LOTHIAN, Md. (AP) - Members of a Maryland church are discussing the fate of a Confederate statue that was recently spray painted with the word “shame.”
The Capital Gazette reported Sunday that the statue stands outside Mt. Calvary Anglican Church in the town of Lothian, which is near the Chesapeake Bay’s western shore.
The privately owned statue is of private Benjamin Welch Owens. He served in a Confederate Maryland artillery unit during the Civil War.
Mt. Calvary Vector R.H. Tregenza said the church’s vestry must discuss the statue’s possible removal. The church’s bishop also must be consulted.
Confederate monuments are being torn down in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody in Minneapolis. A local government official in Maryland recently criticized the Owens statue, saying that honoring people like Owens was cruel and dangerous.
Owens had attended the church. The statue was erected in 1999.
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