Universal Life Church

What is an Arab Christian cleric to do when his congregation has been steadily diminishing amid a tide of Muslim Arab refugees and immigrants? At first the situation sounds like the perfect recipe for brewing religious conflict—while Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is predominantly Jewish it also has a significant Arab minority of 1.4 million, yet within this minority group exists yet a smaller, more vulnerable one—123,000 Arab Christians. Despite the numbers, Father Masoud Abu Hatoum, known informally as “the bulldozer” for his enthusiasm, has found light-hearted and diplomatic ways to revive the dwindling Christian community of Kufr Kana (the Biblical Cana), where it is traditionally believed that Jesus turned water into wine, without taking the traditional approach of proclaiming holy war on invading “infidels”.

Most of the Christians leaving Kufr Kana are young; in order to escape “boring” village life and find better employment, they have moved away to larger towns such as Nazareth and Tiberias, and especially the thriving coastal cities of Haifa and Tel Aviv, “which offer bigger Christian communities, more jobs and better marriage prospects”, reports Diaa Hadid of WTOP radio station. According to Hadid, “Kufr Kana was entirely Christian at the beginning of the 20th century, but Muslims began settling in the village first as traders, and then as refugees fleeing fighting during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, locals said. Now the village is home to 16,000 Muslims and 4,000 Christians.” Churches in the village see Sunday attendance faltering at twenty to a couple dozen, and most of these congregation members consist of the middle-aged and elderly.

Such emigration of young congregation members is, of course, difficult to stem, and it is a challenge to re-invent stale and traditional sermons and ceremonies to make these relevant to increasingly cynical and practical youths, let alone to persuade them to choose their religious community over employment opportunities in the secular world. Of course, if Abu Hatoum’s re-invention of his congregation proves amusing enough to retain and even attract creative types, it could mean the blossoming of an alternative, even bohemian, Christian “pilgrimage” site, and a new facet to the village’s tourist economy.

In an attempt to keep young Christians in town, therefore, the priest has adopted a strategy to make worship in the village more entertaining, exploit its reputation as the site where Jesus turned water into wine, and re-invigorate its image as a vibrant Christian community. One Christmas, the priest constructed a ninety-foot-tall framework of a Christmas tree, billing it as the tallest Christmas tree in the Holy Land, which, according to Hadid, attracted an Israeli television crew and earned Abu Hatoum a segment on a local radio show. The priest plans to perform a summer pageant at his church portraying Jesus’ water-into-wine miracle, then to officiate over a mass wedding there in October. Already, with the fame Abu Hatoum has garnered for his efforts, the village church has shown signs of a transformation into a rather quirky destination featuring an off-the-wall, alternative variety of Christian worship.

Is Abu Hatoum’s attempt to revive his community a sign of irreverence for Christianity? Could it even be labeled tacky? It is widely understood that the early Church made well calculated attempts to incorporate ancient pagan worship sites into newly built churches to attract potential converts and enlarge their “flock”. It is a far more peaceful effort, moreover, than to take a belligerent stance and attempt to “save” Christian holy sites from the “faithless”—even the Crusades could backfire on Christendom, as during the Fourth Crusade of 1202-1204, when Crusaders attacked and sacked the fellow Christian cities of the Catholic port of Zara, in Dalmatia, and the mighty Greek Orthodox capitol of Byzantium, Constantinople, merely in return for funding of their expedition to Egypt, which never happened anyway.

As Hadid reports, “Relations with Muslims” in Kufr Kana “tend to be cool but polite”, and the delicate and complex interrelationships among religions in the area persist. And Abu Hatoum’s gigantic, wood-framed Christmas tree, summer pageant on Jesus turning water into wine, and mass wedding ceremony—with all their quirks, kitsch, and newfangled amusements to lure young people and Christian tourists—do offer a more peaceful, laissez-faire, economically inventive option for re-asserting a Christian presence in shrinking Christian communities. Indeed, they are a sorely needed example of levity and maintenance of religious harmony in a perennially strife-ridden region of the world.

Source & Image: WTOP

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Which is lacking more in our everyday spiritual practice? Content, or formality? The answer may depend on your religious background.

