Jacques Derrida recounts a story of Maurice Blanchot in which the Messiah stands at the gates of Rome, unrecognised, dressed in rags. One man who recognised that this was the Messiah went up to him and asked him, "When will you come?" (Caputo [editor], 1997: 24) The story is very profound. The Seventh-day Adventist church preaches the Advent of the Messiah as a key doctrine. The messianic belief that God is a God that comes, is the foundation for our community in the now. We gather for worship because we believe that God’s coming is not merely a future present; it is imminent. We would agree with Derrida that waiting for the Messiah is a special way of waiting for the future right now. This waiting is structured by openness to the "other". We would also agree that "[t]he responsibilities that are assigned to us by this messianic structure are responsibilities for here and now." (1997: 24)

But what are the responsibilities assigned to us by this belief that is so fundamentally constitutive of our community? How do we reflect this belief in our every day practice and in our attitudes, particularly in our attitude to the "other"?

Admittedly this question is very broad. It calls for a further question: who is the other? The "other" could be God. Waiting for the Messiah, means being open to God as "other". The "other" could be outsiders to our specific community of faith: non-Christians, other denominations. The "other" could also be people who are different within the church: how do we deal with different cultures and race in the church (or different sexual orientations for that matter)?

I believe that each of these questions is closely related. For the purpose of this paper, I would like to examine the messianic implications of race relations in the Seventh-day Adventist church as relations with the "other". I would particularly like to focus on multi-racial couples, and how perceptions of race, and racism relate to them. My thesis is that the Seventh-day Adventist church, as a white, Euro-American church, have often failed to recognise the messianic implications of our Adventist message in the now. We happily classified different races as "other", but rather than fostering openness, we built walls to separate that which was different from ourselves. In this sense we have also overlooked the Messiah at the gates of Rome and lost what fundamentally constitutes community.

Before I continue, I need to clarify where my interest in the topic originates. My concern with the question of interracial couples originated when I (a White Afrikaner) entered into an interracial relationship with a "Coloured" girl from Newlands-East, Durban. We met by accident, enjoyed each other’s company, and we are due to be married in September of this year (1999). As a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist church, several lay members, as well as church leaders, felt free to offer their opinions and misgivings on our relationship. Though I hope that my personal experiences will not taint the objective rigour with which I will attempt to examine the question of race in the Seventh-day Adventist church, this study forms part of a personal search for me to establish how I still fit into this specific redemptive community.

In discussing the question of interracial couples in the church I will draw much of my analysis from Maureen, T. Reddy, who wrote a book called, Crossing the Color Line: Race Parenting, and Culture. I will also use Cornell West, the famous proponent of African-American liberation and philosophy. The title of one of his famous books is reflected in my caption: Race Matters. The concepts of community, and messianic openness to the other, is inspired by various authors, particularly the philosophy of Jacques Derrida as outlined in the book Deconstruction in a Nutshell, edited by John D. Caputo. Derrida’s view of difference has been described as "deeply multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-racial, representing… a highly miscegenated ‘polymorphism.’" (Caputo [editor], 1997: 107)

Interracial marriage tends to excite, scare, and anger many people. The issue of interracial love is still highly charged and riddled with taboos, misconceptions, sexual myths, and stereotypes. Though miscegenation laws were repealed in the United States in 1967, and in South Africa in 1985, there still is intense pressure not to date or marry across racial lines. This is a reality even within the church.

Several authors have written about the social pressure that they felt not to date or marry across racial lines. Mark and Gail Mathabane tell how friends and family expressed strong misgivings and even rejection towards them when they started dating each other as an interracial couple (Mathabane, 1992: 60-82). Maureen Reddy tells how people originally did not take her relationship with her (black) partner seriously (Reddy, 1994: 38).

