Today, the Great Schools in Wake Coalition will hold a briefing at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh. The briefing will deal with research issues, which I will have more to say about later.

I went to the Unitarian Universalist website for information about the briefing and I came across the March 7, 2010 sermon by Rev. Tom Rhodes titled “Are we there yet? Diversity and the Wake County Schools.”

The following passage appeared to summarize the religious basis for the opposition:

This is what Jesus meant when he said, ?Love your neighbor as yourself.?
But in today?s reading, Jesus is asked, ?so, who is my neighbor??

[snip]

Instead, Jesus is saying that our neighbor is really
the person that we wouldn?t normally even talk to,
who is unlike us,
who lives on the wrong side of the tracks.
Our neighbor is the one who sees the color line, even when we claim to be colorblind.

And if Jesus is right, then our ?neighborhood schools? should include
students and teachers from all walks of life,
rich and poor, black, brown and white,
liberal and conservative,
because we are one community in Wake County
? and if you can?t see that, then your concept of ?neighborhood? is too small!

I think Jesus is right, by the way. In fact, I love and trust my neighbors so much that I would like them choose where to send their children to school – without compulsion and perhaps even using the neighborhood’s tax dollars. But I am not minister, and, therefore, I am not qualified to make these kinds of theological pronouncements.