(TheBL) — A Methodist church in Boise, Idaho, has sparked controversy by replacing a vast stained glass window that depicted founding fathers Robert E Lee, George Washington, and Abe Lincoln, with an image of Leontine Kelly, the first black female bishop in the United States wearing an LGBT rainbow scarf.
Officials at the Cathedral of the Rockies, a United Methodist Church congregation located in Boise, announced the decision to change the stained glass window, which dates back to 1960, in June 2020 but only this week did the change take effect.
“The Gospel of Christ Jesus compels us and our Baptismal vows embolden us to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves,” the statement read, in an attempt to forcibly justify the decision to remove the stained glass window of the founding fathers of the country, claiming without substantiation that they represent the alleged systemic racism prevalent in the United States.
The church board went on to note that the decision was made after conducting several “prayers and thoughtful deliberation,” and labeled Lee’s image as “divisive and hurtful.”
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“We believe this section of our window to be inconsistent with our current mission, to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” they continued.
“Further, such display is a barrier to our important work resisting evil, injustice, and oppression. Symbols of white supremacy do not belong in our sacred space,” once again implying that the founding fathers promoted or promote white supremacy.
At that time, the statement confirmed that a black person would replace the image, although it was not determined which one it would be.
Today it has been confirmed that the person chosen was Leontine Kelly, the first black woman bishop in the United States.
The leftist discourse promoted in critical race theory attempts to break with American traditions and blame the country’s founding fathers for alleged systemic racism that prevails to this day.
Robert E Lee, a former Civil War general, has been socially condemned today because there are records of him owning slaves, which has led to statues honoring him being torn down across the country.
Now the decontextualized analysis of critical theory has even made its way into religious circles that, in some cases, are revisiting their history in an attempt to modify issues of the present without regard to breaking with tradition in the process.
Leontine Kelly, chosen as the replacement for Lee’s image, was elected as the first black female bishop in a ceremony held in 1984.
Kelly was born Leontine Turpeau to a Methodist minister father and feminist mother in Washington, D.C., on March 5, 1920. The Daily Mail reported that she grew up in Cincinnati and attended West Virginia State University before leaving to marry her first husband, Gloster B. Current, with whom she had three children before the couple divorced.
In the 1970s, she completed a master’s degree in theology from Union Theological Seminary in Richmond. She was ordained a deacon in 1972 and an ‘elder’ in 1977.
She then served in the San Francisco Episcopal Area until her retirement in 1992, where she developed as a political-social activist advocating LGBT ideology.
In fact, the most controversial thing about the image that was placed in the church is that Kelly is wearing a scarf with the colorful rainbow associated with the LGBT movement.