My personal experiences reflect the descriptions of these reactions to interracial relationships to a large extent. The first reaction that I perceived was that observers of our relationship wanted to downplay the reality of our relationship. We were told not to become too serious with each other in case one of us gets hurt. One church leader told me, that as a pastor, I was "allowed to ‘lay on hands’, but not to go any further." Later in the paper I will show how these comments are indicative of a psychosexual racist logic which tend to depict black people as people with sexual prowess and possible objects of lustful desire.

When the relationship continued a while longer, a leader in the church told me in his office that I must think carefully about the consequences of the relationship. When I asked him to clarify these consequences he mentioned some points that concerned him. He said that the church would find it very difficult to give me a pastoral district in a traditional white area, should I choose to marry a coloured girl. According to him, I would not be able to gain the respect of conservative church members. The community at large would also not respect me, and this would hamper evangelism efforts. He also stated that other predominantly white conferences (dioceses) would not be very keen to call me. During further discussions, the leader told me that it is unwise to enter into a relationship that has so many pressures impacting on it from the start, when it is clear that "normal marriages" themselves suffer under great pressure. He told me to consider the impact on my children, the identity crises, and discrimination that they would face. He also mentioned that there were such a wide variety of girls available that I did not have to choose an "ugly", or "fat", or a coloured girl for that matter. Later in the paper I hope to indicate that these comments are indicative of what Cornel West calls a "scientific" racist logic which measures beauty and worth according to preconceived graeco-roman standards. These standards or "tastes" then become the rationale for discrimination at various levels of society, particularly in the context of neoclassical capitalism.

In response to these comments, I asked for a meeting with the executive staff of the conference to clarify the official conference viewpoint on interracial marriage. During this meeting I was told that the church would not dictate who I could marry in terms of race, but the same concerns were presented with more subtlety and with an added suggestion that my concerns about my place in the conference seem to indicate that I may have a self-image problem.

Though I perceived strong pressure from the above (white) church leaders, a few (particularly black) leaders were very supportive. They spoke to me, asked me what qualities I saw in our relationship and encouraged me to continue with the relationship.

A family member phoned me one day after we had announced our engagement, and mentioned that I would always be welcome in his house, but that he would not accept my fiancée under his roof.

My experience confirms the prejudice and pressures that authors on books of interracial marriage describe. This pressure does not seem to differ much between the United States, and South Africa. The church (Seventh-day Adventist church) is also not free from these pressures. My experience indicate that race still matters, perhaps even more within the church, than in society. The question that needs to be asked is what drives these concerns? Why are interracial relationships so controversial?

In 1903, W.E.B. DuBois asserted in The Souls of Black Folk, that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line." (Quoted in Reddy, 1994: 7). The fact that race matters has been a crippling force that inhibits equitable and life giving relationships between people. This same concern still seems to be present at the end of the century. Cornell West states in Keeping Faith:

According to DuBois the colour-line divided whites and blacks both publicly and privately, keeping most jobs, money, neighbourhoods, educational opportunities, and political power on the white side of that line and consequently separating white and black consciousness. In DuBois’ view, black people lived behind a veil that whites do not penetrate. Despite suggestions on how to lift this veil, the predominant consensus today is that the differences still exist. A 1992 Boston Globe study of black and white people aged eighteen to twenty-nine reported that people of both races admitted to have few friends of a race different from their own, "whites spoke about racism as if it were mostly in the past, blacks reported daily, ongoing struggles with discrimination." A disturbing view reflected by this study, showed that both white and black, even those committed to racial harmony, viewed race as a divide that could not be bridged. Most black people believed that white people could not understand them "Seldom do we hear blacks saying that they can never understand whites." (1996: 8) The church does not function in isolation of society, and it can be argued that this divide will be reflected in the social structure of the church.

The question needs to be asked: What is race? Most contemporary scientists, accept today that historical division of human beings into distinct biological groups according to skin colour, each with its distinct physical and psychological characteristics, is untenable. It has been proven that 85% of genetic diversity comes from the differences between individuals of the same colour in the same country. About 5-10% comes from differences between inhabitants of different countries. Differences between people with different skin colours reflect more or less this same ratio (Tizard, 1993: 1,2). Race is therefore not a biological category.

