The Monuments Man
What mean these stones?
*tap**tap* This thing still on? A lot of travel created an accidental hiatus. Thanks for sticking around. I wrote a version of this several months ago with the intent of submitting it to a local paper, but the time passed and I never got the chance. Details about the full story later.
In a small suburb of Knoxville, a pile of stones stands in the middle of a parking lot behind a Christian school. You wouldn’t see it if you were driving down the main road, but if you happened to drive down a side road. You’d see it and you’d probably do a double take, wondering why a massive pile of rocks was sitting in the middle of a parking lot. That’s the point. You’re supposed to stop and ask what it’s all about.
I was there when Clarence Sexton, Temple’s head pastor and founder of The Crown College of the Bible, dedicated this monument. He’d been talking about building it for months during at least one of the three weekly church services. At the time, I was deep in Fundamentlist culture and was used to Sexton making bold proclamations about big projects. I’m not really sure where the genesis for the stone monument came from, but I do remember that the announcement coincided with Sexton’s sermon titled “What mean these stones?” from Joshua 4:21-24:
And he spake unto the children of Israel, saying, When your children shall ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean these stones? then ye shall let your children know, saying, Israel came over this Jordan on dry land … that all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever.
Sexton explained that as people unloaded their families from their cars and headed into church he wanted their children to see the pile of stones and ask their parents why they were there. He said he wanted parents to use that opportunity to tell their children about the greatness of God. He wanted a physical way to commemorate what he believed to be true about God for generations to come. Like Joshua, he understood the significance of a memorial and wanted to do the same.
Right before Christmas 2021, Sexton was interviewed by a local Knoxville news station to announce his interest in displaying monuments that had been removed from public display in the wake of America’s reckoning with its racist history. Along with statues of former U.S. Presidents, the interview made specific reference to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard. When asked why he wanted to display these statues on college property, Sexton said, “It took all these things to make America what it is today. And somewhere, all these parts need to be displayed."
When I saw this news piece, I knew immediately what history Sexton was going to tell with these statues. I attended Temple Baptist Church for 13 years and graduated from Crown College in the 2010s. The “history” I was taught at Temple was of the David Barton variety, meaning that Sexton believes that America is a white Evangelical Christian nation and that we must do everything we can to preserve American [AKA white Christian] culture and American [AKA white Christian] values. He’s not going to take an anti-racist approach to these leaders. Daily, it seems, I discover that the “good Christian men” that were held up to me in that church held slaves, or were against integration. After all, we’re talking about an institution who, while I was a student there, stated explicitly in their handbook that “interracial dating” was only allowed if you had to get written permission from your parents.
So, I knew the story told with these statues would be a glowing review of “our Christian heritage.” And then Sexton essentially confirmed my suspicions. Instead of denouncing Forrest or saying that he only wanted Thomas Jefferson, Sexton said, "Forrest is a part of American history. If there's something that is dark and ugly about what [he] did, then those things should be pointed out." This may seem like a benign statement, or at least a soft ball, but Sexton made these comments from the Hall of Presidents at The Crown College of the Bible, the school Sexton founded and is president of. To most people, this wouldn’t matter, but as an insider, the location is significant. He could have done the interview anywhere. Why there?
The Crown College campus is part classrooms, part Christian Heritage museum. In my years at the school, Sexton would often talk about how he wanted “young men and women” to learn about the “great heroes of the faith.” The Hall of Presidents is the first thing you see when you walk into the building and it displays a photo of each of the U.S. presidents along with a quotation from each on the importance of the Bible. This was done to prove America’s status as a Christian nation.
I was a student during President Obama’s election when the school leadership debated whether or not to hang his portrait in the Hall of Presidents. During Obama’s second term, they finally relented and hung Obama’s portrait. Unsurprisingly, Trump’s portrait went up immediately. You can see it in the news video, hanging next to Bush and Obama. What you don’t see? Biden. It’s 2022, two years into his presidency, and Biden is not represented. Clearly, Sexton does not recognize Biden as president.
As a history major at Crown, I was taught that America was a Christian nation with a Christian heritage that must be fought for. I had an American history class where the professor (who, I might add, did not have a PhD and was not a historian) talked at length about how the Civil War was only about state’s rights. I heard sermon after sermon talk about how Christians were under attack and how we needed to fight for freedom, fight for truth.
It makes sense that Sexton would say, "It took all these things to make America what it is today," or “We believe that having the whole of the history is what we need." It makes sense given his mission in life. And here’s the thing. I agree with him. We do need the whole story. We do need to understand America’s racist, genocidal past. We should talk about the systems of oppression that were put in place specifically to promote white supremacy, white homeownership, white wealth, and white Christianity. But that’s not what he’s talking about.
Clarence Sexton and U.S. Representative Tim Burchett (TN), who specifically referenced Sexton when he addressed Congress early in December, would like to think that people like me who don’t think these statues should be displayed are part of the “radical left” who want to “erase history.” In addition to being the opposite of what we want, this rhetoric is deliberately misleading. We’re not asking to erase these figures from history. Quite the contrary. We’re asking that we keep these figures where they belong: in history books and museums. In these settings, these figures can be contextualized. Actual historians can discuss the roles these people played in American history in addition to their racist and criminal actions. It’s a weighty issue. It’s a role that shouldn’t be taken on lightly or for express-lane political clout.
Let’s get back to the question: Is Clarence Sexton, a pastor and leader of an Independent Fundamentalist Baptist college, the right person to tell the whole story? Given his track record, I think not. Remember what he said about Forrest: “If there's something that is dark and ugly about what they did…” I have heard sermons where Sexton outlined entire theological frameworks on one word from a passage. The fact that he said “if” is evidence that Sexton won’t tell the whole story. He evaded the question and missed an opportunity to condemn the atrocities committed by these men. Sexton can’t even condemn the wrongs committed by a KKK Grand Wizard, what makes anyone think he will appropriately grapple with the legacies of Roosevelt, Jefferson, and Washington?
In her book Homegoing, Yaa Gyasi describes a teacher trying to explain history to his students. He says, “History is storytelling … Whose story do we believe? We believe the one who has the power. He is the one who gets to write the story.”
Sexton is a man who understands the power of a monument. He’s a man who understands the power of a story. He’s a man who understands that words have meaning. Given what he has – and perhaps more importantly hasn’t – said, I shudder to think of the story he would tell in response to “what mean these stones?”
Change.org Petition
Sexton’s “response”
Original news piece. And then responses here and here.