The Rev. Robert Wright Lee IV has left his job as pastor of a North Carolina church over backlash he got for disavowing his great-great-great-great-uncle, Confederate Army General Robert E. Lee, The Washington Post reported.
Lee appeared near the end of MTV’s Video Music Awards on Aug. 27 in his clerical collar to speak out against white separatists trying to prevent the removal of statues of his indirect ancestor.
“We have made my ancestor an idol of white supremacy, racism, and hate,” Lee told viewers. “As a pastor, it is my moral duty to speak out against racism, America’s original sin. Today, I call on all of us with privilege and power to answer God’s call to confront racism and white supremacy head-on.”
Lee went on to say Americans “can find inspiration in the Black Lives Matter movement, the women who marched in the Women’s March in January, and, especially,
