Proud to look up

I was told not to do it, of course. My "Let's Go" guide to New York, which I browsed on the plane like a piece of rushed homework, told me that it's pitifully easy to spot the tourists in Manhattan – they're the only ones gazing skyward, rubbernecking the impossible architecture around them. But who can blame us? I stand there for a minute or two, my neck bending this way and that like an eraser, taking in this forest of steel and glass and stone.

If you're a rookie, you might as well do all the clichés. As I cross Lexington Avenue I glance to my right and see the Chrysler Building way downtown and gasp out loud... and I don't feel ashamed. I've always admired that building, always wanted to see it. And the golden light of sunset is catching it just right – lighting up its famous sunburst summit.

A Welshman in New York

The church is running an impressive five services this Sunday, opening at 8.00am with a Rite One service based on the 1928 Prayer Book, and closing with an informal charismatic bash at 7.00pm, complete with winking candles, strumming guitars, a sermon with cartoons, and songs on the traditional overhead projection screen. This service is advertised outside the church with a large, friendly banner: "Wear your Sunday worst".

Meanwhile, back in the late morning service, I make myself at home in the broad pews. The rector, Rev Bill Tully, who fed me last night with a phoned-in-for Chinese meal, preaches on Jesus and the Pharisees, explaining why they've had some undeserved bad press down the years. And then a surprise: before the eucharist, he throws open the communion table to all comers. "Holy communion is open to everyone who worships with us without condition," he explains. "Of course there are rules, but today they are suspended." As I join the crowds of people going forward I feel in my bones that this is the right way to do it. After all, even Judas was welcome to the first-ever communion service.

After the evening service, I talk to a group of mostly young people about faith and humor. I can't show the slides I've brought, as the the church's one projector has been stolen. "Welcome to New York," says Bill, with a smile. So my talk has to be radio rather than television, but it goes well. I discover that an American church audience laughs at the same things as an English one – even down to the rude jokes.

Punch and rabbi

Alexandra is from New York, but she is in a saintly state of non-embarrassment at my obviously touristy behavior. Near the Empire State, we come across our best find of the day in the shop window of a little Jewish store. "The Punching Rabbi" is a glove puppet, complete with skull cap, long hair and ringlets... and a boxing glove on each hand.

The label on the packet is a singularly unconvincing attempt to bring some serious religious purpose to the product: "fighting for wisdom for 3000 years". As I buy my puppet, the saleswoman tells me: "Yeah, that's a really popular product."

"Why? Who on earth buys it?" I ask.

"People who want to punch their rabbi," she replies. Of course. Funny how some things cross all the religious divides.

Late afternoon, Alexandra and I go to see the taping of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" on Comedy Central, at the invitation of shipmate Jenny Hunter, who works on the show. Nice to see Arky, the sister of Jesus the Hot Air Balloon (our favourite Gadget for God), on one of the office noticeboards. The most edifying moment in the show is a video extract from a Bible talk being given by a sweet-looking old southern televangelist. When a heckler disrupts his little homily, the sweet old televangelist puts aside his big black Bible and rummages in his briefcase for a gun. "Take this 9mm to that boy," he says, pastorally.

Gadget of the evening

Rev Fletcher Harper, who was the first person to invite me to come to America on this tour, introduces me to his youth group and we sit down together at the back of the sanctuary to a welcome meal of pasta, salad, coca-cola and cookies. Jason, one of the group, wants to know my AOL Instant Messenger username so that he can surprise me with late-night messages, just like he does with Rev Harper when he's trying to compose seriously ecclesiastical emails on the Net. Oddly enough, I can't quite remember it off the top of my head.

Several people come out from New York city for the evening to hear me talk about Ship of Fools and the Internet. The lights keep flickering as the storm blows around outside, but the power holds up for us. I even manage that rare technical feat: making the LCD projector work from my laptop. The youth group call out the Gadgets for God they want to see on the screen, and the WWJD boxer shorts, with their temptation-proof sewn-up fly, prove to be a firm favourite.

In Columbus without a radio

I've been in Columbus over the past year – if only as a radio presence. Every Thursday since last November, I was a guest on Radio U's "Bash and the Freak Show", where we played with tacky abandon, "Jesus Junk: the Price is Right", getting contestants to bid for religious kitsch items, as described by me. I was hoping to be on the show in person today while I'm passing through town, but my host, DC Bash, suddenly left Radio U without warning a week ago. While I'm waiting for my Greyhound to leave town, I sit in a Columbus restaurant eating a chicken salad and feeling sorry that after all those weeks being on the show by phone, we've missed a live meeting by a few days.

