F: First African Baptist Church (St. Simons Island)

Some historians trace the legend of the Flying African, the kidnapped African who flew across the ocean rather than face slavery, to an apparent mass suicide at St. Simons Island, on coastal Georgia. Per an 1803 slaver's account, men jumped at Ebo Landing, on the leeward side of the island, and drowned to their death. The story that survived in folklore, where men few away (and which Toni Morrison adapted for Song of Solomon), moves me to my bones.

A search for that legend led me to First African Baptist Church, the oldest black church on the island and the one closest one to Ebo Landing. The African-American presence on St. Simons has been plowed over. Ancestral burial grounds lie beneath the golf courses and most of the parishioners live off-island. But the congregation holds on still.

At last Sunday's meeting I was deeply moved by a ritual Blessing of the Children. Based upon some reading from the Hebrew scripture, the pastor pulls out a prayer shawl that she purchased in Israel, then gathers the children to the altar.

"I want all the brothers to come forward," the pastor instructs.

Jon and I are the only white people in the church. Children gather under the shawl, which the men hold aloft. "All brothers," the pastor says, "please come forward."

We did.

H: Heavenly Host

Coming to the front of church has always made me uneasy. With Fundamentalists it's the Call. I am not ready to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord-and-Personal-Savior. At the milder Episcopal Church, it's the Eucharist.

The Bob Eucharist. I am unsettled by doubt.

Here's the problem. When we die, I believe, our run ends. Call it soul or spirit or non-particle matter but whatever was inhabiting our body after we die is also ... well ... dead. Gone. Kaput.

Maybe we live on in the memory of others. Or maybe we survive by our good works. Perhaps there is some universal vibration that we humans can only begin to understand. But Pearly Gates? A choir of angels? Jesus in a Devo jumpsuit? All too cartoonish.

And yet the ceremony of communion moves me deeply. I have always been a sucker for narrative. If I believe in anything, it is Story.

So can I accept the body of Christ as metaphor? How much story should I let myself swallow?

Really. Help me out America. Let me know what you think. What are the boundaries between ceremony and belief?

S: St. Augstine Episcopal Church

A cool little religious home. I visited during the lenten season with Young 'Un and Love of My Life. With Easter approaching much of the service followed high Anglican ritual -- the Bible's procession into the aisles, recitation of common prayers, all that.

Then the Meet and Great, the exchange of Peace. A small combo -- flute, tenor sax, piano -- broke into an African-American spiritual. (This is one of the first racially mixed congregations I have visited in St. Petersburg.) Folks shook hands. Veneers broke down. I felt truly welcomed. We were invited to breakfast.

Young 'Un wasn't hungry so we didn't stay long, but during breakfast, we chatted just a little. An older lady took him outside to see the vegetable garden. She showed us the repairs on the education building, mostly done by the congregants themselves. They didn't have Sunday School this morning. The kids worshiped with everyone else.

On the way out, we asked Young 'Un what he thought of the church. Top of his head was "great"; feet were poor. "To my chin," he said.

I had to agree.

UU of St. Petersburg

In my heart I am a Unitarian. The body of my scholarly work draws from the intellectual traditions of Thomas Jefferson and Thoreau, with a heavy dash of Seneca Falls reform. My partner and I were married in the Unitarian Universalist Church of Philadelphia. The creed suits me.

Visiting any UU congregation always feels like a homecoming -- with the ambivalences of home thereunto. This week it was the UU Church in St. Petersburg, Fl. All the usual hallmarks were there. An elegant, aging sanctuary. Heavy oak timbers and the original plastered festooned with felt tapestry. Bad haircuts. Tolerance and a coffee pot.

Lately my own thoughts on religion have taken a traditional turn.

Let me explain. My spouse and I recently completed adoption of an 8 year old boy. Child came to our house with lots of clothes, toys in various states of repair, and no less than 6 Bibles. Pity must motivate perfect strangers to give orphaned children Bibles. One night, tyke pulled out an illustrated version of Good News and pointed at the pictures, asking me for explanations. He was taken with an illustration of Moses in the bull rushes.

So we have started plowing through Exodus. It all makes perfect spiritual sense. Our child prays to God in Heaven. He holds his palms together, open, in a fundamentalist style. Even if he is guarded about his feelings with us, he does insist that we pray, which for an adoptive parent is terrific. Our prayers amount to indirect communication. An expression of hopes and dreams.

Back to the Unitarian-Universalists. The sermon was the typical stuff: explaining UU beliefs, with the usual emphasis on open-mindedness. Plus a few pot shots on doctrinaire faiths. In short, not what we need at this time.

