A Sin by Any Other Name

November 1, 2018

Associate rector at a North Carolina church, Lee spoke forcefully at the 2017 MTV Awards, saying that his great-great-great-great-uncle Robert E. Lee, whose statue stood center stage at the Charlottesville protests, had been made "an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate." His speech won him accolades, death threats, and an ouster from his church. Here he discusses being raised a Lee in the South, racism as America's original sin, the way cultural assumptions of white supremacy damaged his Christian values, and the dangers of nostalgia for the Lost Cause.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2019
A distant descendent of the famous Confederate general wrestles with his family's legacy.Lee IV (Stained-Glass Millennials, 2017) terms this memoir "my letter of love to a place that has shaped me" while acknowledging that such love hasn't always been reciprocated and that he is likely to rile those who resist the call to heal the region's abundant racial wounds. The author caused a significant stir when he broadcast his views on racism in the Southern church, creating a controversy that spurred his resignation from the North Carolina church where he had been pastor, his first such assignment, in a town unaccustomed to such scrutiny. (One wonders if the national media attention would have been as bright without Lee's name recognition.) After a foreword by the Rev. Bernice A. King, daughter of Martin, the author chronicles what it was like growing up in the South as a Lee, with a photo of the man they called "Uncle Bob" in his bedroom next to a Confederate flag. Though his parents were both progressive and pro-integration, he dealt with the mixed messages sent through his formative years with a black nanny, who would never sit at the table to eat a meal with him; his visits to Civil War memorials and battle re-enactments; and his realization that the man he had once idolized, and had been idolized throughout the region, had become "an idol of white supremacy...an idol of nationalism and of bigotry and of hate and of racism." Things came to a head for the author, as they did for the nation, at Charlottesville in August 2017, where the battle over Confederate statues turned uglier and one woman lost her life. Lee received more calls to speak out, which caused him to lose his pulpit but gain a larger following.Readers will sense that these hopeful passages are very early chapters in the young minister's life story.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

March 11, 2019
Lee (Stained-Glass Millennials), pastor and “nephew, generations removed” of Robert E. Lee, shares his path to fighting for racial justice in this revealing memoir. Growing up in Statesville, N.C., Lee learned early the weight of his famous ancestor and the assumptions others made about his own views. Several interactions with black schoolmates during his youth shaped his call to preach and opened his eyes to the pervasiveness of racism, later evidenced at his public high school during a football game where he heard racial slurs used by the crowd against the opposing team. Such experiences, he writes, led him to make racial injustice and the need to end the continued segregation of congregations the focus of his ministry. Following the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Lee was invited to give a brief message at the MTV Video Music Awards; his appearance won him support but also caused backlash in conservative circles; he was later, he writes, fired by his church for an unclear cause. Such divisiveness, he explains, inspired him to preach a message of unity. Unfortunately, Lee’s advice lacks specificity and comes off as rather pat (such as with his recommendation for “noticing the sin of white privilege”), and he rarely offers solutions to the problems he finds. However, open-minded readers will appreciate Lee’s perspective on race in America as well as his story of working to overcome division, bigotry, and his own family’s fraught history.