On March 11, I cited an Alternet story about Robert Jensen, a self-confessed atheist, who joined a Presbyterian church for, as he put it, "political reasons." Now the pastor of that church explains the reasoning that led him to accept an atheist as a member, noting that the early Christians were accused of being atheists because they didn't worship human images of God. (We should remember, however, that until the end of the eighteenth century, "atheist" was not used strictly to mean "someone who believes there is no God" but, rather, "someone with whose religious views I disagree." )

"Whoever has love has God." That's what the Bible says. So the question before my church was not whether Jensen could recite religious syllables like a cockatiel, but whether he would follow the core teachings of Jesus and learn more and grow more into Christ's universal love of which the creeds sing. This he pledged to do.