On Easter, I can't stop thinking about Confederate Jesus

Maybe it’s Easter, but I can’t stop thinking about Confederate Jesus.

I met Confederate Jesus for the first time at the bucolic Alva Cemetery. He came in the shape of a small statue on a cross near a gravesite. A pair of Confederate flags flapped behind Jesus like a cape, a bastardization of a superhero.

Ugh, I sighed.

Just a hunch, but I’m fairly certain Jesus would not be cool with that. He might have a more nuanced opinion on the rights of states but the flag’s reputation as an emblem of hate would definitely be a no-go what with the love one another and all.

It’s been four months since our chance meeting.

During a weekend detour, my husband and I wandered into the Alva Cemetery dating back more than a century. The grounding nature of mortality coursed through the land as country breezes rustled the leaves of majestic oak trees.

As one dies, so dies the other.

This was a place of peace.

All come from the dust, and to dust all return.

We drove to the back. That’s where we spotted him.

I could never be dead here, I concluded.

“That’s why Christians get a bad name,” I said, turning to my husband. He was raised Christian, as I was, though now our spirituality is more secular. We’re the ones regular church-goers suss out in Easter crowds. But I was brought up in a Christian church that put social justice at the forefront. It burns to see Jesus posed with Rebel flags like pom-poms.

I’ve lived here long enough to meet people who defend the Confederate flag as heritage. All of them were white, by the way, in all but one case. I wondered if I was ignorant to some contortionist’s angle where the symbols of Jesus and the Confederate flag can coexist? I was relieved to find a response that made feel less like a judgmental transplant.

“The cross and the Confederate flag cannot coexist without setting the other on fire,” wrote Russell Moore, the Mississippi-bred president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, on his website. “White Christians, let’s listen to our African-American brothers and sisters. Let’s care not just about our own history, but also about our shared history with them.”

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There are values tied to the flag, like a strong sense of family and community, which are compatible with Christianity, though clearly others are not, said Don Ruane, a lifelong Catholic on the board at the House of Prayer spiritual center in Alva. He also used to work with me.

“It depends on how you are interpreting the Stars and Bars and the interpretation of the person flying those images.”

You can’t judge without knowing, he said, like a good Christian.

This reminded me I was not one.

I do not want to be disrespectful to this man's grave or his family's grief. People are entitled to grieve in their own ways, Confederate flags and all. It's not about them, rather the clash of such powerful symbols in me.

For Christians, even lapsed ones like me, Easter can be a time to take stock of where we’ve fallen short. I told a friend about my reaction to Confederate Jesus. Christians get a bad name, she said, because they are silent as fellow Christians act without compassion.

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The conversation helped me figure out why Confederate Jesus is clinging to me. It bothers me that he did not shock me more. In a county I’ve long called home, I expected something like him to exist, just another imprint of an unequal past to which we have acquiesced (See also: historic whiteness of the school board and county commission).

This is my small attempt at being less silent.

Janine Zeitlin is a writer for The News-Press, including occasional essays.