"I feel closer to God here than I do at a conventional church," said Nelson, 56, a lifelong churchgoer who until recently could be found every Sunday morning in the pews at First Baptist Church nearby. "Jesus said we're supposed to be a light to the world. What better place to do that than at a bar?" 

Last spring, Fletcher was accepted in Bethel Seminary in St. Paul; he now commutes 150 miles south one to two times a week for classes. Initially he intended to incorporate work as a chaplain into his job working with an ambulance crew, but as he began his seminary studies he found common ground with a recent wave of evangelical thinkers including Brian McLaren and Shane Claiborne. 

McLaren and Claiborne have criticized some of Christianity's more conservative traditions as they try to attract people disinterested in traditional Sunday attendance - in particular, younger people. 

"I often find the people in the bar are a lot more authentic than people in the church," Fletcher said. "If Jesus was in Two Harbors, he'd want to be with the people in the bar. He'd probably get kicked out of the church." 

"It's kind of nice to go to church and have a couple," said Anderson, attending for the first time. "I'm not exactly a churchgoer." Anderson, who grew up Roman Catholic, said he realized the church wasn't for him the day he wore a Ted Nugent T-shirt to Mass and was reprimanded by the priest.

Long before Dec. 25 became the date for the celebration of Christmas, the darkest days of winter frightened ancient people into performing rituals that evolved into religious celebrations of light.

"Pagans used to light fires and bang drums to chase away the darkness because they were afraid the light wouldn't come back," said Joan Schumacher, a lay minister at The First Unitarian Church of Honolulu. "They needed it for crops. Otherwise they were going to starve." A Solstice Service to celebrate the return of light and spiritual renewal will be held at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the church, featuring the Celtic group Dharma.

Unitarian beliefs are drawn from all different paths of faith, including an "earth-based spirituality," said Schumacher, one of the service's organizers. Recognizing the winter solstice pays respect to the "cycles of the earth and the universe. ... It brings our lives into harmony with the earth," she said.

Fewer and fewer people are satisfied with mainline religions or dogmatic interpretations of God, and have increasingly turned to earth-based spiritual practices in recent years, he said.

"What you would call paganism is just an appreciation of nature. It's concrete, not abstract. ... It's (nature) what sustains us," Bond-Upson said. "We're looking for religious truth wherever we can find it and we're increasingly drawing on other wisdom.

Some of the congregation have strong Jewish, Christian and Buddhist roots and retain their core beliefs, "but they're seekers, free thinkers," Bond-Upson said.

As First Unitarian is a member of the Unitarian-Universalist Association of Congregations, "Unitarians believe God is One, not divided into a trinity (Father, Son and Holy Ghost). This universe is all united; all is one thing because God was one, rather than three. ... We Unitarians embrace it all, unless it is hateful, exclusive or contrary to reason." He added: "In the end, nobody goes to hell. God is too good. God is not a sadist. We focus on the unity and goodness of God."