Another definition for race must therefore be found. Reddy states that

In West’s view the postmodern black diasporan intelligentsia are increasingly becoming aware of the "innocent notion of the essential Black subject… the recognition that ‘Black’ is essentially a politically and culturally constructed category." (1993: 19) "Whiteness", for West, is a politically constructed category parasitic on "blackness". According to him, European immigrants arrived on American shores perceiving themselves as "Irish," "Sicilian," "Lithuanian" and so on. They had to learn that they were "white" principally by adopting an American discourse of positively valued whiteness and negatively charged blackness. The social theory used to define blackness over and against whiteness in this way points to the profoundly hybrid character of what we mean by "race," "ethnicity," and "nationality." (1993:20)

Though definitions of black and white therefore seem rather arbitrary, the political and cultural implications are frighteningly real. Race distinctions have been an instrument of power, control, and ownership. Race has been a basis for discrimination for centuries. The institute of slavery in the colonial and imperialist era was founded on race classifications that viewed black people as only partially human. White men owned black slaves. Reddy describes the power-relations that constituted slavery as follows:

This description of the unequal power-relations between white supremacists and black people seem to indicate that economic exploitation, rather than an abhorrence of interracial sex, was the main driving force for the so-called anti-miscegenation laws. "These laws were motivated by the cultural advantage they secured for whites." (1994:12) They were purposed to maintain white supremacy by refusing blacks the opportunity to become the economic peers of whites. It would therefore not be incorrect for Porterfield to say that "cross racial sex is one of the most virulent and emotional foundations which supports the United States castelike system." (Quoted in Smith, 1996: 7)

White protectionism is clearly seen in the phenomena that "one drop of black blood" in a person’s genes affords him or her classification as black, rather than white. The terms used for people of mixed race are generally derogatory. People of mixed race are often called mulatto’s (Portugese for "young mule") in the United States. The French equivalent was metis (mongrel dog). In Britain, people were referred to as mixed-breed, half-breed, or half-castes (Tizard, 1993: 2). While the black community does not always accept people of mixed race, the oppression that they experience at the hand of whites generally take on the same form as black oppression.

While Reddy and West portray these political factors in an American context, I believe that they would ring true for Africa and for the rest of the colonial world where slavery was practised. As such it is helpful to outline, not only the oppression experienced by black people, but also the taboo’s that surrounded (and still surround) inter-racial romance.

There is no denying of the fact that race distinctions are politically motivated and are the result of attempts by one group of people (usually white) to gain economic, political, and therefore social advantage over others. The value systems that drive these hegemonic efforts could be seen to derive from Hobbesian psychological egoistic ethics which holds self-interest to be the dominant motivation of human action (West, 1993: 254). Clearly race distinctions are therefore not harmless forms of classification, which promote order and simplicity, but powerful tools for supremacism and oppression. As such racism flies in the face of Christian faith which believes that all human beings are equal in the sight of God and should be afforded equal opportunities.

Arguments against interracial marriage, is therefore not a possibility in the church. It objectifies the "other" as an item that can either be used, exploited or subjected according to the tastes of the one who has most power. It would, however, be naïve to jettison all racial categories because the realities of racial oppression are real, and denying that race is a factor would also be a denial that people suffer under racial oppression.

Before we look at how the church could address racism and racial discrimination, it will be helpful to examine the current social theories of race, racial oppression and racial empowerment. In this section I hope to approach the question from an African American perspective. In the following section, I will give a particular post-modern "deconstructive" perspective that could be useful for a Christian approach to racism, racial discrimination. In the following two sections I view the particular difficulties and challenges faced by interracial couples and multi-racial people as part of a larger perspective of racial discrimination and oppression.

