Beloved Community Through the Eyes of Equality
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
October 19, 2025
Good morning, Friends and welcome to Light Reflections. This week we continue our series on Beloved Community by looking through the eyes of Equality. The scripture I have chosen to support my sermon is from
Colossians 3:9-11 from the Message version.
Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
Since I grew up in a very safe and pretty typical family home, and I will be honest, with privilege, being middle class and white, I remember the first time I found myself actually wrestling with equality.
It happened after my first summer working at a Christian camp in Albion, Indiana. After that summer, I headed to my freshman year at Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois to become a Director of Christian Education within the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.
During what they called Freshman Initiation, where they took us to a local camp to bond with other students and learn about the next four years, I participated in a small group activity. Our female group leader had some queries for us to ponder and then invited us to go around and share our answers with the group.
One of the questions she asked was,
“What have you been wrestling with over the summer before coming to college?”
I quickly scanned the group and realized I had some time because I was about halfway around the sharing circle. Most shared being nervous about going to college or leaving family and friends.
I was fairly secure in those things, but during the summer at camp, I had started asking a lot of questions about my faith. One being why women were seen as less than men in the church and not able to be pastors (Please note at this time I was not Quaker, but very conservative Lutheran).
So, when it came to me, I honestly shared about that issue with the group. Immediately, everyone became uncomfortable and stared at me. The leader quickly interrupted me by saying, “Aren’t you Lutheran? And don’t you know the Bible is clear on why women should not be pastors?”
All I had done was answer the question honestly that I was asked. Was there no place for questions in college? And does it really say that women shouldn’t be pastors in the Bible?
Well, these questions would continue to come up about equality. At first it was mostly gender issues that I struggled with. Growing up in a church body that said I must grow up to be the “Head of the Household,” that my wife must be submissive to me, and that it was my job to keep her in her place – especially at church…that, in itself, caused lots of problems.
Then my view of equality expanded once again. This time in my Foundations of American Education class in undergrad. There I had to read the book, Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol written in 1991 about children in American schools. For his entire life, Jonathan Kozol has been one of the nation’s most eloquent and outspoken advocates for equality and racial justice in our nation’s schools.
Because of what is happening in America, today, people are returning to his important work. At 87 years old he decided to publish his final book, An End to Inequality.
Today, being married to a teacher, I can simply talk to my wife about the growing inequalities she sees on a daily basis within our school systems.
Looking back, it was in that Foundations class that I was introduced to a threat to our public education system – vouchers. At that time, I was told it was something new the state of Indiana was pushing (remember I was at college in Chicago). But what the idea of vouchers has never fully taken into account is that equity and equality are not the same thing, and a shot at attending an independent school is not at all the same thing as an equal chance to succeed in an independent school.
I better not get started as this is frustrating, at times deeply racist, and sadly part of our Indiana culture.
Let me explain some of my other inequality “aha moments.”
My first semester in college, I drove a van full of fellow students from the lucrative City of River Forest, Illinois to the city of East Chicago, Indiana, a town devastated by the Steel Crisis of the 70s-80s. We went to help out a pastor I had met in high school. He asked if I would gather a group of students to come lead Vacation Bible School at his African American church. We thought it would be nice to bring cookies and prizes for the kids, but after we arrived, we realized this was nothing like the VBS programs in our white suburban churches.
Actually, the cookies and prizes had to be hid otherwise they would cause fighting among the kids. This VBS was much more structured and involved the entire community, and it was an entire day event. We served lunch for nearly 150 people of which about 50 were the children. We taught our lessons to entire groups of families. Some kids told us that they enjoyed VBS because they were actually able to have lunch. I remember one kid saying, “I haven’t eaten lunch all week.” That stuck with me. Later I would find out many of these kids were orphans of the streets left from their parents losing their jobs at the steel mills and having to find ways to survive.
The pastor told us that VBS was not a church program, but rather more of a community event. It happened every Saturday until winter to literally help feed the community and teach them a little about the Bible. One thing we noticed when traveling to the church was the grocery stores and pharmacies were all boarded up. All that was available to them was liquor stores and gas stations (which we were advised not to stop at). Talk about inequalities.
Or there was the time I visited a prison in Illinois as a staff member with Metro Chicago Youth for Christ. This night we sat in a circle with about 6 prisoners who were all handcuffed to their chairs, and those chairs were bolted to the floor. The group was all Black and Hispanic inmates who were in for life for dealing marijuana – which now can be bought legally on the same streets that they were picked up on in Illinois. While most white people who were caught with marijuana during this same time, were often not even charged. Talk about inequalities.
Or there was the time when I taught at the Chicago Bible Institute on Sacramento Blvd. just on the edge of Cabrini Green High Rise Projects – this is a couple years before they tore them down. The church that held the Bible college was also a winter shelter. I would arrive and a person from the church was assigned to watch my car while I taught 20+ female church leaders in a large classroom on the second floor the basics of the Bible.
One very cold night in Chicago, I arrived and noticed the person that watched my car was up helping someone on the steps of the church who was laying down. He saw me and motioned he would be with me in a moment. I rolled down my window and asked if everything was alright. He said, “No, this man was sitting here waiting to get in the shelter for the night and was shot by some people passing by.” He said it as though it happens all the time. I quickly jumped out of the car to see if I could help. The man said, “No, he was dead when I arrived at the church. I called the police, but they said they may not get around to sending anyone for several hours.” He asked for me to offer a quick prayer and then went over to watch my car. I asked, “What are we going to do with the dead man.” He said, “There is nothing we can do, the police said to leave him right where he was.” Shaken, I went in and had to teach. No one coming to my class even mentioned that there was dead man at the door of the church. When I left 2 hours later, he was still there. Talk about inequalities.