Many of us who grew up in contemporary U.S. Protestant denominations and were later exposed to high Anglican or Roman Catholic practices have noticed the astonishing lack of performance-based ritual in their own traditions. Of course, the first Protestants believed their grievances just in railing against such Catholic traditions as plenary indulgences, priest as mediator between God and lay-member, ecclesiastical material excess, etc. But then along came the puritans, who smashed stained-glass windows and painted over frescoed church walls, and the Calvinists, who preached success through discipline and self-denial as proof of one’s divine favor. Somehow, as the Protestant and Catholic paths diverged, the Protestant attack on such fetishes as holy water, anointing oil, transubstantiation, etc., left little room left for religious performance and resulted in a ritual-impoverished church. The priest was replaced by a minister preaching the infallible “word of God”, and the altar, by a pulpit.

For those Protestants who have felt this ritual poverty in the stale and dull environs of their own churches, it is almost like replacing a fireplace with a television set. While in the Catholic Church priests may have mediated God’s messages for their laity, the laity at least had the opportunity to participate in physical, substantive rituals which rendered their observances more concrete; in many Protestant churches, however, the most inspiring formality consists of partaking in Communion through the ingestion of crackers and grape juice. Scores of Protestant ministers will undoubtedly stress the centrality of preaching abstract theological messages for silent, detached congregation members to absorb and contemplate; for many, however, such nebulous, invisible contemplation is unsatisfactory, and the message is more succinctly symbolized, and fully realized, through participation in physical ritual. Perhaps “magic”—what skeptics might call “superstition”—is the missing element.

How, then, do we “take back the altar”?

In her blog The Wandering Lantern, priestess and Universal Life Church minister Ember K. Miller gives suggestions on the many ways in which one can build a private altar in the home to help make their beliefs and practices more physically potent and meaningful. An altar can be created for any religion, she notes, including “serene Catholic shrines, vibrant Hindu shrines, simple college [sic] altars to the elements, elaborate Samhain altars, expansive Voudoun / Hoodoun work spaces”, and “elegant Etruscan altars”. It need not even directly involve magic or religion, but can consist of “a small shrine set up for a departed pet, or a simple stone next to a pen for a writing altar, or candles and flowers near the bird bath outside to honor the coming of [S]pring”. The point is that the altar reflects one’s unique personality or path. Often this incorporates symbols of the “four” elements which help ground one in the physical environment, e.g. a fountain for water, a bell for air, an incense stick for fire, or a plant, such as a flower, for earth.

What is striking about this type of observance is its similarity to the Christian sacraments—most notably, the Eucharist, in which participants are summoned to the altar to partake in bread and wine transubstantiated into the “blood” and “flesh” of Christ. The fact that traditional Roman Catholics as well as animists and many pagans believe in the mysterious power of ritual objects demonstrates the versatility and relevance of home altars. However, whether or not one believes in the magical or consecratory properties of holy water, incense, smudging sage, photographs, etc., physical spaces and objects can have a very practical effect: they help frame and concentrate one’s inner thoughts and establish their reality in the everyday world, even if this functions as a mere mnemonic device or psychosomatic effect.

Perhaps this is why highly organized dances, processions, and divination techniques are integral to the ceremonies of many pre-industrial ecstatic traditions: ritual may in fact manifest beliefs, hopes, or dreams in physical reality. It is a highly esoteric question, but, then, religion is a highly mysterious creature.

Image: Wiccan Altars

Source: The Wandering Lantern

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Revolutions in marriage and the performance of wedding rites seem to be popping up all over the globe at present, not only with the legalization of same-sex marriage in countries such as Portugal as well as the current lawsuit challenging Proposition 8 in the United States, but also in traditional bastions of sexual conservatism such as Malawi. The bold moves on the part of marriage pioneers remain dangerous, however, as they are met with legal backlashes by governments banning homosexuality and demographic majorities fearful of a “dilution” of the definition of marriage.

The controversy surrounding Steven Monjeza and his partner, Tiwonge Chimbalanga, both of Malawi, exemplifies this precarious interplay between government and constitutional law on one hand, and recalcitrant grassroots activism on the other. Not that these two men are activists; indeed, all they wanted to do was solemnize their love for one another. This is precisely what they did when they held a symbolic wedding ceremony late last year to show their love and commitment to one another, the first such action in the history of this poor southeast African nation. The effect of their public ceremony, however, had an effect similar to that of a protest—on December 28th, local authorities arrested the couple for homosexuality.

