The Confederate Flag Divides America — But Not How You Would Think
(ANALYSIS) If you’ve ever taken a sociology course in college, there’s a good chance that the instructor spent at least a little bit of time talking about the power of symbols in a society. They can be nothing more than a single word or just a short phrase that can convey a world of meaning, purpose and solidarity.
I found an incredibly funny video about the power of symbolic ritual on Twitter the other day.
For those who can’t watch, a white politician was giving a speech in a Black church in Raleigh, North Carolina, and he casually said, “God is good.”
The entire congregation responded, “All the time.”
He didn’t know what to do at that moment. Later, one of the leaders of the church got up and instructed him how to finish the symbolic chant. After the congregation says, “All the time,” the speaker must say “All the time,” and the congregation responds with “God is good.” It may be the most frequently repeated phrase in many Black churches.
This is a symbol of shared identity. Rituals like that make the congregation feel unified and give the speaker a sense of dialogue with the crowd, not just a monologue. It’s a subtle but incredibly powerful feature of group dynamics.
But symbols aren’t just words — they can be tangible objects. A tree or a building can convey an incredible amount of meaning by its sheer existence. In the world of politics, symbols are all over the place. One of the most visible manifestations is often a flag.
It’s nothing more than a piece of brightly colored fabric that often hangs on a pole, but it has the power to convey history, pride, and unity all in just a 3-foot by 5-foot square. When that flag is unfurled before a basketball game, people stand up, put their hand on their hearts, and often sing along with the National Anthem. That moment has a lot in common with the aforementioned call and response in the Black church.
Those symbols can sometimes be contentious, though. When I was browsing through the recent additions to the Association of Religion Data Archives database, I came across a new dataset from PRRI called the Religion and Public Spaces Replication Survey. It contained a battery of questions that really piqued my interest because it was about the symbology of the American Confederacy.
You can read the rest of this post on Substack.
Ryan Burge is an assistant professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the co-founder and frequent contributor to Religion in Public, a forum for scholars of religion and politics to make their work accessible to a more general audience. His research focuses on the intersection of religiosity and political behavior, especially in the U.S. Follow him on X at @ryanburge.