Congregants turn on Lee descendant
Pastor quits post in wake of church reaction to VMA speech against racism
He was the great-greatgreat-great-nephew of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and he felt it was his moral duty to speak out against his ancestor, “an idol of white supremacy, racism and hate.”
He said as much when he took the microphone near the end of the 2017 MTV Video Music Awards, when he introduced himself by a familiar-sounding name: Robert Lee IV.
Lee’s speech at the VMAs on Aug. 27 quickly caught internet fame as among the night’s most memorable events. As he appeared before the cameras, Lee stood in stark contrast to the sleek, geometric set behind him, dressed simply in a black cleric’s shirt and collar.
Soon he would introduce Susan Bro, whose daughter Heather Heyer had been killed 15 days before, after being struck by a car as she protested white supremacy in Charlottesville, Va.
“As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America’s original sin,” he said. “Today, I call on all of us with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on. We can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement, the women who marched in the Women’s March in January, and, especially, Heather Heyer, who died fighting for her beliefs.”
On Monday, Lee announced he would be leaving his church — Bethany United Church of Christ in Winston-Salem, N.C. — after speaking out against white supremacy and the idolization of Confederate monuments.
In his statement, Lee wrote that while he did have congregants who supported his freedom of speech, many resented the attention the church received after the VMAs.
“A faction of church members were concerned about my speech and that I lifted up (the) Black Lives Matter movement, the Women’s March, and Heather Heyer as examples of racial justice work,” he wrote, adding that his “church’s reaction was deeply hurtful.”
Lee wrote that he never sought the kind of attention that has followed him since the protests in Charlottesville last month, even while his visibility as a religious leader and staunch opponent of Confederate memorials garnered international recognition.
Lee did not describe specific responses he received from congregants.
But the comments section on an article about his VMA speech in the Winston-Salem Journal gives some sense of the backlash. One commenter wrote that there was “no way” Lee was a Christian and that “it seems anybody that wants to protect our country is a racist, or white supremacist . ... It’s a sin to use your position to name-call and judge.”
In an Aug. 18 interview with BBC News, Lee argued that statues of his ancestor honor white supremacy and endorse a system in which it is acceptable to be racist in America.
He pointed to the lack of markers to fascists in Europe following World War II as evidence that there is a way to “remember your history and not commemorate it.”