Southern Baptist Convention asks members of its churches to not display Confederate battle flag

The battle flag of Gen. Robert E. Lee's Army
of Northern Virginia came to be known as the
Confederate battle flag, often as a rectangle.

The Southern Baptist Convention, which has more than 15 million members, has called on its followers to stop flying the Confederate flag. The organization "voted Tuesday to amend a resolution against the Confederate battle flag, following a similar denouncement by [Mississippi's] Methodist Church last week," Sarah Fowler reports for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson. The Baptist convention said in a resolution, “We call our brothers and sisters in Christ to discontinue the display of the Confederate battle flag as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our African-American brothers and sisters."

 Mississippi's flag includes the battle flag.

Some Southern states' flags have hints of Confederate flags, but Mississippi's is explicit, using the battle flag as its canton. William Perkins, editor of the Baptist Record, the newspaper of the Mississippi Baptist Convention, "said Wednesday that changing the state flag was the Christian thing to do," Fowler writes. Speaking of the Civil War, Perkins told her, "As a native Southerner, I have heard the stories from my grandparents passed down from their grandparents about the valor of the people who fought in that war, but this is 2016, and as Christians we need to decide whether we’re going to be held back by symbols of the past or whether we’re going to move forward and do the right thing, and that requires prayer from each one us. It’s a symbol of oppression and strife and offense."