Neo-Copperhead ensign?

The author of this pamphlet, Edward DeVries, is a member of the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, an independent Baptist group in Indiana which got its church building seized by the FBI in 2001 after a long-running tax dispute. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) describes the Indianapolis Baptist Temple as a “Patriot” (pro-militia) group, and as part of the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship (UBF) and “unregistered church movement”. The SPLC accuses the UBF of harboring White supremacists of various kinds. DeVries writes that many of the people protesting the FBI's raid on the Temple were carrying Confederate flags. Why are we not surprised?

“A Symbol of Hate?” contains the usual surrealistic pro-CSA arguments, which I think most of us have heard before. In addition to these, the author argues that the Confederate States were a Christian republic, indeed the only godly republic in the world, and that it's army was deeply religious and very moral. Really? He further argues that the Battle Cross or Southern Cross is a Christian symbol. The diagonal cross has traditionally been associated with the martyred apostle Andrew. Are we to believe John Coski's scholarly study “The Confederate Battle Flag”, the X-shaped cross was originally adopted by the rebels precisely because it *wasn't* used by any Christian denomination, being interpreted as a secular symbol. DeVries also has an unusual interpretation of the stars, arguing that they don't just represent the secessionist states, but also the twelve tribes of Israel gathered around the Levites.

I'd say the author interprets the meaning of the flag according to his own peculiar Christian theology!

Avid readers of my reviews know that I'm a Union man, as in labor union and Lincoln's union. Even apart from that, however, I think “A Symbol of Hate?” is very short and relatively uninteresting. It was probably written in haste due to Amazon's recent ban on Confederate flags. Had I agreed with its politics, I would still have given it two stars only. Since I don't like Neo-Copperheads, I'll only give it one.