30. We believe in One God, the Father . . . .

Have you picked up your 2007 Kentucky Travel Guide yet? Among the various places to see in Kentucky is a new listing for the Creation Museum, located on the Bullitsburg Church Road in Petersburg, a small community in Boone County, northwest of Florence where KY 8 meets KY 20. I haven't been there but I understand it to be a museum dedicated to showing that all of God's Creation was actually created just as outlined in the first few chapters of the Book of Genesis, itself the first book of the Bible. (I'll point out here that scholars do not believe that Genesis was the first written of the books of the Bible; they ascribe that distinction to the Book of Job, written somewhere between 2100 and 1800 BC, while Genesis is 400 years younger, having been penned around 1400 BC - BCE, as many folks now write).

If you didn't know, an Archbishop of Armagh (Ireland), James Ussher, who lived from 1581 to 1656 CE, declared that God created the heavens and the Earth on October 23, 4004 BCE. He went on to say that Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden on November 10, 4004 BCE, and further, that Noah's Ark made landfall on Mount Ararat on May 5, 2348 BCE which, according to him was "on a Wednesday." The Creation Museum is dedicated to preserving this story of God's creation according to this timeline, and includes everything that has happened as part of that timeline, including geological formations (such as Mammoth Cave) otherwise believed to be millions of years older, as well as the idea that Noah took "baby" dinosaurs aboard the Ark during the Great Deluge. There are figures of dinosaurs as well as one of Adam on display.

As someone who is quite sure they believe in God, I am also quite sure that the account given in the Bible, as well as Archbishop Ussher's suggested calendar, are both just that - suggestions. Actually, the seven day story of creation, while beautiful and encouraging with its nightly close of "evening came and morning followed," is certainly not something that really happened the way Moses, its traditional writer, said it happened. At least that is what I believe. You are free to believe as you choose. That is one of the heralds of our great Republic, that its citizens are free to worship God, or anything else, or nothing at all, in the manner they see fit.

Growing up, religion was a part but not an integral part of the house I lived in. After my parents divorce, my mother, my brother, and me went to live with my mother's parents. They weren't church going people, although both were members of a church, my grandmother of the Choateville Christian Church, (ironically) on Devil's Hollow Road in Frankfort; and my grandfather of the Carlisle Avenue Baptist Church in South Louisville. My mother was also not a church going person, although deeply religious and an example of some of God's most outstanding work. As a youth, she joined the Third Avenue Baptist Church in Old Louisville where she was raised. She maintains a membership there to this day.

My brother and I attended church from time-to-time with the neighbors, although never with the immediately next-door neighbors, as they were Catholic like my father and that was one church we were encouraged not to attend. Since the Okolona Christian Church was the closest Christian church (the denomination of my grandmother), we began going there. Later we would go to the Mount Holly Methodist Church in Fairdale with the Helton's, and later the Thixton Lane Baptist Church out on the county line in the middle of nowhere with the Shumate's. My brother and I eventually joined Thixton Lane and were baptised there in April, 1974. I was 13, he was 12. For the record, my father, a non-practicing Catholic but Catholic nonetheless, objected to these baptisms of me and my brother, as we had both been baptized at birth into the "One True Church," presided over by the Bishop of Rome. Eventually we both stopped going to church as a habit.

When I was in 11th grade, a friend of mine, Steve Bensing, invited me to his church, Holy Family Catholic Church, where a number of my high school friends attended as well as my father's brother and sister-in-law, and so I went off and on to church with him. When I went away to college the first time, I became enamored with the both the ritualism as well as the social justice emphasis (and near socialism) of the Catholic Church and began attending services at the Saint Rose Newman Center on Rose Street in Lexington. I enrolled in "Becoming a Catholic" classes and eventually "graduated" and was told I was prepared to be baptized (again) and confirmed into the communion of the Catholic Church. But, as always, I moved slowly. The following spring, in May, 1979, I formally joined Holy Family Catholic Church, was rebaptized (again over the objection of my father who insisted I was already "in") and confirmed on the same day by Father Clifford Reide, who that day was leaving his assignment at Holy Family, and thus I was his last official act as Holy Family's priest.

I've been an active member of my church for nearly 30 years, participating in most every event held, including being a Bingo caller on Sunday nights since 1984. As I have for the last 22 years, I'll be calling Bingo tonight while most everyone else will be cheering for either Indianapolis or Chicago. (For the record, I'm for the Colts). I been a lector at Mass, a collection taker, a summer camp chaperone, grass cutter, painter, and any number of things over the years. I have a great church family at Holy Family. But, while I am happy with my church (little "c'), I'm not happy with my Church (capital "C"), which has veered far to the right in its official pronouncements emanating from Rome, far from the credo of social justice and the rights of all beings taught and held dear earlier in the 20th century. If the Catholic Church were closer to the precepts taught by the United States Council of Bishops, the Catholic arm of the mother church in the United States, I would be alright. But all to often those views are well to the left of the official mores being spoken from the chair of Saint Peter, especially under Pope Benedict XVI, the former Bishop Jospeh Ratzinger, one of the more conservative leaders of the Church who was elevated to Pope in April, 2005.

I saw this move early on and in 2003 decided I would take five years to determine if my home church of 25 years would remain so. I roamed through the doors of a few other churches in trying to make this decision, and am still undecided. I regularly attend Mass now at an Episcopal Church on Baxter Avenue. It is a very small congregation compared to Holy Family, with only 15 to 20 persons attending the service as opposed to the two hundred or so I am more accustomed to. I've visited the United Church of Christ as well as the Unitarian-Universalist church, but so far, only the Episcopal church offers the ritual and liturgical importance combined with a sense of social service and justice, the elements most important to me in finding a church home.

As to the Unitarian and Universalist traditions, I will admit the ideas they promote are appealing, but their very unstructured worship I find unsuitable. I am probably more Unitarian than Trinitarian, and am certainly a Universalist, believing that we are all God's children, God's creation, and as such, subject to a loving parent's desire of well being for their own. As with the birds of the air and the fish of the sea, I am confident that God's want all of us to be happy and that, ultimately, He will call all of us home to a life of perpetual happiness in paradise. I really do believe that. But there is no ritual based, liturgically structured, and apostolically succeeded Universalist church. If there was, I'd probably join.

This much I know I believe. The first four words of the Bible are a guidepost for me, "In the beginning God . . . " The way they are written, in English at least, implies that when the beginning began, God was already there. In fact, He began the beginning. In the beginning, God did something which caused the beginning. I believe he struck a match and caused the Big Boom. The rest, evolution and otherwise, is, as they say, history.

In the beginning God. That's probably a pretty good creed. It works for me.