The stained glass windows in the National Cathedral show different scenes from American history. Someone made the dunderheaded decision when the cathedral was being designed to have windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, which seemed, in a setting with limited opportunities to highlight American heroes, an odd choice even back when the structure was opened to the public.
After a gunman shot and killed nine Black worshipers at a church in South Carolina in 2015 and the movement began to ban all things Confederate, the cathedral management decided that Stonewall and Lee had to go. Six years after the glass’s removal in 2017, National Cathedral has unveiled their replacement, which you can see above. The new windows , titled Now and Forever, show black protesters holding protest signs bearing the words “No,” “Not,” “Fairness” and “No foul play.”
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is this a responsible, appropriate, ethical decoration for the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.?
Some don’t think so. One conservative commenter described the windows thusly: “The National Cathedral in Washington DC has decided that they too want to join in on the re-writing and recasting of history in response to the 2020 George Floyd Summer of Love.”
That seems a bit unfair. The website about the new additions says,
“The Cathedral’s Now and Forever Windows capture the resilience, faith and endurance of African Americans and our nation’s struggle with the original sins of racism and slavery…. Through this new addition to the Cathedral, we hope to tell a broader, more inclusive story of American history. In this House of Prayer for All People, we want to tell the stories of all people… Kerry James Marshall [the artist] leaves [the meaning of the signs] up to the viewer’s interpretation, but there are two ways to consider this. In one view, the repetition of “No” and “Not” is a powerful and emphatic way to counter foul play or unfairness. In another view, the “No” is described as God’s powerful “No” to everything that the figures are protesting; it’s God’s No to unfairness, God’s No to injustice, God’s No to foul play.”
The original windows were supposed to honor history, not politics. The southern generals should not be regarded as political, but they have become so. The question is whether the new windows are divisive and political as well. If they alluded to George Floyd or Black Lives Matter, they would be. They don’t. The civil rights movement, the marches and the the struggle to overcome the legacy of slavery constitutes an important part of history; I can’t say it is an inappropriate subject to be memorialized in the Cathedral, once one accepts the concept of non-religious windows. I could easily see this as leading to a series of tribal, victim-group windows that would be divisive rather than unifying, however.
Ethics Alarms 
It would by no means be a favorite, but I think yes that is a reasonable effort.
If it is a National Cathedral, certainly blacks should be a part of that. They’ve been a part of our nation since the beginning, and so many of our struggles and battles have been concerned with their place in our society. So I vote yes.
I don’t like the fact that it’s a deliberate rebuke to what was there before, it sets a precedent for ripping stuff down and replacing it with the exact opposite just to give a big middle finger to the past. If this stops here, I think we’ll be okay but if it’s just the beginning of more probably divisive stuff being added, and you know the liberal clergy there can’t wait to do it, that’s going to be a problem.
I look at these windows and I am disappointed. Our culture has moved away from what should be presented everywhere: the true, good, and beautiful. Let us put these windows to the test.
Are these windows depicting what is true? Yes, things like this have happened. No one can argue on this. Are they depicting what is good? This is harder. The windows have the intent of being understood in several ways, some of them, NOT good. Finally beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, that is true, but no one seriously thinks that the rose windows in Notre Dame are ugly. I certainly do no see much beauty in these windows. The signs are jarring and take up most of the space on the windows. The emphasis, therefore, is on signs and messages, not on beautiful pictures.
In addition, I look at this from the Catholic standpoint of stained glass typically showing multiple scenes of import or people to be admired. From that standpoint, I can come up with many better pictures for an attempt at a mostly apolitical set of windows. If one wants to tell the history of slavery even, I have some great ideas. I think our history has more important matters than that, but I’ll give the slavery a shot first. Of course, all of these will have to be simplified for the material of stained glass, but we have had Jesus feeding the multitudes on stained glass for centuries, not to mention all the other bible stories. A true student of stained glass can simplify anything and do so meaningfully.
For a history of slavery, we could easily have the signing of the Declaration of Independence. A pious looking slave being ministered to by angels would be a great next window, declaring that the evils of slavery cry to heaven. (Remember here that Christians have plenty of stained glass windows that depict Jesus on Good Friday in many of the stages of the Cross, so people should understand that we don’t always have to think that everything seen is good, like beating a man innocent of crime.) Another good picture could be Harriet Tubman standing beside the opening to a tunnel. Lincoln at Gettysburg, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King are other great options.
If we really wanted to be apolitical, we could have other great pictures that have little political meaning. Signing the Declaration of Independence might still be political for some (some find everything political), but is a good start. Betsy Ross, sewing a flag, could be a way to have women on the board. I really like the idea of Rosa Parks (black and a woman, cool!). The first man on the moon is another great one. We could have a Chinese immigrant working on the Transcontinental Railroad, a picture of Chief Washakie, or even just the Statue of Liberty.
