Full disclosure: My firm built Jeff Merkley's website, but I speak only for myself.

Wait a minute, RichW... Are you really saying that this ISN'T how the world was created?

In the beginning there was an empty darkness. The only thing in this void was Nyx, a bird with black wings. With the wind she laid a golden egg and for ages she sat upon this egg. Finally life began to stir in the egg and out of it rose Eros, the god of love. One half of the shell rose into the air and became the sky and the other became the Earth. Eros named the sky Uranus and the Earth he named Gaia. Then Eros made them fall in love. Uranus and Gaia had many children together and eventually they had grandchildren. Some of their children become afraid of the power of their children. Kronus, in an effort to protect himself, swallowed his children when they were still infants. However, his wife Rhea hid their youngest child. She gave him a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he swallowed, thinking it was his son. Once the child, Zeus, had reached manhood his mother instructed him on how to trick his father to give up his brothers and sisters. Once this was accomplished the children fought a mighty war against their father. After much fighting the younger generation won. With Zeus as their leader, they began to furnish Gaia with life and Uranus with stars. Soon the Earth lacked only two things: man and animals. Zeus summoned his sons Prometheus (fore-thought) and Epimetheus (after-thought). He told them to go to Earth and create men and animals and give them each a gift. Prometheus set to work forming men in the image of the gods and Epimetheus worked on the animals. As Epimetheus worked he gave each animal he created one of the gifts. After Epimetheus had completed his work Prometheus finally finished making men. However when he went to see what gift to give man Epimetheus shamefacedly informed him that he had foolishly used all the gifts. Distressed, Prometheus decided he had to give man fire, even though gods were the only ones meant to have access to it. As the sun god rode out into the world the next morning Prometheus took some of the fire and brought it back to man. He taught his creation how to take care of it and then left them. When Zeus discovered Prometheus' deed he became furious. He ordered his son to be chained to a mountain and for a vulture to peck out his liver every day till eternity. Then he began to devise a punishment for mankind. Another of his sons created a woman of great beauty, Pandora. Each of the gods gave her a gift. Zeus' present was curiosity and a box which he ordered her never to open. Then he presented her to Epimetheus as a wife. Pandora's life with Epimetheus was happy except for her intense longing to open the box. She was convinced that because the gods and goddesses had showered so many glorious gifts upon her that this one would also be wonderful. One day when Epimetheus was gone she opened the box. Out of the box flew all of the horrors which plague the world today - pain, sickness, envy, greed. Upon hearing Pandora's screams Epimetheus rushed home and fastened the lid shut, but all of the evils had already escaped. Later that night they heard a voice coming from the box saying, "Let me out. I am hope." Pandora and Epimetheus released her and she flew out into the world to give hope to humankind.

When & where I went to public school, creationism was part of the required subject matter for 8th grade biology, taught in tandem with Darwinism. The teacher did her best to be neutral but for whatever reason the introduction of the Old Testament story of creation in a biology classroom backfired tremendously. Perhaps it was because the windows were transparent and not stained glass or perhaps because the environment of the classroom included so much scientific equipment and posters, but for whatever reason, the creationist theory being taught was loudly and derisively (we were only 8th graders, so subtlety was not our strong suit) attacked by the majority of the students, and even mocked to the point the teacher had to stop the discussion to prevent permanent camps from developing within the classroom. Mind you, this was a school in the middle of snake handler country.

I think teaching the religion of the dominant culture as "truth" shouldn't be happening in schools as a rule, but like other right-wing ideas like knee-jerk deregulation, unaffordable tax cuts for the rich, and supply-side economics as solutions for every ill, the introduction of right-wing ideas is not something we need to be especially afraid of as long as the chance to debunk them exists. Kids are smarter than they generally get credit for and most can smell b.s. a mile a way, not matter what the textbook says. Our salvation from ignorance is that the culture we live in and educate our children in is not ignorant, and not, I should add, completely dependent on public schools to sustain and transmit it.

I thought our biology teacher handled it well. She listed all the major theories and a quick synopsis of each, with a little Q&A time. Then the rest of the time was spent on the leading scientific theories, since we were in a science class.

Goolsbee is coming to Reed next month. Keep your eyes on the banner ads.

Well Dave Hathaway, you haven't done your own independent research on Trinity UCC, clearly. It's the largest congregation in the UCC denomination, formed some decades ago by a merger of the Congregationalists (trinitarian descendants of the New England Puritans) with another denomination. The UCC as a whole is predominantly white. Trinity UCC contributes a share commensurate to its size (i.e. the largest single share) to the denomination's general service and charitable activities, which are not in any sense against "whitey." Over 300 white UCC pastors signed a statement in support of Trinity UCC when the vicious distorted attacks on the church started. Many pastors and other white visitors to the predominantly African-American congregation, including the prominent historian of U.S. religion, Martin Marty, of the University of Chicago, have testified to the warm and gracious reception they have received at the church.

To be a member of the UCC denomination, a Congregation has to accept certain defining theological principles, among which the equal dignity of all human souls before God certainly is one, and broad rules, of which racial non-discrimination certainly is one. The UCC is justly proud of the role of Congregationalists as abolitionists, of providing higher education for black students even in antebellum times in denominationally affiliated institutions like Oberlin, and in the formation of schools, colleges and universities for freedpeople across the South, including Atlanta University and Howard University, after the Civil War.

As the older name Congregationalist implies, a distinguishing feature of this tradition is church polity centered at the level of the congregation (as distinct e.g. from Episcopalianism where decision making power rests in the hands of bishops, again indicated by the name). This high degree of congregational autonomy within the broad principles of the church enables many congregations to have distinctive characters. Trinity UCC fits this pattern in the sense of sharing many features in worship and outlook with "black church" denominations such as the National Baptist Convention or the African Methodist Episcopal Church (and many others), even though not in a primarily black denomination. Despite denominational doctrinal differences "the black church" in this broad sense has common features rooted in the experience of enslavement and escape from bondage, including a strong orientation toward the Old Testament (as seen from within Christianity) with its narratives of slavery, liberation and prophecy, distinctive preaching and musical styles, and so on. Trinity UCC's sharing in this tradition no more means it says "don't trust whitey" than did the Rev'd Martin Luther King, Jr.'s sharing in that tradition, which he absolutely did. That framing is a negative way to characterize what really is a stress on self-reliance and self-help, in the face of a world and historical realities in which white people in general have often been hostile and only very rarely been entirely reliable.

In its congregational life, Trinity UCC has adopted (and no doubt evolved, changed, and internally debated) some ideas that come out of the tradition of black liberation theology developed during and after the height of the Civil Rights movement, which reinforced foci characteristic of the broad African-American religious tradition: focus on prophecy and liberation, the necessity of self-reliance, and the right to self-definition.

White Americans have tended to have a deep ambivalence about black autonomy. For most of pre-U.S. and U.S. history most whites wanted to segregate blacks away from themselves, but then tended to get nervous about what the black people were doing over there on their own (most profoundly in white fears of slave rebellions), a dilemma met by insistence on rituals of subservience and a "right" of white oversight. In recent years this ambivalence has taken the form of criticizing black people for allegedly not taking personal responsibility or doing enough by way of self-help, and then criticizing them for emphasizing self-reliance and organizing for self-help in the "wrong" ways.

Black liberation theology, in its address to worldly matters such as the organization of churches and also the question of the meaning of liberation, of true freedom, in light of U.S. history, rejects both the rituals of subservience and the presumption by whites of a "right" to supervise or control black people's self-definitions. By rejecting these pillars of the long history of white supremacy, it makes many people still culturally influenced by that history profoundly nervous.

You apparently are among them.

<hr/>

As to creationism, I believe the UCC is among the Christian denominations that no longer makes biblical literalism one of its tenets. It would surprise me greatly if Barack Obama believed in creationism or rejected Darwinism, and it would not surprise me if one reason for choosing a UCC congregation from among the many black church options in Chicago, many of which are fundamentalist, was that Trinity UCC wasn't biblically literalist.