(WASHINGTON POST) In Virginia, Charlottesville’s Confederate monuments played many roles in recent years: the epicenter of a legal and cultural battle over what should count as cherished history, the rallying spot for murderous white supremacists, the touchstone of a painful national reckoning with America’s slave-owning past.
Now, they’re fodder for a Bible study.
Two Methodist pastors selected the monuments as the sites and subjects of their ongoing class, “Swords into Plowshares: What the Bible says about injustice, idolatry, and repentance.” Over the past month, the pastors — the Rev. Isaac Collins of Wesley Memorial United Methodist Church and the Rev. Phil Woodson of First United Methodist Church, both located in Charlottesville — have led weekly seminars that reinterpret the statues as idols meant to prop up the false religion of white supremacy.
