Move the Windows (written July 24, 2015)

Art in government buildings should affirm our national unity and ideals; church art should support our beliefs.Two stained glass windows at Washington’s National Cathedral do neither. 

They honor Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, heroes of the Confederacy. The Cathedral is an Episcopal church with quasi-governmental status, not receiving Federal financing, but serving as a location for government officials to gather for prayer during national emergencies and a place to bury Presidents. Currently, in the shadow of the Charleston massacre, the Cathedral community ponders the presence of these windows and their Confederate flags. 

As an American citizen and a Christian believer, I call for the Cathedral to change the context and the message of these windows:  Move them to a museum and surround them by the visual displays of the painful fruits of the Confederate state’s violent ideology of racial domination. Show shackles, slave auction blocks, lynchings, Klan terrorism, the Birmingham 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, the Charleston massacre.  Racial domination is an ideology we must renounce just as South Africa abandoned apartheid.  Glorifying these ideas gives them power to remain an accepted part of our national dialog. 
Art can be used to bring division to a country and genocide against its minorities. In the recent past, for example, Serbia looked for support for genocide against Muslims from The Mountain Wreath, a 19th century epic poem celebrating the killing of local Muslims. Better we should look to Germany, where World War II veterans are looked on with suspicion,and swastikas may not be displayed. Contrast  Japan’s current government, which is considering bringing back its World War II “Rising Sun” flag, while at the same time retracting apologies for wartime acts . 

We do not need to hide the Confederate flag from view, but rather undermine its use as a battle flag for racist ideologies . Delegitimize the narrative that the Southern struggle was honorable.  Our national unity and our integrity as Christians call for such a stand.