Church on racist house decor

Re.: Home’s display condemned (Castanet, Oct. 27)

This is indeed a "terrible public display," and a cause for heartbreak in our community.

As near neighbours along Richter Street, we write from St. Michael's Anglican Cathedral to express our shared sorrow in response to this racist provocation, and to respond as Christians to the idea that the Bible supports slavery and its racist roots.

The writings of the Bible come from times and places in which slavery existed, and was often assumed as a given for societal structure. But the way of Jesus led the earliest Christian communities to gather across ethnic, class and gender lines to share meals, prayer, possessions, friendship, and service to others, regardless of who they were.

The last book of the Bible paints a picture of a rainbow of peoples and cultures gathering together in the city of God and the waters of life flowing out to all the world.

Yes, the church allowed this vision to be obscured along the way in ways that contributed to the perpetuation of slavery and cut against the way of Jesus. Yet that vision of unity in diversity is a biblical vision and has inspired many—think of William Wilberforce toward the abolition of slavery and Martin Luther King Jr and the (U.S) civil rights movement—to speak and work to bring an end to exactly the kind of structural racism and the violence that has been depicted along Richter Street as part of Halloween festivities.

On this Halloween, as we dress up and decorate with the things that frighten us, our hope would be that the rainbow (and biblical) vision of human dignity would contribute to transforming our fears into respect and care for one another, and that the powers that bring death would be exchanged for a genuine sharing of life.

Lynne McNaughton, Bishop of the Anglican Diocese of Kootenay and

David Tiessen, Dean of St. Michael and All Angels Anglican Cathedral