The National Cathedral in Washington removed stained glass windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in 2017. It has now announced what will take their place. This is from the Episcopal News Service:
On Sept. 23, Washington National Cathedral revealed what will take the Confederate windows’ place. The cathedral commissioned new stained glass windows designed by Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall, known for his everyday depictions of African American life and culture. The stone next to the windows will be inscribed with a newly commissioned work by poet Elizabeth Alexander, whose writing explores history, and race and gender politics.
“Cathedrals are never finished,” Hollerith told the Washington Post. “It’s a wonderful thing to be able to add beauty and meaning to this place when it’s already full of so much beauty and meaning. We are excited to have these two artists with us and grateful for their willingness to undertake this project.”
Marshall began designing the new windows this week and is expected to finish by 2023, according to the Post. The windows then will be made and installed on the southern wall of the main worship space.
Stained glass fabricator Dieter Goldkuhle, who worked with his late father to install many of the stained glass windows at Washington National Cathedral, replaces an image of the Confederate battle flag after cathedral leaders decided in 2016 that the symbol of racial supremacy had no place inside the cathedral. Photo: Danielle E. Thomas/Washington National Cathedral
Washington National Cathedral first began a period of discernment over its windows honoring Lee and Jackson in the wake of the June 2015 massacre of nine members of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. Gunman Dylann Roof’s fondness for the Confederate flag sparked a broad reexamination of the flag as a controversial symbol of the South that had been co-opted by white supremacists. The cathedral responded by removing depictions of the Confederate flag from the Lee and Jackson windows.
Two years later, the August 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over removal of that city’s statues of Lee and Jackson left one counterprotester dead and prompted renewed scrutiny of Confederate symbols in public places, including at Episcopal institutions. Washington National Cathedral chose to expedite its decision to remove its windows depicting the generals.
“Their association with racial oppression, human subjugation and white supremacy does not belong in the sacred fabric of this Cathedral,” cathedral and diocesan leaders said at the time.
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The National Cathedral of the Episcopalians is now filled with iconoclasts and hypocrits.
Lee and Jackson were paragons of Christian virtue. That’s why the windows were first installed.
No one will be brought to Christ because of the iconoclasm- rather the Southern Episcopalians are being told “we don’t want you here”. We scorn the gift we once embraced. Rather than take an opportunity for reconciliation and forgivness – the message of Christ, the Episcopalians are embracing rejection and resentment- the hallmarks of the Communist and Nazi., not to mention the Taliban and ISIS. Strange bedfellows for a supposedly Christian denomination. It is a worse offense to repudiate the gift of the UDC- a breach of faith and trust. Shame on the National Cathedral and its operaters. Oliver Cromwell, the great English iconoclast, is their patron saint. I pray no one ever donates to them again.
When they do not like the other’s side, conservatives always call the others “nazi”, etc. Essentially accusing the opposition of using rhetoric and grammar that they themselves use. Yet, will promote book banning and defund libraries for not only having the ‘patriotically-correct literature. (another form of iconoclasm in a land of free speech). Conservatives need to bring weapons to their protests to show the world how manly they are…. One should ask “what assualt rifle brand would Christ bring to a demonstration?
you sir, are what one can call an “unreconstructed Southerner” (no matter from whatever part of the country you originate from…) – you would promote the removal of statues of tyrants from other nations, but not your flawed “heroic’ and equally tyrannical despots….
Well, if taking a nation to war and slaying a million Americans for the right to hold other Americans in slavery is a Christian virtue, I’m glad I’m not a Christian.
I would like to put some other historical arguments/perspectives towards your comments.
Would you be willing to have such a discussion?
You can put what you want. I may not be able to respond due to my physical condition.
Let’s have the discussion at another point in time.
Thank you for the response and regardless of any differing historical views, prayers for a speedy recovery.
Were the original glass depictions destroyed? Sold? Archived somewhere?
They are archived for the National Cathedral. Last year the Lee window was on display at Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.