We cannot put the past behind us
if we’re still chained to it.

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In late 2011, I published a book about the Civil War, the South and the church. Not my first book, nor my last, it was by far the most challenging.

In early 2013, a talk show host from a local radio station interviewed me. Strangely, I still have a copy of the questions asked, and answers given, but have not located the name of the interviewer.

Recently, I reread that interview and realized it’s all still true:

→ Entrenched sins from the past keep recurring in the present. What’s more, they keep creating untold pain and grief, and will continue to do so – until we send them decisively away. Ah, but here’s the kicker.

Confession and repentance
remain the way
to send away
what binds us, collectively,
down through generations.

Yet something keeps convincing each succeeding generation, “That’s too hard to hear, much less survive!” And scoundrels driven by pride, greed and power have assured us, as they continue to lure us, “Others are the problem! You have nothing to confess or repent.”

→ When God calls us to confess, he is not calling us to take on shame. He is calling us to take courage, and embrace truth, and grief, and hope. He is calling us to receive the superabundant grace he is pouring out.

Choosing that way – the way that leads to life – we face into guilt and shame, and leave them in the dust.¹

→ Even when the sin issues that need to be addressed are huge, collective, generational ones, the choice of even one person to confess and go a different way matters more than we can dream.²

Here’s what I was asked in 2013, and what I answered, then.

A thread that kept unraveling

You’ve written a book with a very provocative title: We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church. How did you come to write it?

I’m a white woman from the Deep South. I grew up with a profound awareness of the subjects my culture and my church culture do not wish to discuss. Never would I have dreamed I’d write a book like this – until I worked inside the Southern Baptist denominational structure for seven years.

Patterns that kept repeating

During those years, I inadvertently uncovered something big and ugly that didn’t fit at all with what we proclaimed ourselves to be.  My experiences left me asking God, “What was that?!”

In answer, the Lord prompted me to research the history of the Southern Baptist Convention. When I did, it was as if I’d pulled a thread, and all kinds of things began unraveling.

For one thing, I saw the way the SBC had, from its inception, deliberately linked itself with the South, and particularly with the sin strongholds of the South. I saw how patterns established four generations ago had repeated in my work situation.

But also I saw how those same patterns were repeating in my life and family and in families and churches all around me. The more I learned about my ancestors’ choices, the more I realized how powerfully those choices still impact the US church today, and especially the conservative church rooted in the Bible Belt.

Truth that set me free

As I studied, and grieved over, and worked through all I was learning, I began to experience dramatic changes within me – new life, new freedom, new purpose, new intimacy with God.

I wanted others who are shackled by things they don’t even know are binding them to experience this same freedom.

So after a lifetime of experiences and five years of research, I spent about a year writing We Confess! The Civil War, the South, and the Church. I published it in 2011, the first year of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.³

What still chains us to the past

How do you respond to people who see the title of your book and protest, “It’s time to put the past behind us! It’s time to go forward”? Doesn’t We Confess drag up issues best left alone?

It is time to go forward. But we can’t put the past behind us if we’re still chained to it. My experiences inside a denominational structure made very clear to me that we are still chained to attitudes and behaviors our ancestors could not bring themselves to face. And that’s not just true for Southern Baptists.

The state of our nation indicates as much. The state of a nation reveals much about the state of the church within it. When the people of God are moving in sync with him, it profoundly affects a nation for good. So whatever bothers you most about our nation, whatever you see as badly askew, it’s almost surely badly askew in the church, as well.

If we’ll take an honest look at the church in the US – and especially that part of the church that prides itself on its devotion to Jesus – we’ll see that something has aborted every revival since the Second Great Awakening of the early 1800s. Something is holding us back from the unity, the character and the power of God.

We Confess uncovers the stuff from our past that needs to be redeemed so we can go forward together in newness of life and power.

Desire and power to let go

Your book title begins, “We Confess!” So who needs to confess?

We do.

We who call Jesus “Lord”

That is, we in the US church, collectively, have some serious confessing to do. Especially we, who call Jesus “Lord,” need to let our Lord show us how we have missed him and misrepresented him. When he shows us, we need to step up to the plate and agree with him. What an impact if we, in the white church culture rooted in the Bible Belt, would humble ourselves in this way!

Be aware: Confessing isn’t all negative. Some of our confession will require seeing and turning from wrongs that neither we nor our ancestors have fully addressed. But some of our confession will come from seeing and embracing our true identity in Christ. When we deal with our great confusion as to our identity, a lot of other things will fall into place.

The good news is: We don’t have to wonder whether we need to confess, or what for. If we’ll let go of fear and pride and invite God to show us the truth, he will. And he will give us the desire and power to let go of the junk we’ve held onto for so long, and to embrace the treasure that’s ours for the taking.

