In June 2015, Don Livesay, then-president of the Lake Union, offered an official apology on behalf of the union to the members of the Lake Region Conference for the racism that shaped Adventist work in our territory.
It's hard to imagine that ten years have passed since Elder Don Livesay, then-president of the Lake Union, offered an official apology on behalf of the union to the members of the Lake Region Conference for the racism that shaped Adventist work in our territory. I remember being there on that occasion, which took place at Camp Wagner to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the first regional conference. In the apology, he stated we should not dismiss the racism that was demonstrated in segregated churches and schools as a reflection of the broader culture because “God has not called His Church to reflect the evil of the world; God has called the Church to reflect His character, to treat each other in love — with the Golden Rule, in respectful ways, and to honor each other and all of God’s children.”
I had often wondered why our church, which started as being strongly abolitionist in the time when slavery existed, reversed its attitudes and behavior toward Blacks. Looking for a scriptural answer, I found it in reading about Paul’s encounter with Peter in Galatians 2:11–14. In that story, it appears that Peter was swayed by the cultural bias and pressure from the majority Jewish culture that surrounded him, which led him to fall to prejudice toward Gentile Christians and consequently face Paul’s rebuke. Confronting prejudice was not a unique problem for Paul, as he frequently addressed it in his letters to the churches. I believe prejudice is a sin problem that the enemy will continue to try to use by luring us to adapt to cultural bias to destroy the witness of the church.
One current example of cultural bias today is the xenophobic rhetoric that is prevalent and growing on several social media platforms. Merriam-Webster defines xenophobia as a “fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or anything strange or foreign.” Leviticus 19:34 teaches us that instead of fearing the stranger, we should “treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you.” Hebrews 13 also teaches that we should show brotherly love (Greek is Philadelphia) by showing hospitality (Greek is Philoxenia, “love of strangers”) to the strangers we encounter.
The problem, however, is that the simple reading of Scriptures did not stop the Adventist church from showing overt prejudice toward our Black members through much of our church history. My question for those of us living in 2025 is this — how can the church avoid repeating the evil of prejudice prevalent in our world, especially toward the strangers (including both documented and undocumented immigrants and refugees) who live among us? I believe that Paul again gives us the answer. After Paul recounts his rebuke to Peter about his surrendering to cultural bias, he also shares what he, as a former Pharisee raised in xenophobia, found as the key to eliminating prejudice in his life. His answer is found in Galatians 2:20:
“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”
Carmelo Mercado is vice president for multicultural ministries at the Lake Union Conference.
