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.

C: Church of Christ, Oxford, Miss.

This one was Julie's call. Oxford Church of Christ, on North Lamar and blocks from the Square, sits on pricey real estate. The church has a complex of buildings, done in matching yellow stone, with a nifty playground resembling an ark. The marquee last week, "How to Be a Rebel for Christ," was aimed at returning college students. Julie said we had to go.

Minister Bob Brewer laid out the argument. Following a salmon colored insert and Power Point display, he drew a line between being Rebels for Christ and Rebels against Christ. The text was a hailstorm of chapter and verse, all from Paul – Epistles to Galatians, Peter, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First Corinthians, and Romans.Midway through the sermon: "You may say, Bob Brewer, aren't you being a bit harsh?" Then he took a step forward. "But this is not Bob Brewer. This is Paul. This is Jesus' word." A Rebel for Christ casts out the sins of university life – homosexuality, promiscuity, drinking, cursing, evil thoughts, Ole Miss' bizarre campus cheer ("Hotty Totty, Gosh Almighty"), and again, homosexuality.

Lots on homosexuality.

I recall two, maybe three, references to same-sex love in Paul. Bob Brewer snuffed out half a dozen more. I glanced down the pew for a Bible, but the only scripture came from the blue screen. Jesus' word, passed through Paul, somehow became Bob Brewer's.

After the sermon, a young college student led the congregation in prayer. Then several young men took up collection. Then more young men passed around communion.

Julie scribbled on the bulletin, "I do not want to stay." For me, college was a difficult time. My future seemed uncertain, my head was full of ideas, my libido wandered, and I drank a lot. The tough questions did not have easy solutions (any more than the Bible can be reduced to paraphrased bullet points on Power Point). I wondered whether the lesson of self-loathing and casting out does young people more harm than good.

I do know this much: when the communion plate came our way, I let it pass.

C: Christ CME Church, Oxford, Miss.

Reverend Deldrick LeaSure asks for an Altar Call. Anyone not playing an instrument comes forward. I whisper to Julie, “do we go?” I catch the pianist’s eye. She nods. Julie gets the same message, so we join hands in a circle. “Holy Father,” Reverend LeaSure begins, “we thank you;” he thanks God for blessings, remembers Katrina, remembers shut-ins and those in need. Piano chords build against his prayer. Electric bass improvises against her chords, and the drum set kicks in.Worship here is in music. The service begins with a prelude that sounds like “This Little Light of Mine” then turns into “Amazing Grace.” At any point, the guitar or drums, piano or bass, join the spoken word. And the word itself is never read, but chanted or sung. The choir of four has a soloist whose voice shakes the rafters, but with the choir standing in front of us, I can’t quite place the voice.

Christ Temple is simple and small church: yellow brick and opaque windows, on a main street of Oxford, between Rebel Bail Bonds and the jail. The sanctuary has about 40 pews, with the altar and a baptismal pool in front. The only real luxury is two rows of crystal and brass chandeliers. Plus a big white Peavey amp, hanging from the ceiling. That’s where the voice came from. A church this size might not need the amp. But it sounds really good.

The worship service has a way of involving you. As a white couple in a black church, Julie and I figured we would not remain anonymous. Nor would this congregation let us. All visitors are asked to introduce themselves. When we do, we get a warm round of applause.

Reverend LeaSure calls out the day’s scripture, and waits for everyone to find their place. “Ephesians Four,” he says. Then again, “Ephesians Four.” Folks reach for their Bibles: “That’s between Galatians and Phillipians.” When he reads, LeaSure gives each syllable of the original King James its due: “walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called.”

I am a reader. That’s my vocation, and the message resonates with me. After weeks of hearing the Word dictated from the pulpit, I like flipping through the pages for myself. I like being involved.

The service ends with a collection (thankfully only one, as we are low on cash), then the Benediction. Julie and I shake hands, chat, and walk toward the car. The choir soloist spots us across the parking lot. “Good morning,” she says. The solist smiles and explains, “I can’t let anyone leave without shaking their hand.”

Yes. If you come to this church, you cannot simply hide.

E & Q: Religion and Politics, Oxford, Miss.

Visiting different churches makes one aware of the ways in which God’s Word gets sliced and diced.

Services at St. Peter’s Episcopal flip between a photocopied bulletin and the Book of Common Prayer. A bulletin insert reprints the First and Second readings, The Gradual, then the Gospel. The Gospel is read in a particularly elaborate display of text. Following an acolyte, who bears a crucifix on a staff, the Priest carries The Book into the congregation. She holds the red and gilt Gospel aloft. She reads; the people chant back, “thanks be to God.”

Our message for today (Matthew 21:28-32) supports the sermon, to go into the darkest place of ourselves so we can be changed. Well enough, though thematics trump formal or aesthetic concerns. A passage from Psalms 25:4-9 presumes to anticipate Matthew: “All the paths of the Lord are love and faithfulness to those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.” Later, I check out the Psalm for myself. It is an acrostic, in which each line begins with the next letter of the Hebrew alphabet; starting at verse 4 (the bulletin actually says 3) is like asking a child to sing her ABC’s from the letter D.Ollie Rencher, the Assistant Rector, gives a sermon on the transformative power of God’s love. This brick gothic church somehow manages to be both establishment and progressive. William Faulkner worshipped here. Well-heeled visitors, in town for a football game and The Grove, take communion here. One congregant sports a bow-tie, impressively hand tied. Whatever changes come to Mississippi, the realist in me suspects, probably will begin at St. Peter’s Episcopal.

Next week, we attend a very different meeting, the Oxford Quakers. The group of twenty or so, until recently under the care of Memphis meeting, convenes at a member’s home in a sub- division just outside town. Service is unprogrammed, which may strike some as unstructured, but worship follows a ritual. Folks gather at the top of the hour. Children squirm through the first fifteen minutes, then head to First Day school. It takes another fifteen minutes to hunker down, to clear out job worries and “to-do” lists, then a communal silence develops. This silence is not so much individual absorption as an invisible, connecting chord. Sometimes someone has a message. Sometimes folks have lots of messages. Often, silence reigns.

At the top of the hour, the clerk shakes hands with the person sitting next to her or him, and the usual greetings begin. Much more happens after that, though I usually cut out.

I like Quaker worship for the same reason I could never follow the Book of Common Prayer. If the light of God dwells within each of us, we must decide for ourselves how to interpret the Word. I probably simplify. Just let me note that few bodies of worship (the Primitive Baptists excepted) leave time for silent prayer.

Attending a new church, even for a familiar denomination, takes getting used to. At Quaker meeting, Julie and I say our hello’s, then find two chairs in a corner of the back den. Mocha, the house pooch, settles down by the couch. A precocious pre-teen reads Hamlet next to me. At quarter after, the kids go to the basement for First Day school. I acclimate, check out the faces, the books on the coffee table, and photographs on the wall. Thirty minutes pass. I study the fringe lining the sofa. A communal silence builds. No one speaks today. At noon, the clock strikes twelve. Mocha sits up and wags his (or her) tail furiously. I make it a point to greet this good pooch by the paw.

I believe in the transformative power of Dogs.

Bumper Sticker, Oxford, Miss.

Bumper Sticker, outside Sterling University Apartments, Oxford, Miss.

"1 cross + 3 nails = 4 given"