{"id":306,"date":"2020-09-09T13:43:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-09T17:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.henreckson.com\/?p=306"},"modified":"2021-04-12T13:47:20","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T17:47:20","slug":"monuments-can-be-destroyed-but-not-forgotten","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.henreckson.com\/?p=306","title":{"rendered":"Monuments Can Be Destroyed, but Not Forgotten"},"content":{"rendered":"\nChristianity Today Online, September 2020\n\n\n\nIn the Hebrew Scriptures, stone monuments are earthen witnesses to a sacred covenant. When Jacob contractually maneuvered himself out from under his father-in-law Laban, he set up a pillar in the highlands of Gilead. It was supposed to be a reminder of a legal separation, but the fragility of the peace was underscored by the dueling names given to the monument: Jacob\u2019s in the Hebrew tongue, Laban\u2019s in Aramaic. The monument was barely dedicated before it became an object of linguistic civil war.What\u2019s old is new again. Disputes over historical markers and their meanings are simply the continuance of culture war by other means. Theologian Ryan Andrew Newson wrote his new book Cut in Stone: Confederate Monuments and Theological Disruption in the wake of the 2017 protests and counter-protests in Charlottesville, Virginia. Thousands of organized white nationalists infamously marched through the University of Virginia campus chanting language\u2014\u201cWhite Lives Matter!\u201d \u201cBlood and Soil!\u201d\u2014charged with centuries of racial supremacy. The material cause for the march was the threatened removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Erected in 1924, the statue presented a genteel, handsome Lee\u2014hat in hand, martial but not militaristic. The stone general is resigned but undefeated, like the Lost Cause he represents.The statue lasted decades in the city center without scrutiny, but in the 21st century, it struck some as strange to venerate the leader of a rebellion devoted to the preservation of chattel slavery. Newson\u2019s book delves into the history of Confederate monuments like this one, asking what sort of political ideology\u2014or theology\u2014underwrites them. What did these monuments\u2014often constructed many decades after Lee resigned at Appomattox\u2014mean for the communities that created them? What gave them their near-sacred value? And what is the appropriate political and theological response to markers of a contested American legacy? Can you\u2014should you\u2014erase a moral tragedy?\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christianity Today Online, September 2020 In the Hebrew Scriptures, stone monuments are earthen witnesses to a sacred covenant. When Jacob contractually maneuvered himself out from under his father-in-law Laban, he set up a pillar in the highlands of Gilead. It was supposed to be a reminder of a legal separation, but the fragility of the…<\/p>\n

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