Or there was the time when I co-led an Urban Plunge for Students of Huntington University. I led this trip for all 5 of my years there, but my first one had us actually sleeping overnight in a homeless shelter and sharing showers and bathrooms with the homeless people. In the morning, we even ate the same breakfast before heading out on the streets to do ministry. I don’t think I slept the entire night. Lights had to stay on all night for everyone’s safety, people got in fights right next to us, and gunshots could be heard outside the barred windows. As I laid in my bed, all I thought of was how the director of the shelter told us that many of these people in the shelter at one time had had good jobs and families, but their mental illnesses and lack of professional care left them fending for themselves on the streets. Talk about inequalities.
So, I share these stories to help you understand my experiences and where I am coming from. I have seen, with my own eyes, inequalities in my world and I haven’t always known what to do about them – this is still true, today. Actually, in 30 years of ministry, I have seen too many inequalities, but I have also found at times the church has been guilty of creating or perpetuating those inequalities instead of committing to working to solve them.
This is one of the main reasons I was drawn to be among Friends or Quakers. When I first read through our Quaker Testimonies or S.P.I.C.E.S – I gravitated toward Equality. What did that mean within a religious setting? Were there Christians who actually believed all people were equal?
In the Pacific Yearly Meeting Faith and Practice, it explains what Equality means for us Quakers:
The Equality Testimony grows from the holy expectation that there is that of God in everyone, including adversaries and people from widely different stations, life experiences, and religious persuasions. All must therefore be treated with integrity and respect. Each person is equally a child of God. Friends recognize that unjust inequities persist throughout society, and that difficult work remains to rid ourselves, and the Religious Society of Friends from prejudice and inequitable treatment based upon gender, class, race, age, sexual orientation, physical attributes, or other categorizations. Both in the public realm — where Friends may “speak truth to power” — and in intimate familial contexts, Friends’ principles require witness against injustice and inequality wherever it exists.
It is interesting that Equality was one of the main reasons I was drawn among Friends, but in my first year of serving among Friends I found just the opposite being true. The Quakers I was part of in the Northwest struggled with equality and seeing that of God in all people – especially the LGBTQIA community. I also found that some of the Meetings in our Yearly Meeting would not allow our Female Superintendent to fill their pulpits. And there were more, but I will not go into that here. Sadly, the same is true among Quakers in Indiana and elsewhere across our nation, but this is why we must embrace this core testimony.
I am in agreement with Friend Wendy Swallow of Reno Friends Meeting, who proclaimed,
In times like these, the Equality Testimony can light the way to the work before us – how to push back against the growing inequities, how to reach out to the downtrodden and disadvantaged with kindness, integrity and support. And how to continue to fight for the rights of everyone in this troubled nation.
Folks, the more I have embraced the Equality Testimony, the more people I have been willing to see and open my heart to. The more I don’t want any type of supremacy or power authority to rule over me other than what we call that of God within in each of us.
This S.P.I.C.E. of Equality has another powerful aspect, it lays a foundation for mutual understanding and for empathy (which I spoke of last week). Clearly, as I shared in my earlier stories, there are undoubtedly some aspects of being human that separate us from one another. Our backgrounds and experiences may lead us to see things differently at times. Nevertheless, in the experience of the Divine, we are drawn together with the possibility of truly understanding one another, especially about those things that are most important.
This is also why our understanding of Equality is a fundamental principle of the Beloved Community. It means that all people have equal rights, opportunities, and access to resources, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, financial, or other differences.
Equality in the Beloved Community extends beyond laws and policies to include mutual respect and understanding between people from different backgrounds. This requires looking beyond differences to see the shared humanity in others.
For me, putting myself in places much different than the places I was raised, opened my eyes to the inequalities of my world. I had to realize I share a humanity with street orphans, people with mental illness, homeless people, and prisoners.
Jesus shared this in parable form, this way. He said,
I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’
And as I have said before in this series, true justice requires this kind of love, compassion, and empathy that Jesus is describing. By loving, having compassion, and being empathetic to our neighbors, you and I are motivated to give them what is due to them in justice, creating a foundation of respect, fairness, and ultimately equality.
I think the Spirit is calling us at First Friends to embrace our scripture for this morning. It is considered one of the most important equality messages in scripture. I love how Eugene Peterson expands the ideas to help us see it in a more robust manner. Imagine the Spirit speaking to us this morning. People of First Friends…
Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
That is embracing that of God in each of us – and that is also embracing true equality.
This morning, I have three practical things we can start doing to help us build the Beloved Community through they Eyes of Equality. And as I have learned in my own life, those must begin by working on ourselves first.
1. Address your own biases: Reflect on your own unconscious biases and take steps to prevent them from influencing your decisions and how you view others.
2. Educate yourself: Learn about those fighting for equal rights around you, better understand the challenges they face. Maybe take an implicit bias class, volunteer at a shelter, or maybe head to the library and check out a book about racial or gender discrimination, income/wealth inequality, or disability so you can challenge and speak up against bias and discrimination in your community.
3. Support others: work to become allies by listening to, supporting, and amplifying those in underrepresented groups.
Now, let us take a moment to center down and ponder the following queries.
· Where do I see inequalities in my community?
· Who do I have the hardest time believing there is that of God within?
· Who in my circle of influence needs some love, compassion, or empathy this week? How will I make that happen?