Invariably I will return to a UU Church. Maybe not in the immediate future, however.

C: Church Communities International (St. Petersburg, Fla.)

"Thank you for overcoming your fears," Lenore said, as we stepped inside Bayboro House.

"No fears," I replied. Honest. Spousal unit held out the reservations. We had been invited over but for different reasons, the dates did not work out. I thought my neighbors were Bruderhofers; they are not, they are members of Church Communities International -- an international group that replicates the communal life of the early Christian Church. Other than those few false leads from web searches, and more than our share of superficial conclusions about women in scarves, I did not know much.

Well, I did know some things. That members of this community opposed the War in Iraq when few others did. That their vegetable garden makes ours look like an embarrassment. That their company, Spruce Up Services, does quality home repairs (though not necessarily cheap). And that their annual Christmas Carol skipped the home of a gay couple in our neighborhood (true or not? I can't say).

At any rate ... We sat down for dinner. 20 of us, around one table. Your basic monastic fare: chicken, rice, salad from the garden. I struggled with names. I always struggle with names ... here especially though, as my prejudices lead me to cluster people that seem foreign.

Jesse's father was a Dean at Emory. Lenore's family attended law school where I went to college. The late teen next to me would have rather been sitting next to his friend. A young man across the table is majoring in environmental science at our school. The conversation turned to spousal unit's book, an anthology of civil rights literature. "Do you include any Langston Hughes," a young woman asked.

Conclusion ... and just so we don't think we're done with King's Dream ... The last place for our prejudices to disappear are in church.

V is for Vendanta (St. Petersburg, Fla.)

From Swami Ishtandanda --

A pilgrim wanders from the Himalayas to the southern tip of India. Exhausted, the pilgrim prays to God ... or Gods ... whatever.

"Please, water." A cool glass of water appears.

"Oh, this floor is too hard," the pilgrim cries, "if I only had a mattress." A bed and mattress materialize.

"My body aches," the pilgrim cries next. "What I would not give for a massage." This time a Goddess. Let's say she's beautiful, draped with golden trinkets, smelling of sandalwood. She massages the pilgrim from scalp to little toe.

Thirst slaked, sated and relaxed, the Pilgrim falls asleep. Then a bengal tiger pounces through the window, devours the sleeping pilgrim.

The moral: think about what you pray for.

A: Antioch Primitive Baptist Church, Oxford, Miss.

God directed us here. Working alphabetically through a list of churches in the county, we decide upon "Antioch Primitive Baptist." But the list gives no address or phone. The Saturday before, however, we stumble onto the sign, right under the water tower.

Providential. Primitive Baptists believe as much. Theologically, Antioch has not changed since 1836, the year of its founding (making the church one year older than Oxford). The acronym TULIP sums up the doctrine: Total depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, Preservation of the Saints. The same in 2005 as 1836 – or 1638 for that matter.

The church is elegantly austere. Each window has a simple stained glass dove. We walk into the red carpeted sanctuary. Forty or so men, women and children bow their heads in common prayer. We take our place toward the back on the right. Nearly everyone seems to be a relative of the minister, Brother Max Ewing.

Though a non-believer, I feel at ease with Primitive Baptists. Not for reasons of gender. Women do not preach; no point in arguing this tenet. But the fact of predestination means my fate is sealed. No calls to the mourner's bench today.

Brother Wayne leads the congregation through a string of old timey hymns. Men and women shout out a number, Wayne pitches the hymn, begins in a crystalline tenor, then church joins in four part harmony. We tear through the hymnal. My throat starts to parch.

Kids wander back and forth, families drift in, find their seat. Brother Max's sermon meditates on 2 Timothy 4: "For the time will come when they will not stand wholesome teaching, but will follow their own fancy and gather a crowd of teachers to tickle their ears. They will stop their ears to truth and turn to fable." There is but one way; the rest, fornication, "you tolerate that Jezebel, the woman who claims to be a prophetess" (Rev. 2 20). Brother Max defines fornication broadly: whatever veers from Truth. Like women teaching. And Sunday School.With a left hand (that is slightly darker than the right) laying on the Bible, Brother Max makes one last point. Church closes with "Amazing Grace." Versus three and four lead to a line of handshakes that thread throughout the congregation. The voices dies down to just one or two people, and the rest exchange greetings. I feel welcomed."That's it," Brother Max says. "

See you next week. Same time. Same place." A pause. Brother Wayne pipes in, "same doctrine.