Kentucky heaven

On the way to the Presbyterian seminary, where I'm speaking, we pass the planet-sized campus of the Southern Baptist Convention's main seminary. The president of the place lives in a big white mansion across the grass from the seminary, with fine, tall windows and a big portico with columns, just like the one Jesus used to live in when he was on earth.

We stand in the Presbyterian chapel on campus, awed by its cavernous wooden roof, thrusting upward in a sharp v above us. David tells me that when the roof creaks, the students joke that it's the Holy Spirit moving around up there. At this moment, the wind lifts outside and the roof timbers sigh and crackle from end to end like a ship moving through a light sea, like a restless deity turning over on an old wooden bed.

This evening, a small crowd of us drive down to Baxter Street for a Kentucky-style Ship of Fools crew meet at Molly Malone's, a good imitation of an Irish pub. On the way, we pass near the cemetery where Colonel Sanders, of finger-lickin' fried chicken fame, lies buried. When the last trump sounds, will he be raised in his white suit and necktie, I wonder? We settle into a comfortable corner in the very crowded pub – David, Mike, Glenn, Christian, Karen and I – and notice almost straight away that a Bill Gates lookalike (or maybe it's just his representative on earth?) is supping beer at the bar just opposite us.

A bluegrass band starts up at the other end of the pub, singing their way through favorites such as "The green rolling hills of West Virginia" and "Where did I go wrong and he go right?" with the audience yee-hahing the end of each number with great enthusiasm, me included. The sweet smell of marijuana drifts across the table where I'm standing and the moustachioed man standing in front of me turns to ask, "where's that coming from?" in a "can I have some too" sort of way.

Old Turkey bourbon, a twangy banjo with twangy singing to match, a warm night with stars, a planned stopoff at KFC on the ride home... this is Kentucky heaven.

Jesus and the cat dish

And she has a line which is a blessing for the road, and which is good to say to yourself if you're on your own when the plane takes off: "Traveling mercies: love the journey, God is with you, come home safe and sound."

A town named Auburn

I'm here to meet with the good people of Anglicans Online, who gave Ship of Fools its first online review back in 1997, an event which made our visitor numbers surge to a then-astronomical 60 people per day. Cynthia McFarland, their managing editor and a great friend, tapped me on the shoulder at the airport, where she'd come to meet me, and a few moments later her mobile rang and it was her colleague Brian Reid in California, phoning to say "welcome to Syracuse" in his relaxed, Californian growl.

Anyway, that was yesterday. This morning, Cynthia drove me to church in the nearby town of Auburn, which must surely be the place where all red-headed people come from. I love the American town names, especially the Puritan-sounding ones like Providence, Rhode Island, and Intercourse, Pennsylvania. How can anyone live in a town called Intercourse and not walk round with a permanent grin on their face?

We find a pew in the respectably full parish church of St Peter and St John. We watch a boy, straining on tiptoe, struggling to light the candles on top of the seven-foot poles at the end of the pews. We sing all eight verses of the wonderful Sine Nomine ("For all the saints..."). We hear a well-delivered sermon which takes as its starting point the "martyrdom" of Cassie Burnall, who died in the Colorado school shooting in April. Cassie's tragic death is currently being marketed quite aggressively, with a range of t-shirts, bracelets and key rings in the depressing tradition of WWJD? products – but nevertheless, this is a thoughtful sermon.

The wired ones

Blacksburg, 1,500 feet further up from Roanoke in the Appalachian Mountains, is said to be the most wired community in the world. In 1993, back in the Jurassic era of the Internet, Blacksburg Electronic Village was launched, with the aim of enhancing and complementing the physical community. Today, an impressive 85 per cent of Blacksburgers are online. I discover the town's Net-savviness for myself at the evening meeting in Christ Church, when I ask how many of the audience are on the Net. There is hesitation and some puzzled glances, and then almost all the hands in the church go up. Later, Clare explains to me that they weren't sure if I was asking if they had mere Internet access or their own websites. Maybe Blacksburg is one of the few places where this question would be ambiguous.

My talk ends with some of our very best Gadgets for God – the WWJD boxer shorts stealing the show with the biggest laugh of the evening. But then it's my turn to be ambushed by humor. While I'm snacking on a coffee and cookies after the talk, Father Jack hands me a real-life gadget he's brought along – a mug showing the skyline of Denver at night. Following the instructions on the box, I pour some hot water into the mug and instantly the black sky clears to reveal... a giant Pope John Paul II bending over the city, his hands clasped devoutly in prayer.

