Raised as a young African American Christian in Birmingham Alabama, I am a firm believer in the collection of believers, called the Body of Christ, which transcends culture, language, and skin color. I hold firm to the message of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, and Mother Teresa, all of whom taught that peace and equality is God’s love shared among all people. As a religious studies student I began to ask, ‘if all the various forms of Christian belief are unified in the Body of Christ, then how much more must the body of believers in the One God encompass?’
This question has led my journey and stands at the heart of my Christian belief. No matter if one is Jew or gentile, rich or poor, a Christian or a Buddhist, all have a place in the tribe of God’s people. Thus, I see the call to all believers in the One God, no matter by what name the One God is known, to unite all the tribes into one people. For too long, we as a global community have allowed petty differences to divide us into factions, pitting brother against brother in the name some superior perspective on the unknowable divine. The one Transcendent Divine, God, is beyond our grasp and if we are ever truly to know the One God, we must be able to see all the ways in which God has revealed itself to humanity. It is in recognizing all of the diverse perspectives of belief in the Divine that we may be able to come closer to seeing the true face of God, rather than just a small portion.
At the same time if we are to survive, prosper, and thrive as a species, we must unite around the most basic experience we all share, namely simply being human, existence with all its joy and pain, love and hate, birth and death; and a mystery of the cosmos, the divine mystery which has haunted man since the beginning of time. This mystery is the question of true reality, of our most inherent nature, of our origins, the ultimate meaning of all existence. This is the One Transcendent Divine, the one calling all people to unite as one tribe; one people in One God. This is our calling, this is our salvation, and this is God beckoning all of us to the Kingdom; One God, one people, one tribe.
