Weblogs: How I know I'm not in Berkeley

(An Episcopal priest from Berkeley serves Katrina victims and discovers a culture shock of a different sort.)

Baby Priest: "I can't imagine that we would have sung this ["God Bless America"] in Berkeley either, because the song is so closely associated with a kind of religious patriotism that is frowned upon. But as I thought about this petition to God for a blessing, I began to wonder if it is more appropriate than we might think. After all, we are asking God for a blessing, and God's blessing upon America would not be to leave this country as it is. God's blessing would surely look more like the leveling that Mary asks for in the Magnificat, or what Elijah prophesied to Israel. God's blessing would be the humbling of the proud, and the lifting up of the lowly. Blessings are to ask for God to change what is, not to keep things as they are.

So there I was, not far at all from my old home, but in a culture that was not ashamed of civil religion or of publicly asking for a blessing from God. This would have been different in Berkeley. But, like I said, I am not in Berkeley anymore."