Message from Church Relations

Our Day in History

We tend to think of history as something that happened in the past. We study history to remember the contributions of men and women who contributed to the present we now inhabit. For 50 years popular culture in the United States celebrated diversity and sought to create a society in which everyone was valued and protected.

That's all changing. The POTUS has decreed that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) be eliminated from government websites. General Colin Powell, first Black commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was for a time deleted from the website of Arlington National Cemetery. Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in the National Baseball League and served in the armed forces was also removed from a Department of Defense website; as was Ira Hayes, a Pima indian who was one of those who raised the American flag over Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, and the Navajo code-breakers who helped win World War II in the Pacific.

Those changes have since been restored. But it seemed for a while that the only Americans worth celebrating had to be White and male. (A reference to the bombing of Hiroshima was removed because the name of the B-29 bomber was Enola Gay).

Those of us with friends and family members in the queer community are right to be concerned. We remember the violence and prejudice unleashed against Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals in Germany prior to World War II. Many have pledged "Never Again." Yet every day news reports tell of people detained for deportation simply because they are not White, and dare to speak out against the policies of this administration.

We have to ask ourselves how the world might be different if Christians had stood up for diversity, equity, and inclusion in Hitler's Germany. The answer is remarkably the same as it is when we stand up to bigotry and prejudice in the United States. Now as then, "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood [well, it is], but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Eph. 6:12).

Tomorrow's history is being written today.

Stephen Chavez, Director of Church Relations

Seventh-day Adventist Kinship International

communications@sdakinship.org