BOISE, Idaho -- The Robert E. Lee window that once stood in the Cathedral of the Rockies First United Methodist Church in Boise has been placed in a different church. Well, sort of.
When members of the church expressed disapproval of the stained glass window depicting Robert E. Lee, no one could agree on what to do.
Some thought that removing it would be akin to pretending it never existed. If it was destroyed or hidden, they reasoned, they would be forgetting a past from which they should be learning.
Others thought that keeping it up was allowing Lee, a former commander of the Confederate Army, to remain in a place of honor.
At last, a compromise was proposed: The window should be placed in the Idaho Black History Museum. Phillip Thompson, the executive director of the museum, quickly agreed.
“I don’t think the answer is to whitewash history and pretend like that never transpired,” Thompson said by phone. “But you can put them in a good space that allows you to provide the narrative around it. That’s when we have museums.”
The stained glass, which features the general standing with Presidents Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, was put up in 1960. The Idaho Statesman previously reported that a church committee investigating the origins of the window discovered that then-pastor Herbert E. Richards likely had helped choose the image of Lee with Lincoln to promote a spirit of reconciliation between white Northerners and Southerners living in Idaho.
The window, which was removed in 2020, was unveiled in the museum last week to a group of about a dozen invitees. In attendance was the Rev. Duane Anders, senior pastor at Cathedral of the Rockies.
Thompson previously pointed out to the Statesman that the Idaho Black History Museum is housed in a former church. In some ways, the item has come full circle: it will still be symbol of the past and reconciliation, but the things being remembered and reconciled are different.
Formerly the St. Paul Baptist Church, the white wood-frame structure was erected in 1921 as the first Black church in Idaho, according to the museum’s website. Once located at the corner of Warm Springs and Broadway, it was moved to its new location in Julia Davis Park in 1998 after the congregation outgrew the building, according to St. Paul Baptist Church’s website.
“Having the window at the Black History Museum allows the story to continue,” Anders said. “It allows — in church words — the repentance to continue. Repentance in original form means to change the way you think. So this is a church in Boise changing the way they think about the images that were in their place of worship.”
Thompson said discussions around what to do with controversial historic items are important, and he rejected the idea that there is ever an easy answer.
“We’ve totally lost sight of this notion that there’s more than two sides to everything,” Thompson said. ”It blows me away how absolutist everyone has become in discussing something that’s very nuanced and very complicated.”
The Lee window was replaced in the cathedral with a new one depicting Leontine Kelly, the first Black woman — and second woman ever — to be selected as a Methodist bishop. The ceremony in which she was chosen was held in the Cathedral of the Rockies in 1984.
People can visit the Idaho Black History Museum from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Saturdays and from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Fridays.