There are so many ways we could show our amazing melting pot of society. Sure, we have come from harder times, but we don’t have to emphasize them in a cathedral, or if we do, we should do so beautifully, with more windows showing the good than the bad. This seems to focus on a message of division, not of unification, and even the story of slavery is a message of unification, when told properly. That would be true, good, and beautiful.
COTD.
My response to the images was negative, but purely in aesthetic terms. These panels are about sloganeering rather than people or events, and frankly they’re rather ugly… or, at least, they clash with the style of the other windows. I think that matters; others are free to disagree.
The impulse is admirable; the execution is not. Was anyone else reminded of that MLK statue in Boston?
If the goal was to promote inclusivity, justice and fairness as described in the promotional materials from the linked webpage, why only black representation. Why not rights for women, or images of interned Japanese?
I see no relationship to the “original sin of slavery” when they appear to be all wearing tennis shoes or dress shoes while protesting My take on this is that it is a call for reparations and never to criticize the subjects. If this was historical there would be actual historical scenes that could be depicts like the march to Selma.
What does NO and NOT represent? I don’t get it. Is to suggest that we should not have slavery anymore? “No foul play”. Given the gang violence and murders among young black men and others of “color” shouldn’t that be directed at them assuming that it is a message from God. Or, is the artist focusing on blaming others for the impediments to economic success that many urban dwellers bring upon themselves. That is hardly fair or inclusive. To truly be inclusive one must be willing to share in blame and not just demand credit for something.
To me it is confusing. But it is their money, and they can spend it on whatever they please.
I don’t see it as unethical unless I was forced to support it through tax dollars.
Sarah and Chris, together, offer great analyses of the windows. Nicely done, both.
I see the “No” a bit differently: Aren’t human arrogance and hubris, in defiance of God’s will, really, the Original Sin? Doesn’t slavery really represent that in its totality?
jvb
The issue I have with this is that these new windows, and the removal of the old ones, was not for the sake of blacks but rather to assuage the guilt of self-loathing white liberals
Bingo.
I’ve written here before about what progressives have done to religion. I went to a Church of Christ a few years ago and noticed all the tacky felt banners no longer said anything about faith, hope and charity. They were all about social justice and equity and diversity. The left has hijacked religion. Leftism as offered by the Democrat party IS now THE religion. If you’re not a lefty, you’re a heretic and should be relegated to hell on earth. Churches are no longer in the business of saving souls and ushering the faithful into eternal life with their maker, they are about perfecting life on earth, presumably since they no longer really believe in that life after death stuff. The government is now the holy father to whom we are to direct our prayers and flourish under its grace. They’re all humanists and their sole (soul?) concern is life on earth. This warping of religion is second only to the destruction of the American academy as the major disaster of my lifetime.
The National Cathedral is a bizarre concept. It’s basically the WASP Vatican. How strange. It’s where the ACELA corridor elite who aren’t in the UU go to mimic being religious and believing in anything other than their own goodness. Who cares what they do with their stained-glass windows. This isn’t medieval France. How many Episcopalians are left these days?
I guess I have never considered the National Cathedral, always controlled by the Episcopal Church, to be a place of national prayer for all peoples of all faiths, and ethnicities. It has been the backdrop for much political theater and it continues to do so. If, as described, the windows represent God’s NO to man’s sinful nature then where are the many other sins God has said NO to? Sodomy, usury, war, famine, etc.
Would a compromise have been out of the question? Say, replace one of the windows with one of the new ones and let one of the other replaced ones stay?
Yes, I know the answer — the moral certitude that goes along with the banning of all things that might be construed as glorifying the Civil War South must be destroyed and consigned to the “Things of which we do not speak” bin.
I find it unethical because it was a deliberate act of removal/replacement driven purely by a one-sided political ethos. Nobody on the right, or the middle for that matter, thinks the pro-slavery position of the South was good or moral, but it is a part, and a critically important part at that, of our history. In the National Cathedral, it no longer exists except as a footnote.
This is not to denigrate the replacements as somehow bad — to the extent that civil rights has been neglected there, they aren’t and I would not object to a balanced presentation. But this is not that.
A church with stained glass windows featuring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson? What were they thinking? Sainting two generals? What has that got to do with worship? The whole idea of historical stained-glass windows featuring anyone other than saints is preposterous. I guess Episcopalian is the official faith of America, at least as determined by all the Anglophilic lefties. Keeps the Irish and the Papists in their place.