Article May 12, 1997 Issue

Eliminating religious discrimination

Margaret Wellford Tabor

How can you and I heal religious bigotry in our world, our community, our church, our family, our home? The healing begins with a closer look at the way one practices his or her own faith. Christ Jesus taught, "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13:35). He insisted that his followers not only love their enemies but bless and pray for those who persecuted them—as he would do, even on the cross.

So long as we believe that we all have separate minds capable of debating, judging, criticizing, erring, offending, and in general causing havoc, we are forgetting that there is one God, one Mind, and that God commanded the light to reveal order in heaven and earth. The dawning of this light transformed the religious persecutor Saul into the Apostle Paul. His letters to the early Christian churches call for prayer that transforms divisive personal beliefs into the oneness of loving one another. His own regeneration taught him that there is one God to worship, one Christ to recognize and follow, and one Church to unite with.

He explains to the church at Corinth: "By one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit" (I Cor. 12:13). He beseeches the Christians at Ephesus to be worthy of their calling, to maintain unity by expressing humility and meekness, to be patient with one another, to seek peace until "we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ" (see Eph. 4:1-3, 13).

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