In this section I would like to outline how black social theorists have described their experiences of racism and suggested that it be overcome. I draw largely from an article by Cornel West, which is set in the context of African American experience of racism in the United States. While I recognise that it would be unwise to adopt African American realities in a wholesale way to the South African situation, I believe that the same social theories applied to the South African situation would result in similar descriptions. West’s genealogical materialist position also allows for internationally different experiences of race oppression and racism.

West, describes the power-politics that drives the multi-levelled oppression of black people in much greater depth. He identifies conservative, liberal, and left-liberal conceptions of African American oppression. Following that he examines four influential Marxist attempts to understand African American oppression. He finally argues that a more adequate conception of African American oppression must transcend the Marxist tradition with neo-freudian and poststructuralist reflections on the role and function of difference, otherness and marginality in contemporary philosophical discourse. West calls that a genealogical materialist position (1993: 252).

Conservative views of African American oppression look at oppression from the perspective of capitalist market mechanisms. White employers are understood to discriminate against black people in the market place on the basis of neoclasical economics and utilitarian psychology. Black workers are discriminated against in order to attain the highest economic yield. This discrimination can take place on pseudo-rational grounds like sociobiological classifications of blacks as genetically inferior to whites (blacks have lower IQ’s), or intimations of cultural inferiority (black culture inhibits black people from being competitive in society). The discrimination can also be completely arbitrary. In either case, not much room is left to challenge the status quo, because the market rationality is most important. State intervention is strongly discouraged according to this view. The aim is for oppressed blacks to become self-reliant and to acquire efficacious habits for upward social mobility (1993: 253,254).

Liberal views adopt the same neoclassical economic perspective and utilitarian value system as the conservatives. They however highlight institutional barriers that lead to racist oppression. This oppression can be alleviated to some degree through state intervention, which provide for some or other form of affirmative action or state intervention, which provides cultural upliftment, bridging opportunities, or education for black people. Both liberals and conservatives assume that "rough justice" between black and white Americans can be achieved if black productivity is given its rightful due, namely, if there is close parity in black and white incomes. Liberal viewpoints call for state intervention while conservative views expects market mechanisms to drive the equalising processes. Both these perspectives are intellectually and politically embattled (1993: 255).

West gives a more rosy description of left-liberal views, which sees African-American oppression as an ever-changing historical phenomenon which can be traced through slavery, conservative and liberal economies, as well as neoconservative and neoliberal economies. Left-liberals don’t adopt neoclassical economics as the sole tool for their descriptions, but rather choose structural-functionalist sociology. They often dialogue with Marixist thinkers and are deeply influenced by sophisticated forms of Marxist historical and social analysis. They eclectically oscillate between conservative and liberal suggestions to address race oppression (1993: 256,257).

After discussing conservative, liberal and left-liberal views on African-American oppression, West gives an overview of four Marxist theories of African-American oppression. West is highly critical of the failed Marxist legacy based on monocausal, unilinear philosophy of history, which accurately predicts historical outcomes, and the existing Marxist regimes. He, however, believes that Marxist theory, as a methodological orientation remains indispensable in grasping distinctive features of African American oppression (1993: 258).

The methodological orientation of Marxist theory requires two starting points: The principle of historical specificity, and the principle of materiality of structured social practices over time and space. The dialectical interaction between these two starting points opens possibilities to view the interplay of subject and structure in terms of dynamic social practices during a particular time and in a specific space. Each historical moment is viewed as a multidimensional transaction between subjects shaped by antecedent structures (discursive formations) and traditions (extradiscursive formations) and prevailing structures and traditions transformed by struggling subjects (1993: 259,260).

