A stained glass window depicting Confederate General Robert E. Lee has been removed from a Boise, Idaho, church, in favor of one with Bishop Leontine Kelly. Lincoln was also featured alongside Lee and the country’s first president George Washington, while he served as bishop of Virginia during the Civil War. The new stained glass window will now show late Bishop Leontine Kelly, who died at the age of 92 in 2012 after living with her family in Richmond, Virginia.
“‘We voted to remove it, not knowing whom we would put in the window, but we would figure out something to represent,” senior pastor Duane Anders told the Statesman. “So for a year and a half, the windows have been clear. In a sense, we let some light in.”
St. John’s Episcopal Church in Idaho came up with fifty possibilities for replacing the Confederate general’s image. After a year and a half, the church finally decided on someone to represent them after the window was blanked out – the bishop. The cost of the new stained-glass window was $25,591. The church feels that because they did not want to endorse the Confederacy.
Among the fifty options for the stained glass window, Bishop Kelly was selected. She was a well-known figure in the Christian church as a result of her leadership.
“As we started working through the names, one just kept rising to the top because of our connection to the person and their connection to Boise,” Anders said. “And that’s Bishop Leontine Kelly.”
Willet Hauser Architectural Glass in Minnesota designed the new window. The church’s endowment fund was used to pay for a costly replacement window depicting Robert E. Lee, which had been previously installed.
Bishop Kelly’s children are looking forward to visiting the Boise church so they can see the window erected in memory of their mother.
“Some people were saying it can’t happen, it’s not going to happen,” Kelly’s daughter Angella Current Felder said. “So the fact that it happened, for those of us who recognize and believe in the Holy Spirit, it was divinely guided.”
John Current, Kelly’s son, was a huge admirer of his mother and was particularly proud of her for overcoming the odds to become a Bishop in a male-dominated profession.
“What she inherited there was a wooden church that had been built 100 years earlier, probably right around the time of the emancipation of the slaves, and a hole that had been dug for a new foundation for a new church,” Current said. “She, confronted with ‘Where do I go from here?’ responded, ‘God.’ It was a very male-dominated culture. However, Jesus did violate the customs of the culture in that he talked with women, shared with women. Women were part of the entourage of Jesus Christ. God calls whomever God would call.”
Rev. Chris Austin serves as senior pastor at the Hope United Methodist Church in San Francisco.
“Her life is a culmination of many generations in the Methodist Church,” he stated. “She was a daughter of a Methodist pastor, sister of a Methodist pastor, she married a Methodist pastor, and she’s the mother of Methodist pastors. That’s a unique legacy, and we’re honored to see her memory in stained glass.”
