Now his elder son ... was angry and refused to go in. His father came out and entreated him, but he answered his father. "Lo, these many years I have served you ..." (Luke 15:25a, 28-29a)

Garrison Keillor likes to describe his fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, as having been founded by "Unitarian missionaries who came to convert the Indians through the use of interpretive dance." To appreciate the subtle humor of this remark we need to be aware that Unitarian Universalists generally don't believe in trying to convert people, and that while Unitarians do tend to favor "liturgical innovation," it seems likely that the Indians could have taught such missionaries more about dancing than the missionaries could have taught them. (It would have been like Don Rickles becoming a public re…