What is perhaps most remarkable about the case for prejudiced Western readers is the velocity with which Monjeza and Chimbalanga’s lawyers mounted a challenge to Malawi’s ban on homosexuality. The two men’s legal team has asked for the case to be reviewed before the Constitutional Court, citing Malawi’s Republican Constitution banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation—itself only a recent legal achievement in the United States—and while the presiding judge, Judge Nyakwawa Usiwausiwa, stated that a constitutional review at a higher judicial level was possible, he has said he will continue with the case for the time being. The rapid leap in Malawi from bans on “indecent behavior” to constitutional challenges against such bans is a striking development, undoubtedly due in part to pressure from humanitarian organizations with wedding law reform as an ultimate agenda: Amnesty International UK director Kate Allen condemned the “criminalization” of homosexuality in Malawi as well as the “appalling” treatment of Monjeza and Chimbalanga in prison, where authorities placed them allegedly to protect them from “mob attack”.

Admittedly, it was the ban on homosexuality that Monjeza and Chimbalanga’s legal team challenged, and not the legality of gay marriage there. However, the men’s imprisonment for homosexuality did stem from their matrimony. Monjeza and Chimbalanga themselves took a significant step forward in challenging attitudes about marriage in Malawi by having a public wedding ceremony, suggesting the emergence of outright social defiance of the taboo against unions such as theirs.

As nations increasingly reach parity with one another over the right of couples such as Monjeza and Chimbalanga to wed, as well as the right of their loved ones to solemnize their vows as qualified and ordained ministers, very real humanitarian problems arise in the ensuing struggle. In order to avoid disaster, a balance must somehow be struck between pioneering efforts at change on one hand, and sensitivity to the delicate humanitarian implications on the other. Sometimes this may require working within the system to change it; other times, this approach simply constitutes a form of co-optation. Online churches such as Universal Life Church Monastery can play an instrumental role in the transition from exclusivist and discriminatory marriage laws to a fairer, more just system by opening up a forum for debate and continuing to challenge beliefs.

Source: Pink News

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What sort of innovation illustrates the adaptability of the church to everyday life in the twenty-first century? In a previous post below on the increasingly prominent roles of women and minorities in the Anglican Communion, we showed how it was possible for the Communion to modernize its traditions in order to remain relevant to its diverse congregations in the present day. The Church of England in particular has not stopped here, but has moved a step further in this modernization process by updating Plow Monday—a holiday dating from the Middle Ages that marks the first Monday after Twelfth Night (the Eve of Epiphany)—to include the consecration of laptop computers and mobile telephones brought in by congregation members.

Will Pavia of London’s The Times reports on efforts by the English Church to incorporate the blessing of modern technology, including ubiquitous Apple products such as the smart phone, into its centuries-old liturgy. The Church’s willingness to adapt is evident, as Pavia reports, since “none had been brave enough to adapt its ceremonies to address the modern mysteries of 3G network coverage, iPhone apps and variable battery life” before the new liturgy was held January 11th at St. Lawrence Jewry in the City of London Corporation. Part of St. Lawrence’s success in this endeavor is due to Canon Parrott, who exhibits a charisma and dynamism absent in many of England’s quickly-emptying churches. “In his former parish”, Pavia reports, “he once dressed up as a Christmas tree to promote the message of Christmas”.

At first, this novel practice may appear to many as bizarre, newfangled, and even irreverent, as though the timeless character of the liturgy has been diluted. But this rite may not seem so bizarre as one might first think. In the Middle Ages, Pavia notes, laborers would commemorate Plow Monday by bringing their plows to the church door and leaving them there to be blessed by the clergy. Thus, ecclesiastical adaptation to modern-day needs and interests is not a new phenomenon; the Church (at that time the Universal Church, since the English Church had not yet been established) has long been appealing to its laity with innovations which would have been highly personal for, and contemporary with, them.

