Religion and Halloween

I took Wesley trick-or-treating last night in our neighborhood. At one house, the woman didn't hand out candy but instead put in a fundamentalist tract entitled "Eternal Life is a Free Gift". It reminded me of an incident that happened several years back when Carrie and I lived in Roanoke, Virginia.

We had gone to the movies to see "The Last Temptation of Christ", which had been stirring up a bunch of controversy there (as I'm sure it did in Memphis). There were churches protesting outside, and as we entered, a man handed Carrie a gospel tract. She promptly said thank you, opened her purse, and handed the man a card with the UU principles on it that she'd picked up at church. The man was absolutely dumbstruck! He had been so accustomed to having the communication of his faith be a one-way conversation that he had no idea of how to respond to someone ready to turn it into a dialogue.

I think I'm going to order a stack of those cards and have them at my door whenever missionaries ring the bell. A little reverse prosletyzing might be good for Jackson....

See you Sunday!
Ross