No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The

Listen, O children of time, to the thunderous words of Jane Elliot, a teacher whose voice pierced the silence of ignorance and cast light upon the shadow of prejudice. She declared: “No white group has founded a major religion on this planet. The major religions were started in the Orient and the Middle East, not in Greece and Rome. I always knew you racists didn’t have a prayer.” These are not the whispers of politeness, but the clarion call of truth. For her saying tears the veil of arrogance, reminding humanity that wisdom, faith, and spiritual fire are not bound to skin, tribe, or nation, but spring forth wherever the Spirit chooses to ignite them.

From the ancient sands of Mesopotamia arose the earliest hymns to gods who shaped heaven and earth. In the holy lands of Palestine came forth the cry of prophets who thundered justice and mercy, laying the stones of Judaism and later Christianity. From the sacred groves of India blossomed Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, each a river flowing toward liberation. And in the heart of the Arabian desert, the voice of Muhammad (peace be upon him) proclaimed the unity of God, setting ablaze the dawn of Islam. Indeed, it was not Greece with her marble nor Rome with her empire that gave birth to these great faiths, but the East, where desert, mountain, and river carved a people of spirit.

Why then, Jane Elliot asks, do some among the descendants of Europe exalt themselves as masters of faith, as keepers of divine favor? Her words fall like judgment, reminding us that spiritual truth cannot be caged by pride. Though Greece gave philosophy and Rome gave law, the deepest wells of religious power sprung from other soils, from darker faces, from lands dismissed by conquerors as foreign. And in this irony lies a lesson: arrogance blinds, while humility sees the divine in every people.

Consider the story of Ashoka the Great, the Indian emperor who once drenched battlefields with blood but later, pierced by remorse, embraced Buddhism and spread it far beyond his kingdom. His transformation stands as proof that power does not define greatness—the heart’s awakening does. Contrast him with the might of Rome, which sought to control the world through sword and law, yet found itself bowing in time before a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth, whose teachings outlasted the empire that tried to crush him.

Elliot’s bold declaration is a rebuke, not to diminish any people, but to dismantle the myth of racial superiority. For how often has history been told as if Europe alone bore the torch of civilization? Her words restore balance, reminding the listener that humanity’s greatest spiritual treasures—the commandments, the sutras, the suras, the gospels—were birthed in lands too often dismissed. And so, the arrogance of racism is shown for what it is: hollow, groundless, and blind to the currents of history.

The lesson is clear: no people holds a monopoly on wisdom. The divine chooses no skin color, favors no empire, exalts no crown. To live as though superiority belongs to one race is to walk in darkness; to embrace the truth that all peoples bear gifts of spirit is to walk in light. The ancients tell us that God scattered wisdom like seeds across the earth, that every nation might bloom in its season. To honor only one soil is to miss the vastness of the garden.

Therefore, O listener, cast aside arrogance and open your heart. Learn from traditions not your own, for each faith carries a spark of the eternal. Stand against racism, for it blinds humanity to the divine image reflected in every face. Honor the East, the South, the forgotten, for they have given the world treasures beyond measure. And remember that faith thrives not in the proud heart but in the humble one, which bows before mystery and rises in love.

If you take this teaching to heart, you shall walk as one who knows that truth is universal and prejudice is death. And like the ancients who traveled far to seek wisdom in foreign temples, you too must journey—across cultures, across histories, across boundaries of race—to find the divine thread that binds all humanity as one. Only then will you stand free of the chains of ignorance, and only then will your soul truly have a prayer.