(RNS) — It’s known in the United Methodist Church as the “Cross and Flame.”
But the denomination’s logo — two red flames intertwined with a thin, black cross — means something else to the Rev. Edlen Cowley, pastor of Fellowship United Methodist Church near Dallas.
It reminds Cowley, who is Black, of the first burning cross he saw.
He was 10 years old, riding in the car with his family from Marshall, Texas, where his dad pastored Miles Memorial Christian Methodist Episcopal Church, to Shreveport, Louisiana. His mother pointed it out, burning alongside the freeway, explaining that the symbol was meant to instill fear in Black people.
“No longer should we be represented by an image that was devised to evoke fear in the minds of so many,” Cowley wrote this summer for United Methodist News Service.
Now one of the United Methodist Church’s regional conferences has taken up the call to replace the denomination’s logo because of its association for many with the racist imagery of a burning cross.
The North Texas Annual Conference voted 558-176 at its annual meeting last weekend (Sept. 19) to send legislation to the 2021 General Conference, the denomination’s global decision-making body, to begin the process for changing that logo.
“If the logo itself has become a stumbling block to part of the population we’re trying to reach, then it’s time for a…
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