C O V E R F E A T U R E
Legacy Analysis Goals/Actions Apology Excerpts
|
Tension and suspicion between national and ethnic groups has long been a staple in North America's history, affecting the way we live, work, and worship.
Throughout its history the Seventh-day Adventist Church has had to grapple with the way members of our prophetic movement--who represent every nation, kindred, tongue, and people--relate to one another. At the end of October a summit on race relations was held at the General Conference, sponsored by the North American Division. For three and a half days summit participants, mostly members of the North American Division executive committee, listened to plenary presentations and participated in breakout groups that discussed a host of subjects designed to foster understanding and equality, and celebrate racial, ethnic, and gender diversity within the church. The following
pages contain excerpts from the plenary speakers, analysis of the
summit, personal reflections from summit participants, and a record of
the recommendations voted at the close of the summit.--Editors I grew up racist. Me, a racist? Crazy idea. But I was. I wasn't prejudiced against people with a dark skin, a yellow skin, or any color of skin. But toward the native peoples of my homeland Australia, the Aborigines, I was racist. I thought of them as scarcely above beast level, and certainly inferior to White Australians. Racism is like that--selective. Often racism is directed toward a group right alongside us. It sees differences as a threat and tries to handle them by building a wall. Another thing about growing up racist: the reason I wasn't aware of it was that my attitudes were the same as those of my brothers and sisters and the kids I played with at school and on the street. We were all racist, but I don't think we were born that way. Put a group of little children together--Red and Yellow, Black and White--and they're color-blind. They cope with language differences and find ways to cross communication boundaries easily and smoothly. But the corruption begins early. It comes from outside. From parents and siblings, then from other kids and then adults, they learn to pinpoint some people as different, people to be avoided or made fun of or despised, people who gradually lose their humanity and become caricatures, stereotypes. One of the great goals of life is to figure out who we are, to face ourselves and live with ourselves stripped of masks and pretense. That includes exploring the springs of childhood that shaped the man or woman. Including the springs of racism. America--meaning the United States of America in particular--is racist. For me, one of the major agents of self-discovery came from leaving Australia to live and work in India. Far from family and friends, I learned to appreciate an alien culture. In seeing the value of people of another skin I came to understand myself better--who I was and where I came from. I remember sitting one day in an audience of maybe 20,000 people. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was addressing a political rally. He was speaking in Hindi but suddenly broke off and, looking straight at the two White faces in the crowd--mine and a friend's--he switched to English. Then he went back to Hindi. Gradually, gradually the light dawned. I saw what I was, what I had come from. And I despised it. America--meaning the United States of America in particular--is racist. This country is now my country, and it is blessed as no other on God's good earth. But I weep at its history marked by the slave owner's lash and the exploitation of a people who happened to spring from a particular stock. I grieve over the manner in which the "classless" society still divides and separates person from person. Immigrants step off the plane or boat with stardust in their eyes, but everywhere in the land of the free and the home of the brave they get this message: Keep to your own. Don't try to move out of your class. Don't be uppity. The gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to freedom and oneness. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28, NIV), writes Paul. A shining vision, which we do much better at preaching than living. Somehow we figure that the gospel will take care of the poisons we absorb as kids. Just accept Jesus and learn the fundamental beliefs, and everything will be fine. But it isn't. The gospel has to be brought to bear specifically on poisons such as racism and social injustice. We need to be made aware of longstanding attitudes that oppose the gospel, that Christ went to the cross to put to death. I'm talking about Christian education in the most basic sense: confronting our poisons and prejudices, leading to confession, repentance, and new being. I believe with all my heart that God has a shining vision for Seventh-day Adventists. Of all
the hundreds of denominations out there, we are the most diverse, the most international. The call Here, I believe--here, in this my people--God wants to demonstrate to human beings and to angels the power of the risen Christ to do what no Great Society program of Lyndon B. Johnson's or civil rights legislation or affirmative action (and all these had a role) can accomplish. God wants to show the watching universe that a people, one people, can come together in love and mutual respect and appreciation to meet the returning Lord. One body, one new being, infinitely diverse but intricately and indissolubly one--that is the dream. We've come a long way, my friend, but we've yet a ways to go. So long as ethnic jokes get
a laugh among us, so long as we can't get past color or accent, so long as Jews have a hard time How long, O Lord? How long before we let You strip the masks away? How long before we yield to the Spirit of love and grace? How long until we love each other as You love us? William G. Johnsson, editor, Adventist Review |
