Katharine Seelye of the New York Times has called the Civil War "the most wrenching and bloody episode in American history ... America's deadliest conflict - and perhaps its least resolved."[i]

"This was a war that split the country, that pit brother against brother and whose effects are still being felt around the nation," said a TakeAway.com host, as she introduced an interview with Jeff Antley, member, Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Confederate Heritage Trust, sponsors of the 2010 secession ball held last December in Charleston, S.C.[ii]

Articles published in late 2010 and early 2011 previewed the ball and other planned events:

Bruce Smith of Associated Press wrote,

At South Carolina's Secession Gala, men in frock coats and militia uniforms and women in hoop skirts will sip mint juleps as a band called Unreconstructed plays 'Dixie.' In Georgia, they will re-enact the state's 1861 secession convention. And Alabama will hold a mock swearing-in of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

Across the South, preparations are under way for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. And while many organizations are working to incorporate both the black and the white experiences, there are complaints that some events will glorify the Old South and the Lost Cause while overlooking the fundamental reason for the war: slavery.[iii]

Harold Jackson of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote,

Special events are being held in at least 21 states, including Pennsylvania, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.... Cadets from the Citadel, South Carolina's historic military college, fired cannons on Morris Island in Charleston Harbor to reenact the January 1861 shelling of a ship that had tried to reinforce U.S. troops at Fort Sumter.

In my home state of Alabama, Civil War reenactors are planning to parade through Montgomery to the state Capitol on Feb. 19 to re-create the swearing-in of Davis. They will also raise a Confederate flag.

Mississippi began its commemoration of the Civil War this month with a reading at Vicksburg National Military Park of that state's Ordinance of Secession and a reenactment of rebels in 1861 firing from the bluffs of Vicksburg on a commercial steamboat that they believed was carrying U.S. troops.

In observing the war's sesquicentennial, Virginia is taking pains to note that although Richmond succeeded Montgomery as the capital of the Confederacy, the state originally voted by a 2-1 ratio not to secede. Paul Levengood, president of the Virginia Historical Society, told the Richmond Times-Dispatch that the moment of secession should be recognized, but not celebrated.

Commemorate, don't celebrate. I like that perspective for how the former Confederate states should observe the war's anniversary.[iv]

Yes. Commemorate.

Ah but, "commemorating the Civil War has never been easy," Katharine Seelye aptly observed, quoting former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young: "We don't know what to commemorate because we've never faced up to the implications of what the thing was really about."[v]

So why don't we do what we have not done? Why don't we, who most tend to gravitate to the word "celebrate" when talking of the Civil War, instead face up to the implications of what the thing was really about? Ignoring those implications has created many other issues we haven't wanted to see, and we're the ones most in bondage as a result. So why don't we throw all caution to the wind - and confess?

Confess what? you ask. A lot, really. Specifics will unfold in the pages of the book I'm writing. To say a thing, to declare from our hearts that it is true, we first have to see it. In the decades since the Civil War, Southerners and, in particular, Southern Christians have said a lot about who we are and what in the world our ancestors were doing. But we didn't so much confess as defend.

"One old Confederate veteran put it colorfully on his tombstone," wrote Charles Reagan Wilson, in his book, Baptized in Blood: 'An unreconstructed Johnnie, who never repented, who fought for what he knew to be right from '61 to'65 and received one Mexican dollar for two years' service. Belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, a deacon in the Baptist Church and a Master Mason for forty years."[vi]

Even when we have tried to confess, it's seemed to keep stirring up the hornets' nest. Our confessions have fallen short because we haven't seen what we needed to see to deal fully, deeply and decisively with the underlying issues. We haven't seen because we felt it would be too painful to look, and we thought that doing so would only make matters worse. In our attempt to avoid further pain and trauma, we've instead prolonged and increased both. We've tiptoed around the hornets' nest, trying to pretend it's no longer there, instead of working together to remove it.

For starters, consider the Civil War's bloodshed. We might confess first the wrong responses that generations of white Southerners have made to that bloodshed - if, of course, we saw how the Southern response had missed the mark.

The chilling words of Ezekiel 35:6-7 make very clear that the right response to bloodshed is to hate it: "Therefore as surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I will give you over to bloodshed and it will pursue you. Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you."

In a sin-riddled world, extreme measures are sometimes required to save lives and defend justice. We can honor and thank those who regularly put themselves in harm's way in order to protect a land and its people. Yet we must continually guard against needless bloodshed and the use of force for less-than-just purposes. And always, the righteous response to bloodshed is to hate it.

"Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you." With Ezekiel's strong rebuke in mind, let's glance at four episodes in our history, extending from the mid-1500s to today.

1539-1542. Spanish explorer Hernando De Soto led the first European expedition through much of the region that eventually became the Confederacy, a region then peopled by different native tribes. Though already extremely wealthy and powerful, De Soto was obsessed with finding gold. He and his 600 men proudly identified themselves and their expedition as Christian. At the same time, they used trickery, brutality, extortion, enslavement, pillage and bloodshed to get information, supplies and safe passage from the tribes. De Soto's cruelty resulted in the deaths of thousands of Indians and about half his own men. When he himself died of fever, his frightened followers buried him unceremoniously by night in the Mississippi River.[i]

1830-1858.In the first three decades of the 1800s, settlers poured into the region that would become the Deep South states. Many settlers and land speculators wanted the lands held by the "Five Civilized Tribes" of the region - Choctaws, Creeks, Chickasaws, Cherokees and Seminoles. The tribes became "civilized" as they adopted various aspects of American culture in hopes of retaining their lands. At the same time, some tribal leaders violently defended what white encroachment threatened to take away. Settlers in the midst of a Second Great Awakening paid more attention to fear and greed than to God. They clamored for the young US government to do something. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed into law the Indian Removal Act. In theory, the act allowed tribes east of the Mississippi to relocate voluntarily to unsettled lands conveniently renamed (but not by the tribes) Indian Territory. In reality, tens of thousands of Native Americans died in forced marches westward or in fighting that arose when some would not move.[ii]

1861-1864. A South that proclaimed itself Christian and saw itself solely in terms of cotton refused to admit the wrong of slavery or to seek workable economic solutions that did not depend on slavery. Seceding states formed a Confederacy, deceived themselves as to why they were doing so and chose to provoke war and to declare until the bitter end, "We will never yield." By the war's end, Americans had taken more than 600,000 American lives, perhaps as many as 1 million. In the aftermath, devastated Southern fathers and mothers could not admit that they had sacrificed their sons on the altar of needless bloodshed. Maintaining that the South, though defeated, was right, they built thousands of monuments glorifying the shed blood of the Confederate soldiers. Even today, some Southerners try to attach noble motives to the forming of the Confederacy and the resulting war. Even today, denial prompts us to justify and glorify the bloodshed, rather than hating it.

1973-today. A century after the South began memorializing the war from a less-than-honest perspective, the US legalized abortion. In the nearly 40 years since then, Americans have taken some 52,000,000 American lives.[iii] Once again, desperate fathers and mothers who've convinced themselves there is no other solution have sacrificed their own children on the altar of needless bloodshed.

From De Soto (thousands), to Indian Removal (tens of thousands), to Civil War (hundreds of thousands), to abortion (millions), we've tried to glorify, or at least to justify the bloodshed in an attempt to convince ourselves it was not needless.  

By doing so, have we not trapped ourselves in the place Ezekiel 35:7 describes? "Since you did not hate bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you."

And so I grieve to find that we are again "celebrating" the Civil War. But I celebrate the promise that the God of covenant love holds out to us today. In Joel 3:21, the Lord says, "I will cleanse them of bloodguilt which I have not yet cleansed" (CJB).

That cleansing frees. It frees us. It frees those we love - and those we've hated. It frees the current generation and the generations to come. It breaks the cycle of needless bloodshed. It washes away blame and shame and despair. That cleansing heals. It heals relationships. It heals lives. It washes away bitterness, rejection, pride and fear. That cleansing blesses. It breathes life into dry bones. It radically transforms our desires and attitudes. Where before, bloodshed and death pursued us, now goodness and love chase us down.

God's promise of healing, freeing, life-giving cleansing is ours for the taking.

But laying hold of the promise begins with confessing the deeply soiled areas that need to be cleansed.

It's incredibly hard for good people to admit to grievous sins. It's rather easier for the ax murderer to confess than for the upstanding citizen to do so. But a king named David shows us: It can be done.

David was the most upstanding of kings. By God's own admission, David was a man after God's own heart. Yet even David at times greatly dishonored and misrepresented God. During one season in his life, David committed grievous sins - sins that included sexual immorality and needless bloodshed. When confronted, David confessed. He confessed privately to God. More amazing, David confessed publicly. He allowed the story of his wrongdoing to be written, and he himself wrote several songs of confession - all of which we can still read in our Bibles today.

