I can picture it now: the old man with a scowl eyes me suspiciously from the bed as I stand in the hospital room doorway. He has just come out of open heart surgery, or has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis this morning, or he’s here to live out his last days with the help of some good strong meds. I am his chaplain, and he asks me one devastating four-word question: “Are you a…

Until last year, I’d probably cracked open a Bible five or six times in my entire life. In my family, we only went to church every third Christmas and Easter or so, and when we did, we went to the Main Line Unitarian Universalist Church in Devon, PA. If you know much about contemporary expressions of Unitarian Universalism, it will not surprise you that these occasional visits did not lead me to many encounters with the book of…