The great, great, great, great nephew of General Robert E. Lee, Reverend Robert Lee IV, spoke up at the VMA’s after the riots in Charlottesville in relation to people wanting to preserve the monument of his ancestor. He received much hate and threats from fellow Christians, and so he stepped down as pastor of his North Carolina parish.

He told the ladies of ABC’s The View that he had to speak up because,”If you are silent in these issues, you are complicit in these issues.”

One of the hosts, Sarah Haines, expressed her confusion that Christians were rejecting him when they should be applauding him.

“White Christianity is having trouble dealing with what’s going on in our nation today. We’re having problems talking about these issues of race, of reconciliation, of reparation, of redemption. We have trouble coming up with the vocabulary to speak about these issues.”

He went on to talk about why monuments and other tributes to  Robert E. Lee needed to be removed because of the significance of what they stand for- the white privilege and white supremacy.

This whole segment was very moving, and what really needs to be said, as he stated,”We need to treat each other with respect and dignity, and if we can’t do that, then we’re not being Church at all.”

Whoopi told him that she could almost go back to church because of him.

Sunny Hostin said that Christianity has become a bad word today, to which the reverend replied that we have done it to ourselves, and that we have to say that,”This is not the Church that I know. I know a Jesus that is liberating, and offering us hope.”

Here is the thought provoking discussion: