With prayers, poetry, hymns and history, the Washington National Cathedral dedicated two new racial justice-themed stained glass windows Saturday.
The windows replaced two others that were removed in 2017 and paid tribute to Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Each of those windows included depictions of the confederate battle flag.
Here’s what’s happening this morning at the Washington National Cathedral @WTOP pic.twitter.com/aiw7XBJRtO
— Dick Uliano (@DickUliano) September 23, 2023
“Simply put, these windows were offensive and they were a barrier to the ministry of this cathedral,” said The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, dean of the Washington National Cathedral, in a news release. “And they were antithetical to our call to be a house of prayer for all people.”
The racial justice-themed stained glass windows depict four different protest scenes calling for “Fairness and No Foul Play.”
In the new work, African Americans are shown marching — on foot or in a wheelchair — from left to right across the four windows. Some march in profile while some directly face the viewer with signs proclaiming “FAIRNESS” and “NO FOUL PLAY.” Light floods in through the sky-bright panes of white and blue above the figures.
They have been named the Now and Forever windows by the Cathedral, with the hope that they will last for centuries.
“It is a joy to dedicate these new windows … that tell a different story that lift up the values of justice and fairness and the ongoing struggle for equality among all God’s children,” said Very Rev. Hollerith.
The windows are designed by artist Kerry James Marshall and fabricated by Andrew Goldkuhle, Washington National Cathedral’s stained glass artisan.
“The church in general, across all faiths and this National Cathedral in particular, exists as a symbolic representation of humankind’s aspirations toward perfection, and a desire to keep the promise of redemption when we offend and fall short of the impossible,” said Marshall at Saturday’s event.
Marshall added that artworks “can invite us and anybody who sees them to reflect on the propositions they present, and to imagine one’s self as a subject and an author of a never-ending story that has yet to be told.”
Part of the racial justice display includes a poem that will be permanently inscribed on stone tablets beneath the windows: “American Song” by Elizabeth Alexander.
“A single voice raised, then another,” it says. “We must tell the truth about our history. … May this portal be where the light comes in.”
Alexander told The Associated Press in an interview Friday that the poem referred both to the literal light from the windows, which she said beautifully illumines the surrounding stonework, and the figurative light that “enables us to see each other wholly and in community.”
At the 90-minute ceremony, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Ketanji Brown Jackson — the first Black woman to serve on the Supreme Court — read an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson US Supreme Court reads excerpt from MLK Jr’s Letter From Birmingham Jail @WTOP pic.twitter.com/P0bctpAi7i
— Dick Uliano (@DickUliano) September 23, 2023
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” Jackson read from King’s famed message while jailed in Alabama. “The goal of America is freedom. … We will win our freedom.”
The dedication service was presided over by The Right Rev. Marianna Edgar Budde, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington who offered prayers before blessing the stained glass windows.
“Accept our offering of these windows, which we now dedicate to you for the adornment of this cathedral as a house of prayer for all people and for the inspiration of your people grant that as the light shines through them in many colors, so our lives may show forth the beauty of your manifold gifts of grace through Jesus Christ,” Budde said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
