A weird thing happened to me on Friday night, January 24. I fell asleep listening to a radio program on KSFO, Coast to Coast, and woke up to hear this different talk show host talking about Covenant Network. The executive director of Covenant Network is a member of my church, and she's in my Kerygma bible class on Wednesdays. I was on a committee with her for a year, and have known her for several years. She's a Wellesley grad, was a college classmate of Hilary Rodham Clinton, and I think she used to be a book editor at Random House.

It's so weird to hear my friend's organization talked about on the radio. The conservative radio talk show host was talking about a couple of presbyterian churches in Hayward and Castro Valley inviting a transgender presbyterian minister from Georgia to talk to them, so they could have a greater understanding of transgender people and issues since the slaying of Eddie "Gwen" Araujo Jr. -- the 17-year-old transgender teen slain last October. I guess Covenant Network helped to sponsor the event or something.

From the Covenant Network website, here's what they're about.

"The Covenant Network of Presbyterians is a broad-based, national group of clergy and lay leaders working for a church that is simultaneously faithful, just, and whole. We seek to support the mission and unity of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in a time of potentially divisive controversy. We intend to articulate and act on the church's historic, progressive vision and to work for a fully inclusive church.

We seek to live out the Reformed faith found in Scripture and our confessions, and in our life together to follow the principles laid out in the Call to Covenant Community. We strive to proclaim and embody the gospel as we have learned it from the life and ministry of Jesus; we affirm the centrality of the Bible in our church; and we value the dynamic tension between unity and diversity. The Call to Covenant Community has been affirmed by more than 2,500 ministers, 2,000 other officers, 19 former Moderators, 300+ sessions, five presbyteries, and the Synod of Lakes and Prairies.

Covenant Network was founded in August, 1997 to support the passage of Amendment (97)-A, the "Fidelity and Integrity Amendment." Its founding Co-Moderators were Robert Bohl, Pastor of Village Presbyterian Church in Prairie Village, Kansas and Moderator of the 206th General Assembly, and John Buchanan, Co-Pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago and Moderator of the 208th General Assembly."

It's strange to have one's personal life and a hot news topic come together on a conservative talk show program in the wee hours of the morning.