Summary Thoughts about the UCC KS-OK Annual Meeting

As I was thinking about how best to summarize last weekend's annual meeting of the UCC Kansas-Oklahoma Conference and the response to our resolution, "After Dialogue, a Declaration about Marriage," I was reminded of a poignant saying and story from G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936) told by Dale Ahlquist in his book, "G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense." He writes:

"In 1905, a famous London newspaper, the Illustrated London News, hired Chesterton to write a weekly column. He was told he could write about anything he wanted--except religion and politics. Chesterton responded by saying there was nothing else worth writing about...

Chesterton went ahead and wrote the column for the next 30 years, and every week he wrote about religion and politics. He never backed away from controversy, but if you think about it, every controversy, every argument, every discussion is really about religion and politics. Or both. Religion has to do with our relationship with God. Politics has to do with our relationship with our neighbor. These are controversial for the simple reason that all the problems in the world come from our failure to obey the two greatest commandments: to love God and to love our neighbor.

As Chesterton says: "The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because they are are generally the same people."