"...ease of giving, Priceless!"

Gone soon will be the days when the donation plate passed along the pews guilting the most tight-fisted Methodist to plunk down a few quarters on Sunday morning. More and more church coffers are being filled electronically through online payment tools and most recently, an electronic donation kiosk in the vestibule. The company Secure Give is featured in an article published in the Christian Science Monitor. Founded in 2003 by Pastor Marty Baker who felt that "...American culture [was] quickly moving away from doing business with cash and checks and it was time for the local church to investigate new ways of resourcing God's work." Our parent church, The Monastery has been accepting donations via credit/debit cards since 1999, disbursing the contributions to charitable organizations throughout the world.

Faith and Tragedy

On that tragic Summer afternoon of August 2nd, the commuters on the I35 Bridge in Minneapolis, returning from the grocery store, daycare, or work, could not have imagined that the roadway would collapse beneath their tires. A bus full of school children was spared but a pregnant mother and her two-year-old daughter among others were not so lucky. In the face of such catastrophes, it is natural for believers to question the nature of their god.

Reflecting on this tragedy I am reminded of The Bridge of San Luis Rey the 1928 Pulitzer Prize winner by Thornton Wilder. The story tells of an old Inca rope bridge spanning a deep chasm in the Peruvian Andes that snaps, sending five people to their deaths. The event is witnessed by a friar who is compelled to discover why these seemingly innocent people had been chosen by God, or fate to be on the bridge at the moment it failed.

His labors reveal much about the lives of those who perished on the bridge but fails to deliver on his search for an unanswerable truth. In a final twist of irony, the friar's work is condemned by the Catholic Church and he is burned at the stake for heresy.

On the Sunday following the bridge collapse, hundreds of Minnesotans from diverse creeds gathered in an Episcopal cathedral to memorialize the dead, seeking for some kind of meaning in the tragedy. Maybe some found it. Others, their faith shaken might choose to leave it...collapsed.

Universal Life church History

We appreciate your interest in The Monastery and understand your concerns as there has been a lot of misinformation surrounding the fact that over 50 online ULC’s operate independently from Modesto. It was the ULC’s founder, Kirby Hensley, who upon reading the First Amendment, purposefully intended that the mantel of ordination be passed on freely by each ULC minister, giving no organization exclusive ownership of ULC or obligation to Modesto.

In 1977 when the ULC revivalist movement was undergoing a period of rapid growth Br. Martin founded the Universal Life Church Monastery to accommodate the personal needs of homeless individuals, New Age seekers and new ministers through The Monastery. Following Hensley’s edict, our ministers are encouraged to start their own ministries with freedom to decide the direction, theology, and scope of their mission.

We are now our own Church based on the tenets of the ULC. We keep all of our records internally. We had and still have the same legal standing as any religious institution under the US Constitution. We issue Ordination Certificates and notarized Letters of Good Standing to all ministers in our data banks. Hence, any request for documentation of ordination through this site that we do not have on file, we will continue to fax to Modesto if we do not have a record of such.

Please understand that there are no “bad guys” among the different Universal Life Churches. Churches just like the laity they serve often find themselves traveling different paths despite their common beliefs. We are all children of the same Universe.

How Women Discovered Time...

...and then taught it to men, who then became aware of their own mortality. This, according to Leonard Shlain, a surgeon at UCSF, explains humans', but particularly male sex drive. In his book, Sex, Time, and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, Schlain proposes an explanation for the 'battle of the sexes'.

Humans have an abnormally high rate of childbirth mortality, due to the evolution of our pelvic bone structure necessary for walking upright. As a result women, aware of the link between sex and pregnancy, began to refuse intercourse. Men, on the other hand sought to extend their lineage into the future as a way obtaining immortality and as a result, acquired a sex drive not seen in any other species.

An M.D. as well as a student of evolutionary biology, Schlain refuses to believe that there are traits and behaviors among humans that do not give us an adaptive advantage. He uses this approach to explain the existence of homosexuality. According to his research, 8% of men and 5% of women are gay. Imagine a hunting party of twelve men where only eleven have wives and families to feed. Schlain would have us believe that the twelfth man allows the tribe, band, or group to enjoy a slightly higher standard of living.