I mean, really, dudes

[mme_hardy]

The National Cathedral is debating what to do about windows celebrating Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson that were donated by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1953.

Here are two of the Jackson windows.



That is, without a doubt, the iconography of sainthood. Jackson is being welcomed into Heaven with the words "So he passed over and all the trumpets sounded for him", which is from Pilgrim's Progress.

Stonewall Jackson was a 'kind' slaveowner (yes, sneer quotes) who sold his slaves after the beginning of the civil war because "the excitement of the times proved so demoralizing to them". (A grandson of one of his slaves erected a memorial window to him. People are complicated.) He fought in defense of slavery.

He was not a fucking saint. The Daughters of the Confederacy donated windows depicting him as such. (The National Cathedral removed the Confederate Battle flag from these windows and from the Robert E. Lee windows, which have the same issues, last year.) A cathedral window should not be glorifying him.

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Sounds like it is time for them to go into a museum accompanied by contextual information.

[mme_hardy]

Yeah. Right now the cathedral is going "provoke discussion" and the discussion "here is an insult to you, please discuss" REALLY doesn't belong in a cathedral.

[muccamukk]

If you read contemporary accounts from his slaves and slaves who had to work with him in the army, they weren't fans. And... let's take invading Mexico off there generally?

[mme_hardy]

If you write off "participated in the Mexican war" there go pretty much all the Civil War generals.

[muccamukk]

No, for sure, but does waving sabres and charging into someone else's country need to be in the actual window?

[mme_hardy]

Ohhhh, gotcha.

[sovay]

Jackson is being welcomed into Heaven with the words "So he passed over all and all the trumpets sounded for him", which is from Pilgrim's Progress.

I didn't know these windows existed. Yikes.

[edit] I suppose it is a sign of how normalized the entire Lost Cause mythos had become that the Daughters of the Confederacy could have a pauper's bible of their most famous generals installed in the National Cathedral, because otherwise that is just an incredibly strange thing to read.

[mme_hardy]

Yeah. The normalization of the Lost Cause among Northerners is amazing. How *did* the South do it?

[sovay]

How *did* the South do it?

I assume many of the Northerners wanted to believe it.

[larryhammer]

Generations of repeating it.

[recessional]

Civil wars can be like that - see also the history of the English civil war, where you end up with "Roundheads: right but repulsive; Cavaliers: Wrong but Romantic".

I think if you're going to find a way to not be ETERNALLY at that civil war, until it's not really a civil war anymore it's just a war over a specific bit of territory, you kinda have to either wipe out the other side completely and persecute all the remnants until the nth generation (see Russian Civil War) or you have to find some way to reconcile, even on a basic level.

That fact makes the victors very succeptable to guilt. Sometimes appropriately! Sometimes not. So.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I think that's true.

[garpu]

Wish I could say I'm surprised at the reaction. Or non-reaction, as the case may be. :/

[duskpeterson]

Here's an interesting editorial on the topic:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/should-the-lee-windows-at-the-national-cathedral-be-removed/2017/04/28/05af59a0-2381-11e7-bb9d-8cd6118e1409_story.html

Some context for this: The National Cathedral has generally been progressive on issues of race, etc. Back in 2015, the cathedral's dean called for the removal of the windows. However, the Episcopal Church tends to be as slow as molasses in procedure. (No more so than most churches, I imagine.) So I'm not surprised that the conversation is still continuing after all this time.

[mme_hardy]

That's actually what inspired this post! There may be -- I don't think there is -- a case for Lee, but there is none for Jackson. And I have a quibble about this: "When the Lee window was installed in 1953, before the enactment of the historic civil rights legislation of the 1960s, many Americans may have viewed Lee as a hero."

(1) The civil rights struggle was already organizing and visible in 1953. Brown v. Board of Education was originally filed in 1951 and was wending its way to the Supreme Court by 1953. (Don't know how long the Daughters of the Confederacy had been building the window before that.)

(2) Many Americans still do view Lee as a hero. That is not a thing of the past. His cultus continues.

[duskpeterson]

"Don't know how long the Daughters of the Confederacy had been building the window before that."

They'd been hoping for a window to Lee since at least 1950, it appears.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1950/02/11/stonewall-conscious

And here's a note in a 1952 issue of the Episcopal Church's newsmagazine about the windows. No indication of what the theological grounds were for the decision to install the windows, but the phrasing of the article hints that there was some question as to whether a memorial to Confederate soldiers was appropriate.

https://books.google.com/books?id=qWLkAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA78&dq=%22daughters+of+the+confederacy%22+washington+cathedral+stonewall&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiUy_qdsO7UAhUJ0GMKHcLDCGEQ6AEINDAE#v=onepage&q=%22daughters%20of%20the%20confederacy%22%20washington%20cathedral%20stonewall&f=false

A search on "Negro" in that volume of the newsmagazine shows that the place of African-Americans in the Episcopal Church was a topic of much controversy at that time.