

It’s time to take the next step.  God has been doing remarkable things lately at Old Union Church, and he has more amazing stuff up his sleeve.

Last summer, we all knew things were declining at our church, but no one wanted to talk about it.  Either we hoped it was just a phase that we’d snap out of, or we were worried that there was nothing we could do.  In the fall, we began to look seriously at the concerns we had about Old Union Church.  We quit pretending they would go away if we ignored them.  But we still didn’t know what to do about it.  In January, God took advantage of our openness to his guidance by giving Old Union a theme verse: “Therefore, encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are already doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).  There’s been a renewed level of excitement and energy in our congregation, and we’ve been thinking, talking, and praying about how this verse can point us into the future.

The next step is to move beyond talking and thinking, and to begin acting.  Our theme verse hints that our future endeavors will be rooted in what we are already doing.  We are already a beacon of encouragement for the discouraged and a place where broken lives can be rebuilt.  How can we become more focused on this mission and enhance our work to follow God’s calling?  Here’s how you can help.  In a spirit of prayerful reflection, write down your answers to the following questions:

1.    In what ways have you been encouraged and built up by the people and ministry of Old Union Church?

2.    What have you done in the past to encourage or build up other people, either individually or as part of a church project?

3.    How have you witnessed others being encouraged and built up?

4.    What can we learn from our mistakes?  What could we have done differently when we failed to encourage and build up people, or even discouraged and tore them down? 

When you’ve answered these questions, you will have a list of ways that Old Union encourages people and builds them up.  Your list may include things from receiving a get-well card to sending Operation Christmas Child boxes.  Please give your list to me or to a session member, preferably before the next session meeting on April 20.  Knowing what we’ve already done will give us clues about what we can start to do.

The session is also looking for people to be part of a team to organize new ventures in encouragement and building up.  We will begin with what we’re calling “small, low-risk experiments:” easy and simple things to try out to see if they work or not.  If they do, we can build on them.  If they don’t, we can learn from them to plan the next experiment.  Please let me know if you’d like to be part of this team.

I'm Available

When the prophet Isaiah had his vision of the glory of the Lord in the temple (Isaiah 6:1-8), he heard God asking who would take on the mission that he had.  Isaiah boldly proclaimed “Here am I. Send me!”  He is wonderful role model of how we can respond to the challenges that the Lord sends to us.

Often, however, it’s hard for us to know exactly what God wants us to do.  Very, very few of us have an experience like Isaiah’s, where the Lord speaks to us in a voice that’s impossible to ignore.  The life of discipleship for us more frequently involves trying to sense what God’s will is for us, or what mission he has in mind for us.  Over the years, I’ve had a number of people who have been so excited about the faith that they were eager to do anything for God.  But they didn’t know what God wanted them to do.  My advice was simple: tell God that you’re available, and he’ll give you a mission.  If you express your desire to serve, God will honor it.  Things will fall into place, usually in surprising ways, and you’ll find yourself making a difference in the name of Jesus Christ.  You may even find it so enjoyable and fulfilling that you wonder if it’s too easy.  That’s because you’re doing exactly what God has called you to do.

Since our special worship service on January 18, Old Union has been considering the theme verse that God has given to us:

“Encourage one another, and build each other up.” (1 Thessalonians 5:11)

This commission from the Lord is something that comes quite naturally to Old Union Church.  Many of us have had our lives and faith strengthened through the ministry of this church, and many of us have experienced the satisfaction of encouraging others.

Now that we understand the identity of our church, the next step is to figure out how to live it.  What can we do to encourage and build people up?  We do a decent job within our church family, but what about everyone else?  How can Old Union become a beacon of encouragement and up-building in our community?

To answer these questions, all we need to do is tell God, “I’m available.”  Old Union Church is available.  We’re ready and eager to serve God.  And then we watch.  We’ll discover people in our community who are discouraged, whose lives have been shattered.  Opportunities will fall in our lap to make difference in the lives of the hurting people of our community.  It won’t start with something heroic or splashy, but with simple, easy activity that will eventually develop into something that takes our breath away.

Please join me in telling God, “We’re available.  Old Union Church is ready to do what you want us to do.  Here we are.  Send us.”  Then watch to see what God will show us.

A Special Worship Service

Old Union had an unusual worship service on January 18.  Usually, as the pastor I select a Bible passage and tell the congregation how I think it applies to our lives.  Instead, you selected 14 Bible passages in advance, and told each other how you think they apply to our congregation.  During worship, we divided into five groups, each led by two elders, for lively and uplifting discussion.  By the end of the service I sensed a renewed excitement about our church, and how God is at work in it.

I was also very aware of how God was at work through the entire process: through the session as we planned the event, and through the congregation as He brought to people’s minds powerful and insightful Bible passages.  During the week before this worship service, I thought to myself, “Could I even dare to imagine that God would have all the groups select the same passage as the one that best describes our church?”  With 14 excellent passages to choose from, and five groups doing the choosing, it didn’t seem possible.  But it was.  After all, all things are possible with God!  All five groups selected the same passage, which was also the passage the session had selected during their discussion the week before.  Apparently God wants to use this Scripture to guide us in our ministry and mission:

“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, 

just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thessalonians 5:11).

As exciting as the January 18 worship was, it is only the beginning.  Now that we have a guiding vision for our church, it’s time to do something with it.  On January 25 I began a series of sermons on this passage, and the verses that come before and after it, to help us learn as much from it as possible.  The session is developing plans for how all of us can use this verse focus our attention on what God wants us to do.  As we grow in our understanding what God is telling us, we will be able to focus the life of our church around it, giving purpose and meaning to all that we do.

Spend some time reflecting on these questions that arise from the passage.

• What can we do to encourage one another?
• What can we do to encourage our community?
• What can we do to build each other up?
• What can we do build up our community?
• How can we do these things together, as a church?
• How can we do these things as individual members?

The session and I would love to hear your suggestions and ideas!

This is not something new.  The discussion groups on the 18th talked about the many ways that Old Union and its people already encourage and build people up.  By focusing on these gifts and considering how we can use them to touch a discouraged and broken-down world, we can be part of God’s work to increase his kingdom.

 Peter