African American social theorists have proposed four variations of Marxist analysis for African American oppression. Class Reductionists have described African American oppression as class exploitation and viewed complex racist practices as merely conscious profiteering by capitalist owners of production. West critiques this view as too simplistic and ignoring the fact that racism predates capitalism. The class super-exploitationist perspective holds that "African Americans are subjected to general working-class exploitation owing to racially differential wages received and/or to the relegation of black people to the secondary sector of the labor force." (1993: 262) West recognises the descriptive value of this view, but feels that it does not do justice to the complex nature of race exploitation. The class nationalist viewpoint is widely held and views African American oppression in terms of class exploitation and national domination. African Americans, according to this model form an oppressed national minority within American society. West, however feels that "its ahistorical racial definition of a nation, its flaccid statistical determination of national boundaries and its illusory distinct black economy" is misguided and over simplistic (1993: 263,264). An emerging class racialist position seems to have promise. Racism is depicted to be "a complex cluster of structured social practices that shape class relations and create a crucial dimension in the lives of individuals throughout capitalist societies." (1993:265)

West proposes his own analysis of African American oppression, according to a system that he terms Genealogical Materialist Analysis. The system that he proposes does not merely locate racism within modes of production, but also within the cultural traditions of civilisations.

1. A genealogical inquiry into the discursive and extradiscursive conditions for the possibility of racist practices, that is, a radically historical investigation into the emergence, development and sustenance of white-supremacist logics operative in various epochs in the modern Western (Eastern or African) civilization.
2. A microinstitutional (or localized) analysis of the mechanisms that promote and contest these logics in the everyday lives of people, including the ways in which self images and self-identities are shaped, and the impact of alien, degrading cultural styles, aesthetic ideals, psychosexual sensibilities and linguistic gestures upon peoples of color.
3. A macrostructural approach which accents modes of overdetermined class exploitation, state repression and bureaucratic domination, including resistance against these modes, in the lives of peoples of color (1993:268).

West believes that three white-supremacist logics can shed some light on dominant racist discourses in Western society. The Judeo-Christian racist logic which invokes divine punishment (blackening of his progeny) on Ham for looking upon his father Noah’s nakedness "links racist practices to notions of disrespect for and rejection of authority, to ideas of unruly behavior and chaotic rebellion." The "scientific" racist logic which promotes the observing, measuring, ordering and comparing of visible physical characteristics of human bodies in light of Greco-Roman aesthetic standards associates racist practices with bodily ugliness, cultural deficiency and intellectual inferiority. Psychosexual racist logic endows black people with sexual prowess, views them as either cruel, revengeful fathers, frivolous, carefree children, or passive, long-suffering mothers (1993:269

West sees an important task of genealogical inquiry to be the disclosure in historically concrete and sociologically specific ways of "the discursive operations that view Africans as excluded, marginal, other, and to reveal how racist logics are guided (or contested) by various hegemonic Western philosophies of identity and universality which suppress difference, heterogeneity and diversity." (1993: 269)

The strength of West’s analysis lies in the recognition that racial oppression is a systemic reality throughout society. Racism cannot be limited to isolated incidents of racism, but needs to be seen in the larger societal and historical context of institutionalised racism. Racism cannot be seen as a problem for only one sector in society. This has implications for a messianic theology of race. The church needs to recognise that racism cannot be isolated as a problem of a few individuals or a specific congregation. Racism can also not be seen as standing somewhat distant from racism in the society. Racism is an underlying reality in the social structure of the church as much as it is in society. It permeates through all the levels of church life. An analogy can be found in the concept of slavery in the New Testament. Paul’s reference to slavery was a reference to a concrete social reality that could not be separated into a social slavery on the one hand and spiritual slavery on the other. A slave belonged body and soul to the master who had bought him or her. Being a slave, he or she was no longer a true human being (Ellul, 1976: 23). The classical Marxist corollary to slavery is alienation. African American Marxism sees racism as akin to slavery. The solution for all three, is freedom. The roots of freedom can be found in societies that support difference, heterogeneity, and diversity.

According to West, systems that suppress difference, heterogeneity, and diversity (this includes classical-, and forms of neo-Marxism) can ultimately not effectively address racial oppression. Though West is at times critical of deconstructive theories such as those of Derrida, his views allows a place for some "deconstructive" input on the issues of racial oppression, and segregation.

