Ligon Duncan Calls on Mississippi Legislature to Take Down State Flag

In a post to his blog, Ligon Duncan, chancellor of Reformed Theological Seminary, encouraged the Mississippi legislature to take down the current state flag.

Asked for his opinion on the state’s flag by Mississippi’s Lt. Governor Delbert Hosemann and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, Duncan shared that while he sympathized with those who wish to keep the history of Mississippi alive, he loves his neighbors and wants “all of us, together, to be able to be proud of our State Flag.”

Duncan recalled his family’s Confederate history, noting that his ancestors fought for the Confederacy and “their descendants have been re-fighting ‘The War’ ever since.” He also shared that he grew up reading Lee’s Lieutenants as a child and served as a U.S. Senate Page under J. Strom Thurmond, who opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Despite his family’s ties to the Confederacy, Duncan asserted that the “1894 Flag” was created as a symbol of “opposition to equal civil rights for our fellow Black citizens.”

The Mississippi Ordinance of Secession clearly states and promotes the unequal treatment of Black people, using the “1894 Flag” as a symbol of oppression. Duncan encouraged believers to die to self in order to honor our neighbors.

“We are asking almost half the population of our State to salute a symbol that has (undeniably) been used for well over a century to indicate…