Breaking Down the Walls of Partition

This post was originally published on a now defunct Blog last August. It's one I thought worth saving.)

A few weeks ago, I listened in horror as an older sister made an aside during her talk in Sacrament meeting. She had been speaking about an ancestor who had not joined the Church. She said that this man, who lived in Columbus, Ohio, was a very shrewd business man. She therefore believed that he, “must have had some Jew blood in him.” She repeated this phrase twice more in connection with the management of his business affairs and being shrewd with a dollar.

Now, I admit that I’m given to over reaction. The classic anti-Semetic pamphlet “The Protocol of the Elders of Zion” was not distributed as we left the chapel and I saw no men in brown shirts. But I was deeply saddened to see that this racial stereotype still exists in my church and that no one else seemed to be affected by it or to have glimpsed its significance. This bit of anti-Semiticism has been around for a long time. You come across it, for example, in the Shakespearean character of Shylock in “The Merchant of Venice.” In the 1930s and 1940s, this and other similar stereotypes greased the wheels of Adolf Hitler’s war machine and were to some degree responsible for the extermination of ten million Jews and other ”racially inferior” human beings. I don’t for a moment, of course, believe that this sister, who is old enough to have been an adult when these things occurred, aligns herself with the holocaust. At least I hope not, but the fact remains that she was nonetheless comfortable with this bit of Nazi propaganda.

I said I listened with horror, but I was not surprised. In the last ten years, I have witnessed more blatant racism than I ever did in the 48 years that preceded it. In the late 1990s, I watched as a black man was denied a computer technology job that he was fully qualified for, solely because of the color of his skin. The man who denied him the job, a good man in most ways, a member of my church, washed the sin from his own hands, of course. He simply said to me, “Our customers would never accept him.” Quite recently, within a one week period, I heard a church members refer to rock and roll as jungle bunny music, a supervisor explain an Hispanic employee’s Monday morning absence as a hangover (both men are active church members) and a mid-management church leader discuss with the president of my company the dangerous implications of “a Canaanite in the White House.” (Both of these men were confused and mildy offended when I laughed out loud and tried to explain to them that Barack Obama’s opponent is actually the one whose name means “a son of Cain.”)

No one, I suspect, would like me to lengthen this list. All of this, of course, contradicts biblical Christian teaching. Be patient as I ask you to consider two passages taken from the Apostle Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Ephesians.

Here is the first. “Ye are all children of God by faith in Christ Jesus There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:26, 28).” Racial, class and gender distinctions lose their significance in Christianity. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ established equity. And should any future Christian seek to establish some sort of “separate-but-equal” doctrine, Paul tried to make sure they had no room to do so. Carefully ponder this description of Jesus’ atonement.

“Now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes were far off were made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; having abolished in his flesh the enmity…to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace (Ephesians 2:13-15).”

The spiritual significance of the atonement consists not only in making us one with God, but also making us one with each other. That the veil separating us from God in the temple was ripped open is an historical fact. Unfortunately, that every generation since that Good Friday has tried to repair those walls of partition between us, walls that Christ died to break down, is also an historical fact. How sad that the people of God, who rejoice in their free access to God through the temple veil, should be so stubbornly persistent in erecting walls and partitions between themselves and others.

Thus, when Barack Obama spoke in Berlin about tearing down walls, he was not peddling fluff instead of substance, as some have said. He was renewing the age old, clarion call of Christianity which, I would think, devout Christians in all churches would respect. But what are we given instead from the pretentious ideologues that form part of the Christian right? We see them pointing fingers of scorn; displaying attitudes of mocking that erupt in childish You-Tube videos like “Obamessiah.” Too many Christians, captured by ideology, have forgotten the Christian significance of tearing down those walls that divide us. If prejudice and discrimination fester in our churches, how can they not affect our political discourse as a nation? Logically, Senator Obama can lose this election and America can rise above intolerance and bigotry. Just as logically, Barack Obama cannot win if we do not. However we chose to vote, let us first seriously examine and then re-examine ourselves as to where we really are regarding this fundamental question.