National Cathedral continues to debate the Lee, Jackson windows

By Heather Beasley Doyle
Posted Feb 20, 2017

Stained glass fabricator Dieter Goldkuhle, who worked with his late father to install many of the stained glass windows at Washington National Cathedral, replaces an image of the Confederate battle flag after cathedral leaders decided in 2016 that the symbol of racial supremacy had no place inside the cathedral. The long-term fate of the windows honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson remains under debate. Photo: Danielle E. Thomas/Washington National Cathedral

[Episcopal News Service] When sunlight shines through the Washington National Cathedral’s stained glass windows, colors disperse. Hues take flight from the visual stories that normally confine them to a framed, defined space. Illuminated, the freed colors alight on cathedral walls as patches of blue, shades of pink and splotches of purple, transformed from visual narratives into an ephemeral pastel version of a Rorschach test.

The aftermath of a hate crime brought two particular stained glass windows at the cathedral into sharp relief. On the evening of June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof shot 12 people, killing nine of them, during a Bible study at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. The racially motivated violence prompted many institutions to take down Confederate flags. At Washington National Cathedral, then-Dean Gary Hall called for the removal of two windows – one commemorating Confederate General Robert E. Lee, the other memorializing Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Both are inlaid with a small Confederate flag, offering a clear acknowledgment of the Civil War-era South for which the generals fought.

Roof “surrounded himself in these Confederate symbols,” said Rev. Kelly Brown Douglas, canon theologian at the cathedral and professor of religion at Goucher College. Acknowledging the modern-day violence associated with the symbols, the cathedral’s chapter (its governing body) formed a task force to recommend a way forward, rather than simply removing the windows.


A stained glass window dedicated to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee window was originally donated to Washington National Cathedral by the Daughters of the Confederacy in 1953. Photo: Washington National Cathedral

In a report last June, the task force proposed leaving the windows in place for the time being: “The windows provide a catalyst for honest discussions about race and the legacy of slavery and for addressing the uncomfortable and too-often avoided issues of race in America. Moreover, the windows serve as a profound witness to the cathedral’s own complex history in relationship to race.” The report further urged the chapter to resolve the matter by June 2018.

Report in hand, the chapter decided that while the windows should stay, the inlaid Confederate flags could not, and swiftly replaced them with clear two clear glass panels, one blue and one red.  “The [Confederate] battle flag is a problematic, racist image that has no place in the cathedral,” said Washington National Cathedral Chief Communications Officer Kevin Eckstrom. Brown Douglas, who sat on the task force, agrees. “Whatever the Confederate flag meant historically, it has come to symbolize white supremacy,” a stance in conflict with “Christian values,” she said. Flags aside, Lee and Jackson “fought for the Confederacy, and in so doing, they were fighting to uphold the institution of slavery,” Brown Douglas added.

Cathedral leaders haven’t always believed that the Confederate legacy clashes with Episcopal principles. The cathedral accepted an offer from the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) to fund a memorial of Robert E. Lee, an Episcopalian, in 1931. UDC’s top goal is “to honor the memory of those who served and those who fell in the service of the Confederate states.” Twenty-two years would pass before the project came to fruition in the form of the stained glass windows. Cathedral archives included in the task force report show a friendly, supportive repartee between cathedral and UDC representatives. On paper, at least, no one seems to have questioned including the Confederate battle flag.

A stained glass window honoring Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson in the nave of Washington National Cathedral features scenes from Jackson’s life and his death in battle. Photo courtesy Washington National Cathedral.

“It’s taken us a while to get here,” said Heidi Kim, the Episcopal Church’s staff officer for racial reconciliation. While Washington National Cathedral’s foundation was laid in 1907, decades after the abolition of slavery, Kim pointed out that slaves built many Episcopal churches. Many Episcopalians owned slaves and others, northerners among them, profited by trading slaves, a story told in personal terms in the documentary, “Traces of the Trade.”

“The degree to which almost anyone in the nation who had any economic privilege benefited from slavery, in the North and the South” was considerable, said Rev. Dr. Robert W. Prichard, a professor of church history at Virginia Theological Seminary and author of “A History of the Episcopal Church.”

In 2008 the Episcopal Church apologized for its role in slavery. The apology followed a resolution passed at the General Convention in 2006 urging the church “…to address systemic racial disparities and injustice in the church and the wider culture” deepened that sensibility. Opinion on what this means and how far it should go varies among Episcopalians.

Many think the windows should stay at the cathedral as a reminder of the Episcopal Church’s past. “There’s something about taking away those windows that seems a bit of a denial of where we’ve been,” said Danielle A. Gaherty, a member and lay leader at Trinity Lime Rock in Lakeville, Connecticut.

“I don’t think they should leave the building, especially at this time when there’s so much controversy in the world over race relations,” she said. “It just seems that it’s more important now than ever to remember.”

Retired parish priest William Thomas Martin of Williamsburg, Virginia, agreed. “By getting rid of the windows we [would] throw away the memory, and if we throw away the memory, we’re going to repeat [our mistakes]. The Confederate flag is a symbol of our original sin, I think. It reminds us of our own fallibility and our need for God’s grace.”

Doug Desper, an Episcopalian in Waynesboro, Virginia, thinks the Lee-Jackson windows should leave Washington National Cathedral. Like Gaherty, Martin and Riley Temple, he felt compelled to comment on a Religious News Service article about the windows posted on the ENS website in October. “I don’t think that battle flags of any sort belong” in a house of worship, he says. More importantly, he doesn’t like “the criminal South versus the virtuous North” feeling he gets from the discussion. That trope, he contends, ignores the complexities of mid-19th century American life. He advocates a reconciliation window to replace the Lee-Jackson windows, but “I don’t think we need to keep apologizing. I think what we need to do now is to look at how far we’ve come from where our ancestors were.”

As for a continued “we’re sorry” mantra, Brown Douglas agreed that’s not the answer. “Apologies are cheap grace,” she said. “The church should be talking about repentance. You have to name the sin, then turn around and go in a different direction.”

The point that Lee and Jackson were as complex as any men, the nuances of their life stories larger than stained glass windows, Rev. Delman Coates, senior pastor at Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Maryland, said that acknowledgment isn’t enough to put him at ease about the windows, even if their context is explained. “For me as an African-American, those are symbols of a very painful, horrific past,” said Coates, who participated in the cathedral’s panel discussion “What the White Church Must Do” last July. So much so, he says, that leaving the Lee-Jackson windows as-is would “make it difficult” for him to feel fully welcome at the cathedral.

Former cathedral task force member Riley Temple wants the cathedral to beef up its efforts around the windows now. He thinks the events to date have been intellectual to a fault; that they fail to address the array of emotions at play. He wants the cathedral to address this imbalance. “No one’s thinking about our level of discomfort and the continued injury and assault of the windows,” he said. “They don’t want to make white people uncomfortable. The truth is going to make us squirm, and we can’t get to reconciliation without squirming.”

But Brown Douglas cited another essential step in this process: “Before we can talk about reconciliation, we have to talk about justice.” To that end, she said the cathedral is creating programs and forming partnerships, including one with Coates’ congregation. During Lent, Brown Douglas will run a study program on social and racial justice. And on March 29, she will participate in the cathedral’s panel “Saints and Sinners: Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.”

Mobilizing a social justice and reconciliation movement within the broader Christian church makes sense to Coates. “Racism and structural racism in America were justified theologically,” he said. “In order to make progress on a range of social justice issues, we must reclaim and reimagine our own theology.” Willie James Jennings, associate professor of systematic theology and Africana studies at Yale Divinity School, author of “The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race,” agreed. “Racism has a deep Christian architecture to it, and there’s no way to reckon with that past without coming through Christianity,” he said.

The theological and ethical journey of reckoning for Episcopal churches and others with very few African-Americans must include an honest look within. “It does come down to a denomination having a sense of its own whiteness,” he says. “They don’t understand how their Christianity and their whiteness feed each other. [As Christians] it is always important for us to show people what it means to be living in the truth.”

The strong emotions unleashed when people talk about race warrant attention – they’re important. Jennings pointed to “deep frustration about how people just refuse to honor the horror of all this.” If there’s good news on this challenging path, it’s that “the church has a vital role in helping people come to terms with what they feel, not just what they think,” he said.

Right now, feelings about the windows seem inextricably linked to a pervasive concern not about this country’s past, but about its current interpersonal and political climate.  “We’re as divided a nation as we’ve ever been. We’re as divided racially as we’ve ever been,” Brown Douglas said. By calling its Lee-Jackson windows into question, the cathedral stepped squarely into that sensitive, uneasy space.

Whatever the outcome, Coates and Jennings credit cathedral leaders and community members for calling the question on their role in memorializing and glorifying a painful past with omnipresent fingerprints. “I want to acknowledge the courage it takes to see what others refuse to see,” Jennings said. “I’m thankful that they’re doing that. It’s really important.”

In its report, the task force recommended digging into the topic as a community with forums, an “audit” of the stories the cathedral close buildings tell and with art of all kinds. Brown Douglas hopes the process will answer the questions: “What are we suggesting about who we are? But more than that, what are we saying about who God is?” She also hopes it will uncover “the voices that have gone unheard, the subjugated history.” How to incorporate those voices into the National Cathedral and just how the Lee-Jackson windows will fit into a now-evolving narrative remains to be seen.

— Heather Beasley Doyle is a freelance journalist based in Massachusetts. 


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Comments (64)

  1. Lloyd Newell says:

    Is this a political driven? History is what happen and one needs to place them in the events during the time the events occurred. To pretend the Civil War is just a * in our country’s history is a misjudgement at best.

  2. The Rev. Fred Fenton says:

    I have lived in the South and experienced the near worship of Robert E. Lee. The fact is both Lee and Jackson were traitors to the nation they swore to defend. They caused the death and suffering of countless thousands in their attempt to establish an independent, slave nation. Former Dean Gary Hall was right to call for removal of the windows honoring Lee and Jackson. Harvard University has repeatedly denied petitions to add memorials to Harvard graduates who fought for the Confederacy in the Memorial Hall built to honor graduates who fought in the Union army.

  3. The Rev. Dr. Robert H. Crewdson says:

    I was active in 1963 in working with Mennonite and Church of the Brethren leaders to integrate (peacefully hopefully) Rockingham County in which I served my first parish in VA. One of the two churches I served was on the Port Republic Battlefield where Stonewall won his second battle in two days. I studied Jackson and the history of that period extensively.

    Jackson did own slaves while in Lexington as slaves wanted him for a master as he was kind to them and would let them work for their freedom. What most people don’t know is that Jackson started an illegal Sunday School in Lexington where he lived to teach slaves to read the Bible. He had 8 teachers from the Presbyterian church and one from our Episcopal Church. He kept this going by sending much of his pay as a soldier to the school. It had 300 slaves attending. It was illegal because he taught slaves to read. The slaves loved him. I see him as a civil rights leader for that period in history. I believed he was kept out of jail because of the stature of the teachers as upstanding members of the community.

    1. Doug Desper says:

      Reverend Crewdson, thank you! The bumper sticker versions of history just don’t tell the whole truth, but you remember. People in the 1860s inherited a life dependent on the servile misery of others and they knew that they had daily moral choices to make, including how to bend or break the law to the benefit of such people. Lee and Jackson were handed a national crisis of unheard of proportions, and as men of faith and men of the military they had to pick a side. They sided with state’s rights instead of the heavy-handed and impetuous Federal government’s tactics of unity at the point end of a bayonet. They – and hundreds of thousands – resisted as the Federal government deepened the crisis by swelling a federal army with poorly trained recruits who were given the authority to occupy non-combatant communities. Slavery was not a war objective until later in the war when Mr. Lincoln had to come up with a new rallying point to finish the war. The war was all about forced unity and the poorly contrived and ruinous policies that would cripple the country if not resisted. Even Union General McClellan couldn’t bring himself to lead the army to carry out such a policy of forced occupation of communities and he slow-stepped his battlefield plans praying that cooler heads would prevail. In the end he was fired and then opposed Mr. Lincoln’s policies as a presidential candidate.

      Now, about us. In our time we have slaves. They are unseen. They don’t live “out back in the quarters”. Like Lee and Jackson our lives benefit from the servile misery of others – just differently: child labor in mines to collect lithium for cell phone batteries, and the misery of sweat shops around the globe in order for us to have affordable goods. No, we can’t pretend that we are somehow more moral than those 160 years ago. Any critic of Lee and Jackson IS, in fact, living in a similar way; dependent and intertwined in the misery of others.

  4. The Rev. John C Humphries, Jr. says:

    The windows are an art form in and of themselves. An effort to change historic written texts would be rallied around and called censorship. Leave them be for what they are.

  5. Ione Hodge says:

    I can not understand those who would remove a depiction of things as they were during the civil war. You are trying to change history not just remove a picture/window which depicts a painful memory. That would be the same a rewriting history to say that the settlers of the new world did not steal land for the Native Americans. Let the windows stay! Those who find them offensive don’t have to look anthem.

  6. Hugh Hansen, Ph.D. says:

    Two statements apply to those who want to de-Christianize Lee and Jackson. “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.” Number two: “he that is without Sin should cast the first stone.” These were people from a different era. If those naysayers above were to take this self-righteous position with respect to the Anglican church, then Cranmer and many others would not qualify as a part of our history. Wasn’t the body of Christ riven and wasn’t his blood spill to cover all of our sins, even the Sin of racism, even the Sin of Pharisaism, and even the Sin of a judgmental spirit. Please leave the windows and let us accept these men as brothers in the faith who had many of the same faults that we have. They no doubt prayed the prayer of forgiveness at every Eucharist just as we do.

  7. Terry Francis says:

    Rev. Delman Coates and Rev. Freda Marie Brown do not speak for THIS African-American. I have no problem whatsoever with the windows. I’m sorry they do. Not all African-Americans feel the way they feel. I don’t want only progressives calling the shots as to what can and what can’t be seen, taught, read, or looked at in this cathedral. As I said in a previous comment regarding this issue, Abraham Lincoln had always believed the black man was inferior to the white man. Even suggested that maybe the blacks should all leave the United States and start a colony of their own. Should we now do away with the Lincoln memorial bay? And would Rev. Coates feel unwelcome because of the presence of the George Washington bay? After all, he owned a large number of slaves at his beloved Mt. Vernon. Where does all this self-righteous liberal pc nonsense end? Political correctness has virtually become another sacrament of the Episcopal Church!

    1. Tony Oberdorfer says:

      I agree completely with Terry Francis, especially his last sentence. The arrogance of those intent on politicizing the Episcopal Church beyond repair is overwhelming. Unfortunately, all of us will eventually have to pay the price when so many have left the Church that it can no longer sustain itself.

  8. Hugh Hansen, Ph.D. says:

    I think this discussion draws forth controversy and needless conflict among members of this church. I see no discussion of unity or “Forgetting the past I press toward the more of the high calling of God which is in Christ Jesus.” Indeed, I feel that a number of the statements are infused with bitterness, a bitterness that may breed even more bread bitterness. I sense today that there are many who want to simply move on toward our evangelical destiny. I am definitely one of those people. How about more articles in this ENS publication about the positive work of the Holy Spirit in this great church?

  9. David Veal says:

    My great-great grandfather had a farm in Dekalb County, Georgia. He had three sons, ages 16, 18, and 21 in 1960. He owned no slaves and planted no cotton. In the election preceding the Secession Convention, he voted for a candidate who opposed secession. He never took up arms in the Civil War that ensued. His sons did so only a year after the invasion of the South. They served honorably in the Confederate Army to the end of the War, which to them was a war in defense of their Country. The family farm was burned to the ground by Sherman’s troops and all their produce and livestock was destroyed or consumed by the invaders. It took two generations to restore the family’s security. The invading Union army deliberately sought civilian casualties and “collateral damage” and their slave-owning general was an outspoken exponent of “total war.” I am tired of my Confederate ancestors being demonized and the rapacious invaders lionized. My family, and countless others, never had any great affection for the Confederacy and no interest in slavery. That hideous, unnecessary, and devastating war was imposed on our country by greedy, ambitious, self-righteous leaders on both sides. Countless brave and innocent persons were killed on both sides. Now, one-hundred and fifty years + later, can’t we forgive each other and in the words of the priest-poet of the Confederacy offer “love and tears for the blue and tears and love for the gray” and offer thanks to a merciful God for a reasonably “happy issue out of all our afflictions.” Sadly, the Confederate flag, like the Nazi Swastika, has been appropriated by rabid American racists, but neither symbol has been redeemed or its historical meaning changed by this. I see no reason for our National Cathedral to display the “Stars and Bars”, simply because its current meaning is so offensive. The national flag of the Confederacy is not so well known, nor has it been so tarnished by modern identifications with it. But, it seems to me, we cannot claim this to be a NATIONAL Cathedral if its precincts only recall one side of a truly national conflict.

  10. John Payne says:

    i am afraid the Cathedral has painted itself into a corner with no way out. Remove the windows and offend many folks who have devoted themselves to the Cathedral, not to mention the donors of the windows. Keep the windows and offend many, especially African-Americans who say they do not feel welcome at the Cathedral because of the windows. Perhaps the windows could be removed and displayed somewhere else on the Cathedral close.

  11. John Williamson says:

    What next? Do the protesters want to take scissors to the Declaration of Independence and the original copy of the Constitution to remove the names of signers that are not considered politically correct?

  12. Leaving the flag in the window stands as reminder that the Episcopal Church never spoke out as a body against slavery. The General Convention simply closed shop until the unpleasantness was over. Historians can debates the merits of should we or shouldn’t we have done it. The reality we didn’t. Until this country apologizes for building a country on the backs of slaves and the near genocide of our Native Americans we will never be able to truly move forward on race issues. I don’t think we have the right to take that flag out yet.

  13. James Boyd says:

    In a sermon by the Very Rev. Gary Hall at the National Cathedral on June 28th, 2015 he said: “There simply is no excuse for the nation’s most visible church to display a symbol of racism, slavery, and oppression. None.” This is his call to remove the Lee and Jackson windows that have been in the National Cathedral since 1953. His sermon is available via YouTube, but the comments section is no longer viewable.

    If the Very Rev. Gary Hall truly means what he says then he needs to do the following:

    He needs to remove the Lewis and Clark windows in the National Cathedral. They were both slave owners and even took a slave with them on their trip.

    He needs to remove the Thomas Jefferson window that’s in the National Cathedral. He was a slave master.

    He needs to remove the James Madison window that’s in the National Cathedral. He was a slave master.

    He needs to remove the tomb of known racist and segregationist President Woodrow Wilson from the National Cathedral. I know that Dean Francis Sayre was the grandson of Woodrow Wilson, and he marched with Martin Luther King at Selma, but he also was the man that installed the Lee and Jackson Windows.

    He needs to remove the statue of the slave master George Washington that’s in the National Cathedral. How can the National Cathedral reside in Washington, DC anyway when it was named after a slave master? Move it all out now!

    He needs to remove the memorial to General Nelson Miles, the man that slaughtered countless Native Americans honored in the National Cathedral.

    Why does the National Cathedral still accept money with slave masters on it? You’re good with pennies, $5’s and $10’s, everything else has a slave master on it. That goes for the gift shop and the entry fees charged tourists too.

    He needs to change the name of the National Cathedral’s Elementary School which is currently named after the retirement home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

    Some of these steps may sound extreme, but in order to comply with the crusade launched by the Very Rev. Gary Hall they have to be done if he really means what he says. He leaves no “wiggle room” in his sermon. Here’s his statement again for reference:

    “There simply is no excuse for the nation’s most visible church to display a symbol of racism, slavery, and oppression. None.”

    In an interview with NPR on June 27th the Very Rev. Gary Hall goes as far as to compare Lee and Jackson to the Germans during the Holocaust!

    The National Cathedral’s very own website says the following:

    “As docents are quick to note on tours of the Cathedral, the presence of such a controversial set of figures as Jackson and Lee underscores the building’s role as a repository of American memory, carrying the very wounds of war within its walls.”

    Since the National Cathedral will no longer be a “repository of American memory, carrying the very wounds within its walls” what will it be other than a hollow shell?

    “Cathedrals do not belong to a single generation. They are churches of history. They gather up the faith of a whole people and proclaim the goodly Providence which has welded that people together as they have hoped and suffered and believed across the centuries.”

    That quote comes from the National Cathedral’s very own website and from the mouth of Dean Francis Sayre himself. Dean Francis Sayre was BUILDING a National Cathedral whereas the Very Rev. Gary Hall seems to be trying to tear it down.

    Words have meaning, don’t they?

    Lee and Jackson did not slaughter those innocents in Charleston, nor did the Confederate Battle Flag. Lee and Jackson would pray with us for them and their families if not lead those prayers themselves. It would be difficult to find two men more devoted to God than Robert E. Lee and Thomas Jonathan “Stonewall” Jackson.

    Prime Minister Winston Churchill wrote of General Robert E. Lee: “His noble presence and gentle, kindly manner were sustained by religious faith and an exalted character.” His minister told him, “If you are as good a soldier of the cross as you are of the Army, Christ will have a great worker in His Church.” President Theodore Roosevelt described General Robert E. Lee as: “the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth.” When President Gerald R. Ford reinstated Lee’s citizenship on July 24, 1975 he said: “As a soldier, General Lee left his mark on military strategy. As a man, he stood as the symbol of valor and of duty. As an educator, he appealed to reason and learning to achieve understanding and to build a stronger nation. The course he chose after the war became a symbol to all those who marched with him in the bitter years towards Appomattox … General Lee’s character has been an example to succeeding generations …” Douglas Southall Freeman, Lee Biographer, said of Lee: “Lee the soldier was great but Lee the man and Christian was greater by far.” Freeman’s summation of Lee was: “Character is invincible – that, it seemed to me, is the life of Robert E. Lee in three words.”

    In 1855 Thomas Jonathan (aka Stonewall in 1861) Jackson began teaching Sunday school classes to slaves in Lexington, VA which was a violation of Virginia’s segregation laws. In 1906, long after Jackson’s death, Reverend L. L. Downing, whose parents had been among the slaves in Jackson’s Sunday school, raised money to have a memorial window dedicated to him in the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church of Roanoke, Virginia—likely making “Stonewall” the only Confederate general to have a memorial in an African American church. That stained glass window is still in that African American church today.

    The National Cathedral has a stone gargoyle of the fictional killer of millions in Darth Vader, but chooses to no longer have a stained glass window dedicated to these MEN OF GOD that’s been in place since 1953?

    Is this what MY Episcopal Faith has become?

    Please leave the Lee and Jackson windows as they were.

    1. Kilty Maoris says:

      JAMES BOYD:
      Thank you for your citations. Most have never heard the repulsive statements of Gary Hall. All the better I am sure. Fortunately, his tenure was rather short and after causing so much dissension there is a new Dean of the Cathedral. We all can hope and pray he well guide this to the proper resolution and cease the problem with windows and hear the real history of this space. I suppose it would be far wiser to just tear the building down and build a parking lot. This is the people’s cathedral not the possession of one group or another. Accept our past as the past and let us enter a new era of learning from it.

  14. Tony Oberdorfer says:

    To James Boyd: To answer your question, I’m afraid that’s exactly what our Episcopal faith has become and the degradation started years ago long before the present controversy at the National Cathedral. It is as demeaning and insulting to decent black Americans as well as white to have to put up with clerics such as the Very Rev. Gary Hall who evidently care little about the history of our country but are willing to besmirch true American heroes in order to curry favor with the those engaged in propagating our country’s sad Zeitgeist. Thanks for speaking out, I wish more people would.

  15. John Payne says:

    If you assume that the Lee and Jackson windows are works of art, please explain to me the difference between what the powers that be at the National Cathedral are considering, and what ISIS did to the Greek temples in Palmyra and the Taliban did to the statutes of Buddha in Afghanistan. Destruction of art because you disagree with its politics I find very troubling.

  16. bob wadkins says:

    I am an Episcopalian. Thirty one of my direct and collateral ancestors died while fighting for the Confederate States of America. All of them fought under the St. Andrews “battle flag.” None of them fought to preserve the institution of slavery. They fought for the right of self government. Slavery is an economic institution, not a vehicle for the self righteous co-option of many of these comment makers. Whenever the opportunity and need converge there will be slavery. It is human nature.

    The real core excellence of the Episcopal church until the 1970s was that it recognized and accepted human nature for what it is and simply strove to have us employ the better parts of our nature in our dealings with each other. Not many are left who remember the profound feelings invoked by the collects at Morning Prayer. Now it is just “touchy – feely” and come to Jesus.` So, now we have those who think he or she is a better person for having condemned an historical fact. These are the kind of superficial emotions that are being promoted by our church — and have been for the last thirty years.

    Getting back…On second thought, there is probably no getting back to the old church and many of you will be happy with that thought believing that you are a force for “good.” So be it. The church has long since passed me by. You can leave the windows or remove them, I do not care. You can put the battle flag back in or not. I do not care. The Episcopal church is in its death throes and I no longer mourn its passing. The very idea that I should apologize for the actions and ideals of my ancestors and for Lee and Jackson shows how far we have slipped spiritually and intellectually.

    Robert L. Wadkins

    1. bob wadkins says:

      What does that mean?

  17. F William Thewalt says:

    The Soviet Union was the last government I knew that re-wrote history and it was condemned. Why should we re-write history? Let it stand as a teaching monument. See John Williamson, Feb. 22.

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