One of David's songs, Psalm 51, makes clear the connection between confession and cleansing. The biblical introduction to the psalm (not one added later by translators, but one included with the Hebrew manuscripts) identifies the sin: "For the choir director: A psalm of David, regarding the time Nathan the prophet came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba."

The song of confession follows:

Have mercy on me, O God,

because of your unfailing love.

Because of your great compassion,

blot out the stain of my sins.

Wash me clean from my guilt.

Purify me from my sin.

For I recognize my rebellion;

it haunts me day and night.

Against you, and you alone, have I sinned;

I have done what is evil in your sight.

You will be proved right in what you say,

and your judgment against me is just.

For I was born a sinner -

yes, from the moment my mother conceived me.

But you desire honesty from the womb,

teaching me wisdom even there.

Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean;

wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.

Oh, give me back my joy again;

you have broken me -

now let me rejoice.

Don't keep looking at my sins.

Remove the stain of my guilt.

Create in me a clean heart, O God.

Renew a loyal spirit within me.

Do not banish me from your presence,

and don't take your Holy Spirit from me.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation,

and make me willing to obey you.

Then I will teach your ways to rebels,

and they will return to you.

Forgive me for shedding blood, O God who saves;

then I will joyfully sing of your forgiveness.

Unseal my lips, O Lord,

that my mouth may praise you. (Ps 51:1-15 NLT)

It's in confessing the truth, no longer denying or defending our actions, that we're set free: "Then your conscience won't have to bear the staggering burden of needless bloodshed and vengeance" (1 Sam 25:31 NLT).

The Israelites of Ezra's day show us the connection between confession and celebration. Having returned from decades in exile, having rebuilt the Jerusalem wall, the people gathered to hear the reading of the "Book of God's Teachings." Ezra the priest and other teachers read "clearly and explained the meaning so that the people could understand what was read" (Neh. 8:8 God's Word).

As the people listened, they saw, for the first time in their lives, the extent to which they had missed and misrepresented their God. In response, all the people wept. Astoundingly, they didn't close their ears or cry for the teachers to stop speaking. Because of wrong choices that generations before them had made, their nation had been decimated by war and its people forced to live for decades in exile. Now, as the returned exiles began to hear the truth, they pressed in to hear it all.

Twenty-three days later, they gathered to confess. First, they confessed who God is: "Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you" (Neh. 9:5-6).

They confessed all the ways God had proven his love and faithfulness to them and to the generations before them, all the ways he had made known his character through his amazing acts.

They confessed the ways their ancestors had responded to God's goodness - and the ways the Lord had in turn responded to them: "But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey your commands. They refused to listen.... But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them" (Neh. 9:16-17). Even when the people created and worshiped another god, "Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them.... You gave your good Spirit to instruct them.... you sustained them" (Neh. 9:19-21).

The Israelites of Ezra's day confessed the bondage and distress that their ancestors' stubbornness and their own unrepentant hearts had ultimately brought on them. And they re-covenanted to be the people of God in truth.

But even before they confessed and covenanted, they celebrated. From the moment the people saw who God intended them to be and what they had lost due to sin, their leaders urged them, "Go and celebrate.... This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!" (Neh. 8:10 NLT).

It was indeed a sacred day. Now that they saw what they did not want to see, they could confess and be cleansed. They could become who God had made them to be.

Believe me, I know all the reasons why confessing may sound like a lousy idea. But I'll tell you from hard-earned experience: Not confessing is a far, far lousier one.

I also know from experience: You cannot confess what you don't see. That's why, in our day, God is graciously removing the veil. He's showing his people the extent to which we've missed and misrepresented him. Regardless what region we're from, regardless what color our skin, he wants to lift from our shoulders staggering burdens that generations have needlessly carried. He wants goodness, not bloodshed, to pursue us. He wants the forgiveness, cleansing and restoration that he is holding out to overflow within us and to rise like a river among us, sweeping us all up in its strong, true flow.

The God of covenant love has promises to keep, and this is one: "I will cleanse them of bloodguilt which I have not yet cleansed." He waits and watches for us to see what he is showing us and to press in to hear it all.

As we listen, as we see, we'll give ourselves permission to weep - to finish the grieving aborted so long ago. Paradoxically, we'll celebrate - together, freely, with great joy.

Then, refusing to deny or blame any longer, we will confess.  

. . . . . . .

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures references are from The Holy Bible, Today's New International Version™ TNIV ® Copyright © 2001, 2005 by International Bible Society ® All rights reserved worldwide.