Tragically, Father Jack is an avid collector of mugs and takes his miracle mug home with him instead of turning it over to me for safe-keeping – and just when I was thinking it would make a spectacular addition to the downstairs toilet of my home in London, which is becoming a veritable cave of gadgets.

Connecting with the motherboard

There's a big blue sky and warm sunshine. There are wooden houses with long porches and sofas on those porches. There are multi-colored leaves still clinging to the trees. And there is Dana Bogany sitting in the church offices, waiting for me as I walk in the door. Dana is the unofficial mother of the Ship of Fools bulletin board (I like to think of her as the "motherboard") and she drove all the way down from Pittsburgh to hear me speak last night. In an artsy little coffee house, we settle down in one of their shapeless sofas talking, laughing and sipping ice-cold coffee. And later we lunch in a vegetarian restaurant, sitting in the window next to a plaster bust of Elvis. This is a mind-stretching bit of fun, meeting a shipmate from these shores for the first time.

As Dana and I chat about the bulletin board and its denizens, talking quickly, interrupting each other, grinning, emphasising – doing all the conversation things – I'm mentally computing how long an email all this talk would make. I'm enjoying the simple physicality of meeting... it's what Anwar Sadat once called "the joy of talking".

American ice age

The tour yields a convert

At the station I meet Rev George Young, who drives me to his home in Fernandina Beach, on Amelia Island, one of the barrier islands which stand between Jacksonville and the ocean. Fernandina Beach is an old town, once prosperous and ambitious, now quiet and comfortable. The houses look colonial and sun-beaten, with big, wide porches and the occasional American flag hanging from the upstairs balconies, and George's church in the center of town (St Peter's) has a style I'd call tropical gothic. We go to the Golden Grouper for lunch and meet April: "Hi, I'm April and I'll be serving you this lunchtime... can I get you some drinks?" I have a lemonade (with a small mountain of ice in it) and then order baked cajun grouper. It feels good to be here.

Tonight, at the parish supper in the spacious church hall, I'm warmed by the welcome people give me... and also by the delicious red wine, which is flowing as freely as a wedding where Jesus has got involved in the catering. A good crowd of people are here, and I give a talk about the Internet and then a bit later about faith and humor. The most satisfying moment of the evening happens during the discussion, when someone tells me that my positive remarks about the Net have won her over, and she's going to try it out. It's gratifying to see at least one glorious conversion during this tour.

November in Florida

I'm staying with another Rev George Young (the father of George in Fernandina Beach), and his wife, Peggy, who have shown me the city, fed and entertained me like I was the prodigal son, and even let me knock out some ragtime on their splendid old piano. Before supper last night, George took to the piano himself, as he does every night, schmoozing it with Richard Rodgers' "Bewitched, bothered and bewildered..." And after supper, we settled down comfortably, each of us puffing on a cigar, to watch the British sitcom "As Time Goes By" on cable. George and Peggy are nigh-on the perfect recommendation for the contentments of retirement.

The sermon goes fine. Outside church, the sun is shining, making a complete joke of this being a November day. The congregation pour out of the main doors and people come over to talk. Someone tells me that they could listen to my accent all day. Others want the Ship of Fools website address. Father Michael, the rector, picks me up on a point of theology which will help with the rewrite. One parishioner wants to talk about the humor of Jesus – the subject of the sermon – while another is keen to discuss the death of Princess Diana.

I fly home on Wednesday morning, but first, there's one place I have to visit...

Baptism of Memphis

But this day is about to get better in a serious way. By 8.30am I'm standing on a grassy bluff high above the beautiful brown waters of the Mississippi as it powers through town. The saintly, soft-spoken Paul Brown, professor of homiletics and worship at Memphis Theological Seminary, rescued me from the airport and sensibly drove me straight here to get a shot of agrophobia as the perfect antidote to the flight.

I've never seen the Mississippi before. I've never seen a river anywhere near this big before. It is monumental in its size and dignity, even though it's rather reduced at the moment after a long, dry summer. I climb down the steep, rocky slope to the edge of the water to put my hand into the river. The wind is cold here this morning, but the water is cool on my fingers. Looking out across the river from surface level, I can see the current properly – and it's swift and relentless, alarming for a river of this width and depth. This is a river with presence, with attitude. And of course with stories.

I'm not speaking here until tomorrow, so with an afternoon free, Nancy McSpadden, the seminary's librarian and dean of chapel, drives me through town, past churches without number and along Elvis Presley Boulevard. The sun is shining madly. I open the window. It's a hot day. "I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee, I'm going to Graceland... I've reason to believe we both will be received in Graceland..."

