Reflections on a Confederate marker

The weather was warm for Dec. 29 in Israel, or so our tour guide informed us.

On the day in question in 2009, we stood facing the Mediterranean Sea, as clear a body of water as I've ever seen. It was here, in Caesarea, that Pontius Pilate had his headquarters while governor of the Roman province of Judea.

Approximately 100 yards from the water's edge stood a marker that historians assert has stood for two millennia.

It was difficult but not impossible to read the inscription, which included the word "Pilate."

An informational sign nearby explained the marker was the only extant archaeological evidence of the existence of the man who ordered the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Nothing else of Pilate remains on this earth.

My mind went to Caesarea this past Tuesday night as I sat in a meeting of people debating a different marker -- the Confederate monument in Cape Girardeau's Ivers Square.

After spirited discussion, the members of the city's historic preservation commission voted unanimously that the marker be removed from the public property on which it sits and be stored.

The Confederate States of America wished to perpetuate slavery.

All eight commissioners agreed the 14 ½-foot tall white slab constitutes an affront to African Americans because of its tacit endorsement of what was once called "the peculiar institution."

Cape Girardeau City Council will meet July 6 and receive the recommendation.

Presumably, the council will accept or reject the commission's findings.

Personally, I take no position on the monument.

As a reporter for this newspaper, I must remain impartial.

As a person of faith and teacher of New Testament at Southeast, I know some of the theology of both sides in what some southerners still call "The War of Northern Aggression."

Both, as Abraham Lincoln pointed out in his Second Inaugural Address on March 4, 1865, "read the same Bible and prayed to the same God."

Both Union and Confederate preachers invoked Scripture to support their positions.

The Union pulpiteer would remind parishioners that "there is neither slave nor free, for all are one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28)

The Confederate pastor would tell the person in the pew that slaves should obey their masters "in all things" (Colossians 3:22) and "with fear and trembling." (Ephesians 6:5).

Both sides quoted the sourcebook of the Judeo-Christian tradition to buttress their arguments.

What is so clearly wrong in 2020 was muddled, at best, during the conflagration of 1861-1865.

I take no position on the C.S.A. marker.

I would ask, and suggest, that both sides be gracious with one another whatever the fate of this 12 ½-ton monument.

Some will be happy. Others will be saddened and perhaps enraged by the outcome.

Lincoln's final words after taking the oath of office for the second time, 41 days before his own death, are a call for reconciliation between people who are divided.

We might need to remember them anew in the days ahead.

"With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Pilate's marker remains at its seaside locale.

Whether it is there or not in the future, none will soon forget what the Roman procurator allowed to happen in his name.