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

[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.