Nancy and I bypass Elvis's mothballed jet airplane and go straight for the small shuttle bus which sweeps us across the road, through the sacred gates and up the winding drive, right to Elvis's doorstep, beneath a white colonnaded portico, southern style. The tour is guided by headphones and a cassette and is unexpectedly fascinating. I'm no Elvis fan, but there something intoxicating about seeing so directly into the private world of a person who is this god-like.

Here is Elvis's piano, glimpsed through tasteless stained glass panels in the living room. Here is his oval dining table, positioned so that he could watch one of Graceland's 14 television sets while entertaining guests. Here is momma's bathroom, with purple tiles and wallpaper with poodles on it. The house is quite small and intimate, making you feel that you could bump into Elvis round any corner... and maybe we will, if he gets home early from the gas station or wherever else he's been appearing recently.

And of course, the costumes. This has to be the best thing of many best things about Graceland. Not just the big, bloated costumes from the end of his life, with chunky belts and rhinestones, but simple things like a dark jacket which even I recognize on sight from one of his famous early photographs. Next to the jacket, a picture of Elvis in the jacket... you look from one to the other, checking the cut, the lapels, the buttons. You can almost feel the presence of the person who once filled it and made it famous. Being here reminds me of saints and relics and why they have such a powerful grip on the imagination.

After my baptism in the Mississippi and encounter with Elvis, it would be greedy to expect anything more exciting than an early night with a cup of cocoa, but Beale St, birthplace of the blues in downtown Memphis, beckons. Paul, Nancy and I wander the street for a while, sampling the music spilling out of the clubs, and settle on "This Is It", a restaurant and music lounge in the middle of the street. Onstage in the restaurant window is The Dynamic Band, playing blues, soul and even the occasional bluesed-up country and western number... but the slow blues tunes are the ones which make me glad to be alive to hear them, here and now...

I'm gonna get me a hoochy mama,
I gotta put a smile back on my face.
I'm gonna get me a hoochy mama,
I gotta put a smile back on my face.
I'm gonna get me a hoochy mama,
Ain't got no pride ain't got no shame.

Church growth on steroids

Bellevue is church growth on steroids. It was probably once a decent Baptist church which started snacking on the wrong stuff, expanded rapidly and then popped all its buttons, without anyone seeing what a bulging monster it had become. Instead, the leaders, Southern Baptists all, moved the show out of town so it could grow even more, built a 7,000-seater sanctuary for it and started bussing people in from Memphis for the services, sucking the life out of local churches in the process. The church is now so big that an exit from the highway was specially built for it.

Doris is the tour guide for our visit and helpfully tells us the statistics as we walk round: 24 ordained ministers, 700 Sunday school teachers, 23 kitchens, 78 water fountains, 11 acres of plush carpet. Hiking across that carpet near the grand entrance, we see a 9,000-piece chandelier that is probably powered by Bellevue's own hydroelectric power plant and has been valued at a quarter of a million dollars. How God went ballistic over the Tower of Babel but approved all this is already giving me a theological headache.

The crowning glory is the Singing Christmas Tree. Every December, the church runs special carol concerts, featuring a gigantic helter-skelter in green plastic fir, festooned with golden drapes, multi-colored lights and a 100-strong choir standing on ascending tiers, with a solitary singer right at the top. The tree then proceeds to sing carols, presumably to the delight of the audience, while staff concealed inside stand ready to offer help to choir members who overheat, suffer from vertigo or are tempted to end it all to the strains of "Have yourself a merry little Christmas".

I look at the photos of this surreal concoction – a tree with 100 human faces, surrounded by cute Disney-like houses in blue and pink – and marvel at how everything at Bellevue has to be XXL. Their advance planning team are probably working on a five-story high stuffed Christmas turkey, floating on a 5,000-gallon lake of steaming sauce, ready to roll as soon as genetic engineering makes it possible.

As we leave, Doris reminds us: "Be sure to come back for the Passion Play. My favorite part is when the curtain of the temple is rent, and when they do the earthquake you can really feel it. Broadway shows can't hold a candle to it."

Thoughts in a yellow taxi

The city is beautiful. It feels like home, coming here for one last night.

I think of the people and places I've visited, of how there is now snow falling in Ithaca, New York, while Florida enjoys sunshine which any English summer would envy. I think of the homage I've paid to the cultural icons – Elvis and Col. Sanders – and I think of bluegrass and bourbon, of the Mississippi and the blues. And I'm full of thanks to all the people who have welcomed me and shared their home, their refrigerator, their Internet connection... Thank you, everyone: you made this tour possible – and then you made it impossible to forget.