Not in Berkeley Any More

I was driving home form work the other day, and the one public radio station near the church was having a pledge drive so I hit seek on the radio. Many Christian Stations. One preacher was talking about the very same bible story I had talked about the week before (Jonah) so I let him talk. Shortly he came to say "I can't imagine anything that would make me more afraid than to come before God on Judgment day having stood in the pulpit and said that the bible is not the literal inerrant word of God divinely inspired." I felt like he was talking about me specifically. Except he kept calling these preachers who talk about metaphor and symbol as "he." "She!" I called back to the unhearing voice. He went on to talk about the nerve of these preachers to pretend to follow God, pretend to have faith. It started to rankle.

Especially since that same week I learned that the UU church is not invited to participate in the local cooperative that addresses poverty in our county because we are "not Christian." Now I have recently had occasion to explain on more than one occasion that although Unitarian Universalism has Christian roots, and there are Christian UUs, I don't happen to be one of them. So I'm not going to try to have it both ways. If the cooperative is only for Christians, I'm not going to argue semantics. But I don't really see what doctrine has to do with caring for God's children. It's a theological climate that is very different from the one I left behind in the San Francisco Bay Area, and even different from the one I leave behind each time I drive across the border from my home in Ithaca.

Added to "To Do" list- stop 'round the Jewish and Muslim communities in the county and say hello.