I believe that Derrida’s views on community and hospitality discussed in Deconstruction in a Nutshell provides a very useful tool to overcome racial segregation and oppression as described by West. I mentioned that I believe that Derrida opens up possibilities for a messianic vision of community and constructive race relations in society, but also in the church. This may seem doubtful at first. "Deconstruction gets blamed for a lot of things – For everything from undermining the law of gravity to supporting Mormon polygamy and to starting the wars in Bosnia!" (Caputo [editor], 1997: 106) The nationalist wars in central Europe have been seen as a good example of the legacy of postmodern advocacy of "Difference," of the right to be different. Derrida would disagree. The nationalist wars are for him, "the almost perfect embodiment of ‘identity,’ of identitarianism, of self-affirming, self protecting, homogenizing identities that make every effort to exclude the different." (1997:106)

The above description is directly applicable to white supremacist attitudes which are threatened by ascendancy of other races, and which erect protectionist barriers between the "us" and the "them." Postmodern difference in Derrida’s terms is, as I mentioned in the introduction, "deeply multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and multi-racial." (1997:107) Derrida therefore does not reject the idea of unity and identity out of hand, for "pure" diversity. Pure diversity is as disastrous as a "pure" totalitarian unity.

That is why Derrida is troubled by the word "community."

What Derrida does not like about the word community is its connotations of "fusion" and identification." The word, communio, is a word for military formation and related to the word "munitions." "To have a communio is to be fortified on all sides, to build a ‘common’ (com) ‘defense’ (munis), as when a wall is put up around the city to keep the stranger or the foreigner out." (1997:108) If the purpose of community is to provide self-protective closure, deconstruction is the opposite. Deconstruction could be seen as the "preparation for the incoming of the other, ‘open’ and ‘porous’ to the other." (1997:109)

A helpful linguistic tool to understand Derrida’s views on community is to follow his analysis of "hospitality," a word which Derrida often prefer to use over and above "community." Hospitality is the welcoming of the other, to invite and welcome the "stranger". Deconstruction sees itself as being hospitable, letting the other come. "If deconstruction had an international headquarters, say in Paris, it would have a large banner hanging over its front door saying "Bienvenue!" (1997:110)

The word hospitality", however, also carries its opposite within itself.

Hospitality therefore preserves the distance between one’s own and the stranger, between owning one’s own property and inviting the other into one’s home. When a person welcomes the other and invites the other across one’s threshold, a person does not surrender one’s property or identity (1997: 110, 111).

But there seems to be a contradiction in this analysis. It seems impossible to welcome one’s guest without surrendering control of one’s property. If a person does not surrender control, hospitality is nothing but show. This kind of impossibility characterises deconstruction. And as in other cases, the possibility of hospitality is sustained by its impossibility (1997: 111).

In order for hospitality to occur, hospitality must therefore go beyond itself. "That requires that the host must, in a moment of madness, tear up the understanding between him and the guest, act with "excess," make an absolute gift of his property, which is of course impossible. But that is the only way the guest can go away feeling as if he was really made at home." (1997: 111)

Critics of Derrida may see in this another cynical attempt to unmask more mastery and power. But for Derrida, the impossibility of hospitality is not merely a difficult conceptual riddle that should be solved in an intellectual adroit way. The only way to solve the riddle of hospitality is to actively strain against its impossibility, to open oneself up for an uncertain future through an act of generosity, by risking the demise of hospitality through a giving which gives beyond itself. The hope is that the gift binds the other to the giver in gratitude and the need to reciprocate. Hospitality does not come down to knowing anything, but to doing something (1997: 112).

