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From The Pastor's Corner 

March 26, 2008

Dear Editor:

We have recently been exposed to a new controversy concerning Senator Barack H. Obama on the race issue.  I do not agree with Senator Obama on most issues but I do agree with him that we should not make race an issue in this country.  It is time for us to get past the injustices of the past and build bridges bringing people together.  What we call a race issue is really not a race issue it is an ethnic issue.  There is only one race and that is the human race.  We have different pigment in our skin but we are all of one blood.  We need to get past judging others by the color of their skin and deal with each person as an individual.

I grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y. in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s.  I went to college in South Carolina in the 1960’s.  I had the opportunity of attending High School in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn before going to a segregated school in South Carolina.  I have enjoyed close relationships with individuals of all ethnic origins.  We had our differences and we had our similarities.  We have had and still have injustices here in America but the conditions here are far better than in any other country in the world.

We must stop dividing people the way Pastor Jeremiah Wright has done in some of his sermons and work for reconciliation.  We must work together the way we did during the days of desegregation.  People of different skin colors joined together to overcome the prejudices of the past.  Democrats and Republicans joined together to change the laws of our land to give equal opportunity to those who had been held back for too long.

I am thankful that God has allowed me to pastor a multi-ethnic congregation in the midst of a primarily Anglo-Saxon Community.  I have sought to bring people together and not to divide them.  Jesus worked for reconciliation and not for retribution.  Senator Obama should be considered for the issues that he endorses and not for the color of his skin.  I like the man even though I do not like the things that he supports.  I hope that when people go to the polls in November they will vote intelligently based upon the issues that face us as a country and not based upon the color of a person’s skin or their gender.

 

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Anthony L. Gibson

Pastor, Calvary Baptist Church

988 Post Road

Darien, CT 06820

203 655-0318