I went to church the Sunday of that newspaper article in kind of a foul mood, not all my fault; society’s. During the week before, I kept hearing appalling hatred from the theocratic religious right in escalated political rhetoric. We also hear it from some of the secular left.

“(T)he good guys and the bad guys” (us versus them); biased blame for provoking war; wishing death on one’s ideological opposition; another “sovereign” state polarized against our founding’s pluralist unity; regressive dismantling of previous “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI); self-harming xenophobia in a reversal to our open trade and information …

I was beginning to think that there really was no hate like Judeo-Christian love, and to wonder what Utah really means with its populist license plate slogan “In God We Trust”; divine favoritism?

What we really trust in is one political party or the other and their scammy promise to beat the rest of the world in wealth through deficit dollars at cheaper rates. (Not mutual win-win but win-lose, a wider disparity that turns out to be lose-lose in the long run. We push the overkill of U.S. military supremacy overseas instead of deterrent parity for true defense at home; that and our entitlements are the biggest factors amassing the world’s greatest national debt.)

None of this imaginary superiority sounds like what Russell Nelson had attempted last year with “Peacemakers Needed.” And to “disagree better” isn’t half the problem.

But that Sunday, someone must’ve been praying hard for the Spirit to guard our sacrament worship service, because my mood seemed to get checked at the door. Somehow reoriented to cheerfully greet early birds, I then sat down during beautiful organ prelude and began to notice the diversity of people entering the chapel — gender, locals, visitors, other-colored faces … and hair, varied clothing, together or alone, interracial marriages, singles, young and old, healthy and ailing, hurried or calm, eye contact or downcast, smiles or furrowed brows, heavy laden or not.

Bowing in unison for invocation, the Comforter seemed to confirm a feeling for kinship of all having the same pedigree to God, all seeking upliftment toward “Him.”

And then the speakers, too! Asian-American (fortunately for us, in English), an overseas mission leader’s wife visiting from the Czech Republic of Eastern Europe, mother and son. Oh, those two sermons! There were stories of foreigners — no more strangers, interaction with atheists, a Father in Heaven reaching through to reassure any of his suffering children. The bishop emphasized picking that day’s congregational hymns about the spirit of “God.”

That would be the Father of all, not just of Christ’s followers, and not just the God of the house of Israel’s chosen race called “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” (Matthew 8:10-12 NLT/NIRV)

With an inclusive benediction, all seemed to coalesce our equal identities with God the Father. I felt strongly the small measure of Hindu in me growing; they try to see and accept the divine in anyone. I felt Allah’s transethnic love.

His Spirit carried the day, in spite of me or Western Civilization, where religiously ethnocentric bias has dominated globally from the ideology maintained in a Judaic Old Testament.

Thankfully, our grandkids’ next generation seems to instinctively already know better, as does the rising non-Western world. Now Utah’s grownup political culture needs to advance beyond its national funding and old alignment with religious ethnocentricity.

Jade Henderson retired from Wyoming state government in 2015. He and his wife moved to Spanish Fork seven years ago to be closer to grandkids. He served a Latter-day Saint mission in Muslim Indonesia some 45 years ago before obtaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in international studies.