Honoring Memorial Day: Remembering Reconciliation and Controversies.

Memorial Day was founded on the biblical ideals of forgiveness and reconciliation shortly after America’s most divisive and bloody conflict, the Civil War. The holiday’s origin dates to April 25, 1866, when a former chaplain in the Confederate Army accompanied a group of women from Columbus, Mississippi, to Friendship Cemetery — the burial ground for about 1,600 men who died in the Battle of Shiloh — for the purpose of honoring the dead with decorations of flowers. Memorial Day means more than remembering and honoring those who died in military service to the country. It means connecting with a heritage that began with a courageous and faithful group of founders, who risked everything for the birth of freedom and the establishment of America as a “city on a hill.”