clipped from www.ucc.org

Is Pastor Wright to be ridiculed and condemned for refusing to play the court prophet, blessing land and sovereign while pledging allegiance to our preoccupation with wealth and our fascination with weapons?  In the United Church of Christ we honor diversity.  For nearly four centuries we have respected dissent and have struggled to maintain the freedom of the pulpit.  Not every pastor in the United Church of Christ will want to share Pastor Wright's rhetoric or his politics.  Not every member will rise to shout "Amen!"  But I trust we will all struggle in our own way to resist the lure of respectable religion that seeks to displace evangelical faith.  For what this nation needs is not so much polite piety as the rough and radical word of the prophet calling us to repentance.