Why do congregation members bring their plows and laptops to church to be blessed? The ritual may have deeper and more anthropologically significant roots than we imagine. The Catholic Church, for example, has been a traditional exponent of the doctrine of transubstantiation, in which worshippers partaking in the Eucharist literally believe they are consuming bread and wine which have been alchemically changed through incantations into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ. This, along with the consecration of holy water and myriad other Catholic sacraments, is not terribly different from the ceremonies of pre-industrial cultures in which participants engaged in drumming, dance, and chant to bring rain or a good harvest, or to ward off disease. Both might be considered forms of imitative magic, in which the mimicry of an event brings that event into reality.

As long as traditional practices such as imitative magic form a fundamental aspect of religion, it seems appropriate that the church should adapt them into a modern-day context. And the current rapid advances in technology cannot be excluded from traditional ceremony. Online churches such as Universal Life Church Monastery, with their discussion forums, online sermons, and non-traditional methods of ordination, are one example how the church has incorporated modern technology—particularly the internet—into its traditional rites, services, and ceremonies. As the world becomes increasingly more interconnected, these modernizing methods will become instrumental in helping congregation members and burgeoning spiritual adepts to become involved in the clergy, exchange ideas, and minister to the underprivileged.

Image and Source: The Times

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The issue of how to define religion came to the forefront of the news in Clay County, Minnesota, Sunday, where a new $20 fee was instituted for all filing of ordination credentials with the county. While the new fee reverses the long-established trend of charging no fee for the filing of ordination credentials, the action refrains from constraining the definition of eligible religions to mainline Christian traditions, reflecting protections granted by the First Amendment.

While this move is good news for those of us who invoke the First Amendment in defending freedom of and from religion, it illustrates the controversial status of many minority religions as well as the potential of an unconstitutional bias towards mainline churches which squeezes smaller religions out of the picture. Clearly, many of the laws which govern the United States are not in place to cater to the majority, but rather to protect the minority in affairs which do not involve the majority, and this fact is what stirs the ire in many critics of minority-faith clergy, including atheists, who get the go-ahead to file their ordination credentials.

The controversial nature of clergy from myriad faiths filing their credentials alongside Catholics and Protestants is highlighted by the fact that Clay County Recorder Bonnie Rehder was forced to pose the rhetorical question, “Who are we to say which religion is legitimate and which one isn’t?” according to Dave Olson of INFORUM. The objections many mainline churches have towards these credential filings reflect an apprehension over the ease and accessibility of the ordination process in the associated churches. As Olson reports, “In 2009, about a dozen people filed credentials that appeared to come from Web sites like the one maintained by the Universal Life Church of California, which issues credentials after asking for a minimum of information from would-be ministers.” Clergy belonging to mainline churches might understandably feel offended by Clay County honoring these easily-obtained credentials, considering the long and arduous academic work such clergy take on in their own churches to qualify as a legally ordained minister. However, the First Amendment does not define a religion as an organization in which prospective ministers must undergo rigorous academic training to earn their ordination credential.

Indeed, the definition of a valid, qualifying organization whose clergy apply to have their credentials filed is rather murky and amorphous. As Olson reports, “Rehder said workers [who file credentials in Clay County or anywhere else] have no means of challenging the legitimacy of someone’s religion, a term whose meaning, she said, is hard to pin down”. But perhaps such amorphousness in the definition of religion allows traditionally overlooked or marginalized groups the legal right to do ministerial work, as perform wedding ceremonies, for those who reject mainline churches and their doctrines. One example is that of Charles Kesler, an atheist who filed his credential from the Universal Life Church Web site with Clay County. “My main motivation”, Olson reports Kesler as saying, “was friends and associates that wanted to get married, but don’t really follow the Roman Catholic or Christian ways”. Atheists such as Kesler merely seek the right to perform wedding ceremonies through a non-denominational religion, which, of course, the United States federal government cannot invalidate without violating the religious neutrality dictated by the First Amendment.

Even if Kesler did not go through Universal Life Church to obtain his ordination credential, atheism itself may qualify as a religion anyway: as David Rosman suggests in his column in the Columbia Missourian, atheism is ” a theological, philosophical, anthropological, sociological, and psychological phenomenon of human kind”, meeting the criterion of religion formulated by religious philosopher and blogger Kile Jones. Thus, any jurisdiction, and not just the tiny county of Clay, would have to recognize an ordination credential from an atheist organization as well as, for example, an evangelical Christian one.

