After quietly removing panes bearing the Confederate flag from its stained-glass windows, leaders of the Washington National Cathedral are now wondering what to do about remaining images of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
RNS:
The windows honoring the Confederate generals were added in 1953 with the support of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group that sought to honor the memory of veterans who fought for the South.
Under the Robert E. Lee window there is language etched in stone that calls him “a Christian soldier without fear and without reproach.” And under Jackson, it says he “walked humbly before his Creator whose word was his guide.”
Cathy Ball, who attends another Episcopal church in Washington, said the windows should stay.
“Our history in the United States, in America, is a history of oppression through the very beginning, the oppression of native peoples, the oppression of enslaved peoples, the oppression of immigrants,” she said.
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I would love to help fight a war that has been over for 150 years, but I’m too busy with the Crusades and couldn’t give this one proper attention.
One cost of white privilege is to have ones sins remembered. Let the memorials stand, for they remind of all that such men were: imperfect, like the rest of us.
Maybe the building should be done away with altogether. Perhaps – that will finally make the new puritans happy at last…
An earthquake tried that a few years ago, but the earthquake failed.
Maybe we should give them back their flags.