Both "hospitality" and "community" therefore carry the same limitations within themselves. In hospitality the challenge is to welcome the other while retaining mastery of the house. In the same way community faces the challenge of retaining its identity while making the stranger at home. These impossibilities cannot be overcome through objective analysis, but merely through "an act of madness, a giving without return in which one makes the other welcome, pressing against the limits of this self-limitation." (1997: 113)

Derrida’s views are messianic. The recognition that hospitality and community can only become real by moving through their own internal impossibilities, risking their demise and embracing the future in faith, is akin to Adventist belief in the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God is here, right now. We have to admit it. Christ himself proclaimed the Kingdom. But our belief in the Second Coming and the logic of realising that all is not well on earth makes the possibility for a present kingdom seem impossible and absurd. Yet we recognise, as Adventists, that the mystery of the Kingdom is not merely a matter of cognitive, epistemological speculation. Grasping the Kingdom is a matter of action, of being in the world as though the Kingdom is here. The call is to live the impossible life of the Kingdom, a life of openness to the "other," in a world that is based upon principles that are line-right opposite to the Kingdom. By doing this, and it can only be done as a leap of faith, one opens oneself up to the possibility of the Kingdom and the "Other".

One way of living the reality of the Kingdom of God is by fostering communities where difference, heterogeneity, and diversity is accepted. From the perspective of this paper, it would mean taking steps to live a communal life as though the colour-line does not exist. Descriptions given by people like Reddy and West, indicate the tremendous challenges that go hand in hand with such attempts. It is here that Derrida’s discussion of "hospitality" and "community" has direct import. It is our task to make the "other" feel welcome and to embrace their difference in a step of "madness" that might cost "us" our own identity. It is from this perspective that I believe that interracial couples and communities have an ability to grasp the paradox of the Kingdom in one sense, more fully than perhaps, homogeneous couples and communities. (I don’t say this as a normative self-justification, merely as a serendipity that could accompany some of the other more challenging aspects of interracial marriage.) It is from this perspective that I answer racist admonitions, which question the impact of interracial combinations on their children. It is from this perspective that I also answer objections that interracial couples are somehow less useful for the church than homogenous couples.

How can we live an ecclesial life of hospitality, of real community, which is open to the other? Moltmann in The Open Church: Invitation to a Messianic Life-Style, talks about friendship.

According to Moltmann the challenge is for Christians to live a life of friendship. Moltmann defines friendship as something that does not have to be produced or possessed. It is there, all around you and waits to be discovered:

Friendship is an unpretentious relation. According to Immanuel Kant, friendship is affection and respect. "To combine affection with respect does not mean wanting to serve or be useful to the other person, but needing the other just as he or she is." (1978:51) Friendship links affection with faithfulness. You can depend on a friend. Friendship is a "deep human relation that arises out of freedom, consists in mutual freedom, and preserves this freedom." (1978:52) "Hegel called friendship ‘The concrete concept of freedom.’ Why? Because between friends the law of reciprocation is invalidated. One trusts a friend, one confides in a friend. When necessary, one helps, without reward, but also without intruding oneself." (1978: 52) Friendship happens over time. Because friendship is without compulsion or constraint, it cannot be forced. Enemies don’t become friends overnight (1978: 52).

Moltmann states that friendship in our society often becomes exclusive.

It is this closed circle of friendship among peers that is broken in principle by Christ. Christ did not abide by the peer principle by remaining in heaven. Christ incarnated and forged friendships with sinners and tax collectors. The result is that Christian friendship should also not be lived within a closed circle of the faithful and pious, of peers in other words, but only in open affection and public respect for others. Through Christ friendship became solidarity (1978: 61).

I believe that Moltmann’s messianic conception of open friendship, is the essential way of being church in our world. We need to be open to the "other" at all levels. This means cultivating friendships, establishing respect and giving support to those who are "other". This means that only openness to the "other" will eventually be the authentic way of being church. Openness to the "other" also opens up the future for the church.

Race still matters in the Seventh-day Adventist Church. While this paper obviously does not give a comprehensive view of race matters in the church in South Africa, it calls for a new messianic openness to the "other", be that to people of different race, interracial couples, or God. This openness to the other will be the only gateway that will eventually open up the church for its future, on earth and in heaven.