It is a relief that we still have the First Amendment in place to settle this potential problem for us once and for all. Being a non-denominational and ecumenical church, Universal Life Church Monastery understands the rights of ordained ministers to perform their work regardless of which religion they subscribe to. The fact that non-traditional ordination still ruffles the feathers of more conservative churches forces us to maintain vigilantly that every church has the right to recognize its ministers as it chooses, and that such individuals qualify equally with any other to perform legally the rites of his or her church.

Sources:
Inforum
Columbia Missourian

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It may at first seem ironic that an institution founded by a man and traditionally dominated by men—the Church of England—is currently headed by a woman, Elizabeth II. And while the individual churches within the Anglican Communion are officially independent of their Mother Church, each has inherited a deep-seated legacy of bias against the executive power of women and sexual minorities. This tradition has been changing, since the ordination of women as priests has become commonplace in many Communion churches. Albeit not without controversy, Anglican—and even some Catholic—clergy have begun to view the church not as a rigidly unchanging authority founded on fixed doctrine, but as a fluid, flexible institution inspired by universal principles. Still, women—especially homosexuals—hold few bishoprics and archbishoprics. Thus, while change is afoot in Anglican churches and, to a much lesser extent, the Catholic Church, much progress has to be made in the struggle to realize equality for all church members.

The gradual shift in the Anglican church to a less patriarchal system took an important step in Perth, Australia, when the Diocese of Perth appointed Australia’s first female bishop, Kay Goldsworthy, in 2008. In a decision that recalls the controversial decisions of many lower-level U.S. “activist” judges on the constitutionality of marriage equality, the diocese ruled that “nothing in its constitution could stop the consecration of a female bishop”, rejecting concerns that “the appointment of Australia’s first female bishop will cause division within its ranks”, according to Australia’s ABC News. Indeed, appointment of female bishops is a relatively well established practice which has failed to lead to any sort of schism, as Goldsworthy herself reminds us: “‘There have been female bishops for 20 years, bishops who are women for 20 years, in churches all around the world, and it has not fractured the [C]ommunion’”. Indeed, the erosion of patriarchy and racism within the Anglican church took yet another, highly significant, step forward when a Hispanic female bishop, Right Rev. Bavi Edna Rivera (a provisional bishop from eastern Oregon), ordained another woman, the second female priest in the Diocese of Fort Worth on Friday, just a month after the ordination of that diocese’s first female priest, reports Jim Jones of the Star-Telegram.

Nevertheless, the slow-dying controversy surrounding the appointment of higher-tier women clergy sparks to life once again when it becomes known that that woman is also homosexual. The lingering prejudice against sexual minorities, even in the Communion, became evident in 2003 with the election of the Right Rev. V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. According to Larry Stamer of the LA Times, “Robinson’s election threw the Episcopal Church and the global Anglican Communion into an uproar, leading to decisions by some conservative parishes and dioceses to leave the [U.S. Anglican] church and resulting in a de facto ban on the election of additional gay bishops”. However, even this prejudice is slowly decaying: Stamer also reports in the same article that last month, following the recent lifting of the ban, the Diocese of Los Angeles elected as bishop the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, who is not only a woman, but also an open lesbian. The fact that the Anglican Communion has been moving away from male domination and homophobia is perhaps exactly why it may survive longer as a church in the future.

But imagine if authorities in a more centralized church, such as the Catholic Church, took a similarly progressive stance, threatening division within that ancient institution; the question then becomes whether or not a system which marginalizes over half its followers is worth preserving in the first place. Should women and sexual minorities be supporting such a system, or should they be working within it to change it? At least in the Anglican Communion, these groups have shown that change from within is possible, and that the church can prove itself a relevant, adaptable entity rather than an archaic regime mired in strict Biblical doctrine.

If we are to defer to Biblical texts, however, even the infamously misogynistic Apostle Paul ironically admits in Galatians 3:28 (KJV), “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.” It is therefore the responsibility of ecumenical churches, such as Universal Life Church Monastery, to offer its egalitarian structure as a model for the modern-day, color-blind and gender-blind church.

