Black/white. Muslim/Christian. High caste/low caste. Protestant/Catholic. Female/male. We/they.

It sometimes seems that the family of man, living on what is increasingly viewed as "a small planet," is caught up in an unending spiral of prejudice, suspicion, hatred. Racial prejudice, religious prejudice, ethnic, sexual, economic, and political. In a century vastly changed by new technologies, centuries-old prejudices remain stubbornly rooted in many parts of the world.

Yet alongside old hatreds, there's an increasing awareness among some people of all colors that racial difference does not have to mean superior/inferior relations. Others are showing by their successful efforts to live peaceably together that religious differences do not have to mean suspicion or friction.

The founder of this magazine was familiar with educational, gender, and religious prejudice—from chilly disdain to heated threats of violence. Mary Baker Eddy viewed prejudice as rooted in a materialistic view of mankind, separated from God and one's fellowman.

Describing a period when she received threatening letters while she was preaching, she writes, "I leaned on God, and was safe." This brief explanation of her response to religious prejudice hints at what her other writings elaborate: a conviction that the healing of prejudice is made possible not simply through blind dependence on a distant deity but as the outcome of the spiritual understanding that God, Spirit, is the Father of all.

This understanding—that we are all, in our genuine, God-created selfhood, linked by divine Love—is far more than an idealistic human longing for goodwill. It is grounded in unchanging spiritual fact, which—when lived—has the effect of moving human experience more into accord with divine reality, the allness of divine Love. The life of Christ Jesus is the supreme example of Love overcoming hatred and prejudice.

Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science, writes of "true brotherhood" in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent, war will cease and the true brotherhood of man will be established."

From the time of its founding, the Sentinel has frequently carried excerpts from clergy's comments or sermons on important issues of the day. Continuing this practice, the Sentinel recently interviewed two clergymen, Bishop Krister Stendahl and Rabbi Eugene Markovitz, who have been active in working to overcome religious prejudice, particularly in the field of Jewish-Christian relations.

Bishop Stendahl, a Lutheran, taught at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for many years and also served as Dean. In the mid-1980s he returned to his native country as bishop of the Church of Sweden in Stockholm, later returning to Harvard, where he now serves as chaplain of the Divinity School. Excerpts from his comments to the Sentinel appear below. Comments from Rabbi Markovitz will be published in next week's Sentinel.

Bishop Stendahl, you've been active for many years in addressing the issues of religious prejudice.

Yes, I have worked especially on Jewish-Christian relations. When someone deals with that, it's pretty obvious that one is dealing with a general phenomenon of what you might call prejudice and how one comes to grips with that.

I have been involved in the World Council of Churches in that part of the work called "Dialogue with People of Living Faiths." I think it is very important that it is called "dialogue with people" because it isn't religions that dialogue; it's always people.

From that I have learned basic rules that we try to implement.

The first rule is to allow the other to describe and define themselves. Seventy percent, if not more, of what one tradition, religious or otherwise, says about another tradition is usually a breach against the commandment "Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor." We always seem to describe the other so that we win, so to speak. And we pick out things in the other's faith or attitude that often enforce prejudice. (That certainly goes for Christian Scientists—they are seldom allowed by others to express their beliefs and practices in their own language.)

Second, let us compare equal with equal, the best in my own tradition with the best in the other.

Another stage in dialogue is that you find in the other something that is beautiful, admirable. And to admire does a lot to overcome prejudice. For instance, there is something in the Muslim—Sufi—poetry which is unparalleled and it's beautiful. And I think that there is no tradition in which you cannot find this beauty sort of thing, if you look for it.

There is much more to say about prejudice. Prejudice often is relatively low when there is little tension. But when the level of frustration rises, then the need to find something to take out your frustration on calls for scapegoats.

There are tendencies now, when the communist police lid is off Eastern Europe and Russia, that this religious prejudice pops up.

What do you see as the underlying causes of prejudice?

There's a terrible curse—thinking in terms of "we" and "they."

What works for peace and what works for hatred? What is dehumanizing? How do you deprive a person of full humanity in your mind?

The West has an enormous prejudice against Arab culture and religion. And the war with Iraq enforced this prejudice. We think, "They are constantly killing people; they have no sense of personal freedom"—all this kind of thing. Now, that is a deep, deep prejudice that goes back to the Crusades and the onslaught of Islam in the eighth century. But it is these Arabs that brought back culture and civility into a barbarous Europe. And we still have Arabic numerals and mathematics and philosophy. So where have we got this idea that they have not culture and we have culture? It's just prejudice. And it lies so deep.

All these things look different if you are a majority or if you are a minority. A majority, people in command, always think that they are people of goodwill, beyond prejudice. You might say: "There is so much prejudice in the world. If everybody just had a little more love ...." But it is only if you are sensitive—if you even bother to inquire what the other has against you—that you can start to deal with prejudice.

Do you see prejudice as basically of the same cloth—that is, religious prejudice, racial prejudice, social prejudice?

I wouldn't make too much distinction between racial and ideological and social. They are of the same cloth. They might have to be dealt with in slightly different ways.

I've been very moved lately by various kinds of religious and other antiprejudice activities. I've been struck by Jews and Christians and Muslims who have been addressing themselves to the problem of prejudice and peace—how one has, in a totally new way, gone back to the ground idea that we are all created in the image of God, "male and female," which makes it clear that God is not male.

Long before all covenants and revelations, long before Abraham, long before Moses, long before Mohammed, long before Christ Jesus. We are all created in the image of God. And that image may be tarnished, but it is still there.

What do you feel the role of prayer is in overcoming cycles of prejudice and hatred?

The life of prayer is, of course, part of Christian existence. I don't like to speak about prayer as a means by which one achieves things. I think it is very important when one prays that one listens: "Teach me to be sensitive so that my prayer is not like that famous prayer quoted in Luke: 'I praise You that I am not like....'"

I love that word of Paul when he says (Romans 8), "And sometimes we are so low that we do not even know what we should pray. But the Holy Spirit intercedes for us with unspeakable groans." One very central theme of prayer would be of realizing, of lifting up this recognition: that at the bottom, deep down, we are all created in the image of God.