UCCtruths

The saving grace of the UCC church, sometimes an understandably hard one for outsiders to discern, is that one of its central beliefs is the supremacy of the local church. This is another way of saying that while all sorts of statements and issues are trumpeted by the national church, local churches, unlike, say, those in the Catholic Church, are at the top of the pyramid, not the bottom. My local church is not in the politics business. With both liberals and conservatives sliding into the pews every Sunday we stick, for the most part, to the concerns of our community. Is Mrs. Jones in the hospital? Is the UCC Home (a project for senior citizens) in good financial shape? Do we have the funds to send young Joe or Sally Smith to church youth camp? Are we reaching out to those troubled by alcohol or depression? Yes, thanks to the national church's insistence on injecting the highly political issue of same-sex marriage into the mix in a top-down fashion, we have spent a considerable amount of time having a vigorous yet constructive conversation on the subject, leaving it basically where we found the issue -- unresolved. But if you are coming to listen to fiery diatribes spewing hatred against George Bush, well, bless you, but you're not going to find them delivered here. Our church is focused on what unites us as children of God, not what divides us in the secular realm of American politics.