Sources:
ABC News
Los Angeles Times

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Since its founding by Rev. Sun Myung Moon in Seoul in 1954, The Unification Church, known originally as The Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (HSA-UWC), has both inspired those who seek a close-knit religious community and roused suspicion in those who criticize it for its “cult-like” characteristics. While some point out Moon’s tenet of exogamy as a form of peacemaking, others challenge his claim to be the Messiah, as well as the Church’s mass-weddings and “matching ceremonies”, performed by Moon with the belief that commitment precedes love in marriage. The Unification Church is one religion which, arguably, teeters precariously on the fence between cult and struggling minority faith.

These differing attitudes towards the growing Church become evident in a Washington Post article by Michelle Boorstein, who discusses how younger generations of Unificationists have had to decide whether to abide by the traditional tenets of Unificationism or adapt to mainstream society in order to keep their church thriving. The children of the mass-weddings of the 1970s and 1980s, she shows, have very mixed attitudes, with some practicing a more metamorphic, flexible form of the religion and others showing an almost evangelical devotion to fixed doctrine. Often, these attitudes reflect devotion either to an isolated, stolid, cult-like religion, or to a more compromising, mainstream one.

Perhaps the more orthodox, palatable practices of Unificationism for mainstream society include its earlier 1980s grass-roots, “revolutionary” activity, in which “thousands of young people . . . ditched their educations, careers and families to live out of vans”, Boorstein reports, and “sell flowers at airports”. In some ways, such activities resemble familiar revolutionary movements such as the hippie movement, in which well-meaning youths seek to shed what they see as burdens of a conformist culture. Meanwhile, “[p]arents can now use Web sites with photos and biographical information to search for a suitable spouse”, showing the internet savvy of modern Unificationists. Moreover, Moon’s promotion of interracial and intercultural marriage as a form of peacemaking shows initiative in the struggle to change irrational opinions about miscegenation and create racial harmony. (At the very least, it helps prevent inbreeding.) And Moon himself, as the Church’s chief hierophant, has shown at least some flexibility with respect to church custom: in 2001, he announced that “parents could match their own children”, whereas previously Moon himself had matched couples by pointing them out to one another in his wedding ceremonies.

It is this fact, however, that makes some critics of the Church squirm in their seats. According to church officials, Moon did not make a retraction; rather, the change in custom regarding the matching ceremonies was “a natural evolution of Unificationist theology, one that sees Moon as a parent . . . who establishes rules and lineage and now is passing the parental responsibility of matchmaking to individual mothers and fathers”. Critics might argue, though, that this is just a convenient euphemism to excuse arranged marriage among the masses, a mere throwback to the days when marriage constituted an exchange of property (including women, such as the “peace-weavers” of Anglo-Saxon England) between tribes in order to create alliances, and nothing whatever to do with a private contract of love between two people. It is easy to see how this matchmaking practice reflects a larger tribal or familial manipulation of marriage to fulfill social and political ends, despite the argument that the private union of two individuals is nobody else’s business. Probably the most irksome claim of the Church for critics, however, is Moon’s claim to be the Messiah, or perhaps an avatar of sorts. After all, as Massimo Introvigne notes in The Unification Church: Studies in Contemporary Religion, the global population of Unificationists stands at about 250,000, and, according to B. A. Robinson of Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance, these are concentrated in South Korea and Japan. So it is rather discouraging to think that any profound teachings of Moon should remain so obscure.

But perhaps the Unification Church, which Boorstein suggests has shown enough adaptability to survive long-term, will reflect a similar path to that of Christianity, starting from a local cult and burgeoning into a worldwide “flock”. The looming threat of this, of course, is the evolution of the church from a grass-roots, egalitarian religion to a centralized, hierarchical one. As Barbara Ehrenreich notes in Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy, “[s]ocial scientists of the twentieth century have tended to portray the early Church’s assault on ecstatic, or even festive, forms of worship as part of an inevitable process of maturation” (p. 74). In other words, the Unification Church could transform from a small and alluring sect into a menacingly dictatorial behemoth. At any rate, the new generation of Unificationists will have to decide between the unique offerings of an uncompromisingly isolationist path, or the convenience of a popular, “normal” church.