God who is removing the veil

May I quote briefly here from chapter 1 of We Confess?

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.

When our hearts wholly belong God

What would you say is the most crucial thing that needs to be seen and dealt with?

When people think of the Civil War, the South and the church, the first issue that comes to mind is racism.

Facing the issues

Slavery was certainly the key justice issue when our nation divided and went to war. Racism continues to be a huge issue. It needs to be faced, and the church should lead the way in doing so.

Also, God is revealing other justice issues that have been hidden in plain sight. Typically, these justice issues involve collusion in treating whole groups of people in ways that are dishonoring, unloving and often oppressive, cruel, mean.

The reason we haven’t been able to address these issues successfully has to do with what I call unrighteous roots. We need to see the tangled root system of ungodly attitudes in our lives and our generations. We need to let God uproot these attitudes, if we want to be who God has made us to be and to do what is right and just. Roots such as pride and greed, power-seeking and fear have got to go.

Seeing where our true loyalties lie

Yet none of these issues is the most crucial. The most important issue we need to address is so pervasive that trying to see it is like trying to see the air we breathe. I don’t think we can see it until God, by his Spirit, makes it visible. The problem is a deep double-mindedness that has plagued us for generations. It comes from confusing loyalty to Christ with loyalty to things we connect with Christ.

The church in the South fell into this double-mindedness after the Second Great Awakening. A large percentage of the population had become Christian, but the society as a whole had become obsessed with cotton. Christians began to confuse loyalty to Christ with loyalty to the South. When the voice of the Spirit said something different from the voice of the culture, the church ultimately chose to follow the culture.

Today, too, we may try to serve Christ with divided hearts – and not even know it. We may not see where our true loyalties lie. That’s the key to resolving all the other issues.

When our hearts wholly belong to the Lord,
he will show us how to redeem all the rest.

At last we realize

Why now? Why do you think God gave you this message now?

We’re in the midst of the 150th anniversary of the four-year Civil War. The year the tide turned in the war was 1863. So this year, 2013, marks the 150th anniversary of that turning point. I believe this anniversary provides a crucial window for a different kind of turning – a turning, and a returning, of the church.

Whenever God brings something to light, he also pours out “a spirit of grace and supplication” on those he wants to respond.⁴

In this time, God is giving his people grace to see what we haven’t wanted to see so that, at last, we can become who we truly are. In this time, God is giving us courage to break free from destructive patterns that have kept generations in bondage, crippled the US church and sabotaged spiritual awakening for a century-and-a-half.

Always when God gives grace, he also gives us freedom to accept or reject it.

If we accept that grace? If we dare to confess from our hearts? Let me summarize the outcome with one more quotation from We Confess:

At last we realize: The uncomfortable, the difficult, the devastating aspects of confessing and repenting aren’t a plot to do us in. They’re God’s way of removing the veil so we can see and reflect his glory – splendor we cannot imagine or describe.

Afterword

And if we reject his grace?

As I write this, it’s February 2025. Twelve years have passed since I answered those five questions. During these tumultuous years, many who know Christ have seen the growing mountain of evidence that strongholds from the past still shackle the US church.

Many have seen – and grieved. Some have tried to speak up to warn. For we have also seen grievous consequences looming, and already happening.

Yet, collectively, the US evangelical church culture has continued to choose not to see, or confess, or turn.

Thus, the many mourners are still an often-isolated minority. Some remain so isolated that they may feel they are seeing and grieving alone.

Today, I pray that many more people will call on the name of the Lord for grace to face the truth that truly does set us free. I pray that we will be able to find each other and to encourage each other in the Lord.

And also today, my grieving heart ponders another question, a sobering question.

Is the window still open?

Is the Lord still pouring out a “spirit of grace and supplication” on the so many others that he is calling to see and to respond?

“Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”⁵

All I know is this, Lord: You keep telling me to cry to your people, “Take courage, and go with God!”

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The bulk of this post – the Q&A part – is taken verbatim from my 2013 interview. The intro, epilogue and headings were added in January 2025.

The featured image above appeared in Frank Leslie’s illustrated newspaper, June 24, 1882. Here it is, with the original title.

Image source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs division, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

See also

• Can we talk about shame?
• Behind the façade in the SBC
• The Civil War, the South and the church
• The great righteousness-justice divide
• This “good Christian girl” is a woman now
• My Gettysburg legacy and this turning time
• Going with God

Footnotes

1. Please. See the post, Can we talk about shame? ↩︎
2. Daniel and Nehemiah both made that choice. They show us how such confession and repentance can be done. See Daniel 9:1-19 and Nehemiah, chapters 1 and 9. ↩︎
3. In 2020, I updated the ebook version of We Confess. ↩︎
4. See Zechariah 12:10. ↩︎
5. Ezekiel 37:3. See verses 1-14. ↩︎