Has the Christian Flag Become a Lost Cause?

Most of us will only have one funeral. The Confederate Lt. General, slave trader, and Grand Wizard of the KKK Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife, Mary, just had their third.

Originally laid to rest in a Memphis, Tennessee, cemetery following their deaths in the late 1800s, officials moved the couple’s remains in 1904 to a park named in his honor. Following the 2015 shooting at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, leaders in the Bluff City voted to remove the Forrest monument. State officials initially barred the actions, so the city sold the park to a non-profit entity that was exempt from the prohibition.

A statue of Nathan quickly came down. Then, in June of this year, the process began to remove the pedestal of the monument and relocate the remains of the couple. The Sons of Confederate Veterans buried the couple again on Sept. 18, this time at the National Confederate Museum in Columbia, Tennessee. 

With cannons firing, women dressed in 19th century black dresses and head coverings, and men sporting Confederate uniforms, the latest ceremony sought to honor the man who enslaved people, massacred Black soldiers who had already surrendered, and led a group that sought to maintain White Supremacy through violence. One SCV leader called the internment “a remarkable event” for “one of our heroes.” Even the rain on that day, he added, “was like God was crying, but then the rains, the tears, stopped and gave him the welcome home like it should be.”

More than rhetoric connected God to the Forrests during the ceremony. Their coffins were draped with flags: his with a Confederate flag and hers with a Christian flag.

Screengrab of pallbearers bringing in Nathan Forrest’s coffin draped with a Confederate flag to place it next to Mary Forrest’s coffin draped with a Christian flag.

The funeral for two “saints” of the lost cause wasn’t the only time this year we’ve seen that unholy conflation of the Confederacy with the Christian Kingdom. We also witnessed the two banners flying together as insurrectionists violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Christian flag’s co-optation at these events raises a banner of questions about its contemporary meaning to the Church. These questions became even more poignant when the U.S. Supreme Court last week agreed to hear a case about flying the Christian flag at a city hall. In this edition of A Public Witness, we unfurl the history of the Christian flag and raise up its usage by White Supremacists today.

For Whose Kingdom It Stands