Sources:

Dancing in the Streets

ReligiousTolerance.org

Signature Books

Washington Post

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Few individuals have shown as much hard work, expertise, and dedication to bringing happiness and opportunity to their fellow human being as Br. Daniel Brooks Chapin. Not only has Br. Chapin proved his selfless devotion to others by providing services to those suffering from mental trauma, but he has also participated in the advancement of social justice causes. Using his pastoral training background, he has applied the principles of civil justice in his role as officiant at many non-denominational wedding ceremonies and has continued these laudable efforts here at Universal Life Church Monastery. It is with great compassion and gratitude, therefore, that we watch him leave his post as Vice-President at the Church to grieve the recent passing of his mother, and to return home to care for his ailing father.

Throughout his career, Br. Chapin has successfully combined his natural altruism with real-life experience as well as rigorous training in various fields in order to better effect social change. Demonstrating his concern for the mental well-being of others, he attended the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress as well as the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, where he became board certified in acute traumatic and critical incident stress management, the knowledge of which he applied as Rehabilitation Specialist at the Mental Health Association of Orange County. Moreover, his past role as President at non-profit organizations such as the Coalition for the Advancement of Civil Justice illustrates his commitment to equality, fairness, and progress.

Br. Chapin’s work in ministry and wedding officiation reflects a similar set of ideals along with the talent needed to put them to use. An ordained minister, his studies in sociology and theology at Loyola Marymount University and his degree in Christian chaplaincy from UCMI Pastoral Training Institute have provided him with the necessary training for the co-ordination and performance of wedding ceremonies at Always and Forever – Southern California Weddings, where he currently serves as Administrator and Primary Officiant. Br. Chapin’s ministry has extended beyond the co-ordination of weddings, however, and, as a certified pastoral counselor, TIPS-certified specialist in drug and alcohol abuse prevention, and a certified teenager/child grief counselor, he has sought to ensure the health and happiness of the couples he marries as well as their families.

All of his valuable skills and life experience Br. Chapin has brought with him to his vice-presidency at Universal Life Church Monastery, which has undoubtedly grown and flourished as a consequence. He himself has eloquently expressed the high purpose and the profound impact of progressive ministerial work at the Church on the Universal Life Church Monastery blog, and what a selflessly rewarding privilege it is for the ordained minister. It is only appropriate to mention how instrumental his managerial role has been in the continuing success of the Church, and how greatly he will be missed. We send Br. Chapin our sympathy over the loss of his mother, and we wish his father an imminent recovery.

Welcoming Bruce Taylor

With our loss of Br. Chapin, we are happy to announce the appointment of Br. Bruce Taylor to our Board of Directors. Br. Taylor has been an ordained minister since 1978 and currently operates a successful and well-respected newspaper which serves the local business community of the mid-Willamette valley of Oregon. We believe his wide-ranging experience and skills will be a highly relevant and valuable contribution to our ministry.

As an ordained minister, Br. Taylor possesses first-hand, practical knowledge of wedding officiation, wedding laws, community outreach, and the ordination process. His ability to reach out to those seeking an open-minded and welcoming church experience has been well demonstrated during his more than thirty years of ministry, while he has shown dedication to making the institution of marriage welcoming and fulfilling for diverse groups of people. Also, Br. Taylor’s background in ministry and theology has given him the opportunity to provide friendly and non-judgmental spiritual counsel to those who might otherwise feel like outsiders to the church.

In addition to his background in ministry, Br. Taylor has a long track record of competency in business operations and management, which will prove indispensable in church administration. Br. Taylor’s entrepreneurial and leadership skills are evident in his ability to forge a community of business leaders through his publication, Salem Business Journal. Through his experience in the publishing industry, he has been able to collaborate with others in order to provide useful and relevant information to the community on banking, real estate, marketing, technology, construction, and other business-related fields. Br. Taylor’s managerial and collaborative skills will be invaluable in his position on our Board of Directors.

Br. Taylor is also a husband and father of three. He and his wife reside in Oregon. Two of their children are currently attending college, while their oldest son is currently serving on active military duty. A true humanitarian at heart, Br. Taylor is dedicated, principled, imaginative, and professional in all of his endeavors. We are honored to have his service in our church and look forward to working with him to help our spiritual community grow and flourish.

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