Universal Life Church

The long-standing debate over the core message of Christianity has centered largely on the concepts of salvation, redemption, and grace, the origin of these, and what Jesus himself really said about them, if anything at all. The heavy hand of the early Church struggled long and hard to contain its “sheep” from straying too far from the flock and down the paths of alternative belief systems, crushing the many smaller, less-powerful Christian movements as heretical. Mainstream Christianity—whatever the denomination—has inherited this resistant attitude toward heterodox teachings, stressing either the authority of the Church or the Bible as the one and only path to eternal life. But what are the original tenets of Christianity, and where can we find them?

Perhaps we need look no further than the Gnostic Gospels, a collection of Christian texts which the early Church rejected as apocrypha while it was developing its dogma and picking the appropriate documents to include in its new sacred book. The gospels were found inside an earthenware jug in 1945 by a pair of brothers digging for fertilizer near some limestone caves near the town of Nag Hammadi, in Upper Egypt. Princeton University religion professor Elaine Pagels is one of the scholars who had the opportunity, while working on her doctoral degree in the 1960s, to examine the thirteen papyrus manuscripts, which were written in third- and fourth-century Coptic translations of Greek texts composed during the first two centuries after Jesus’s death. Once this enormous feat had been accomplished, the manuscripts offered insight into a far more diverse array of beliefs and teachings than ever previously thought—teachings which often contrast thematically with those found in the canonical New Testament.

Exactly how do the teachings of these gospels, known also as the Nag Hammadi library, differ from those of the canon? According to Pagels, author of The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas, the most striking differences can be found by contrasting the canonical Gospel of St. John with the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas, a collection of proverbs attributed to Jesus Christ. The former text, she explains, “says Jesus is utterly unique, and you have to know about Jesus because your salvation depends on it”, while the latter text says, “yes, Jesus is a manifestation of divine light—but so are you. The light is buried in you and me, obscured and forgotten. Jesus speaks as one who is divine, but the same potential is in everyone. So one’s salvation is in discovering who you are”. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that a power-seeking religious organization would reject a gospel which granted spiritual authority to the individual along with salvation through inward exploration.

This aversion by the Church to independent-minded mystics had very practical motivations. While evangelical Christians believe that church fathers were divinely guided in selecting the existing sixty-six books of the Christian Bible, non-evangelicals argue that the relatively recent discoveries of texts such as the Gnostic gospels are just steps in an ongoing divine revelation, and should be considered as well. Tom Keogh reports Pagels as saying, “decisions about which gospels were accepted in the New Testament had much to do with the survival of Christianity. Canonical uniformity was key to establishing an organized church.” “The message of the New Testament”, she says, “is that if you want to know God, you need to go through our church. So if someone else, such as Thomas, says you already have access to God just because of the way you are, that doesn’t help a church.” Thus, the early Church needed an ecclesiastical proclamation of canon law which dictated that salvation was obtained only through believing that God tortured himself to death to pay for humanity’s imperfection, not through personal exploration, and that the punishment for rejecting this doctrine was eternal damnation. Of course, in order to garner support for this position it was necessary for the Church to proclaim that it was divinely inspired by God to pick just the right books, and not politically motivated to protect its position. Everything else falls into place if the seeker takes the word of the bishops and the pope on this point.

It is easy for many to assume that God told the Church to pick the right books and reject the wrong ones. Evangelicals might argue, “But we do not believe in the authority of the church; we believe in the authority of Scripture”, but non-evangelicals will counter, “but Scripture was compiled by the Church, so if you place authority in the Scripture, you therefore place authority in the Church anyway.” Thus, whether Roman Catholic or Protestant, mainline Christians place great faith in the authority of the early clergy to serve as a conduit of divinely inspired theology and doctrine, and, for them, it means risking eternal damnation to explore other teachings of Christ which assure them that salvation is in their own hands. Perhaps non-evangelicals have the upper hand, though, in arguing that the Bible is a biased compilation, that Christianity should have an open canon, and that the conscience of the individual serves as a direct link to the divine.

Source:

The Seattle Times

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The belief in the efficacy of certain forms of “magic”—or whatever one wishes to call it—has not died out in the West; in fact, the practice of harnessing unexplained or mysterious forces to heal, guard, or protect the individual has in many cases simply adapted to the demands of modern life. In a previous post, we discussed the blessing of laptop computers and mobile telephones at a London church on Plow Sunday, a traditional holiday when the laity left their ploughs on the church porch to be blessed by the clergy. A similar custom has now taken root in the small town of Pocatello, in the U.S. state of Idaho, where one church is hosting an annual motorcycle blessing ceremony, showing that our desire to affect our world through unseen methods is alive and strong.

The latest ceremony was held at a recent Sunday morning worship service at Calvary Alliance Church, where more than one hundred motorcyclists gathered outside to have their vehicles blessed before taking to the streets of the town for the fifth annual Blessing of the Bikes. “For the riders”, reports Genevieve Judge of Local News 8, “this has become a tradition to prepare for a busy riding season. They see it as a necessary and welcome event to keep them safe and together.” Pastor Jim Jones of Blazing Grace Church said, “I don’t care what walk of life they come from[;] it’s important to them to have their bike blessed before the ride season. It is something that gives them a peace [sic] spiritually, and it just allows them [never to] worry about things”. But the ceremony at Calvary Alliance did not neglect its human congregants, and, in addition to the blessing of motorcycles, said Reverend Jones, the church carried out baptisms for fifteen of the motorcyclists present. The amusing and unconventional spectacle was topped off with lunch before the riders headed out on to the streets of Pocatello.

Already, the more skeptical among us will ask questions such as, “does such a practice really work?” or “why would God stop what he or she is doing in order to consecrate a few motorcycles?” Similar questions have been asked about prayer, and the same people want to know whether it works to ask God to heal people and even whether prayer can be scientifically tested in the first place. One of the most overlooked points which proponents of prayer and ritual blessings make, though, is the psychological benefit it may have on the very person who does the praying or who seeks the blessing. As Pastor Jones points out above, the act of consecrating a motorcycle gives the rider a sense of spiritual peace. Even if there is no supernatural force at work in the use of holy water, and even if a successful bike ride is just the result of a placebo effect or some sort of psychosomatic influence by the mind on a person’s physiology, such an effect would not have been possible if the rider had not sought the blessing, because it was the blessing which instilled a sense of confidence in the individual in the first place, no matter how subconsciously. (This is a common observation in the determinist philosophy of thinkers such as Robert Blatchford.)

Holy water, anointing oil, smudging sage, and other supposedly magical forms of healing and protection against natural phenomena may really work—but for largely psychological reasons. After all, human beings are highly visual, kinesthetic creatures who thrive on ritual and ceremony in order to affect their environment, and we find magical practices in almost all faiths, whether Baptist, Buddhist, or Wiccan. In this sense, perhaps we should start viewing these things less as the useless trappings of superstition, and more as tools which facilitate concentration and willpower, as well as enhance the mental state of the practitioner. What could be more mundane than that?

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In the United States, we like to think that the First Amendment to the Constitution is an automatic guarantee that each citizen has the right to practice the religion of his or her choice, or no religion at all, and that the state will make no law which reflects an establishment of religion. Many local jurisdictions within the United States, however, have failed to put this fundamental principle into practice until they are finally put to the test and prodded into doing so. Indeed, the relation between church and state has proved so complex and nuanced that, in many cases, First Amendment rights have been violated unbeknownst to the casual observer. This fact only shows how much vigilance is necessary to protect people of all faith groups—including those who belong to none.

It was under such circumstances that 41 year-old computer technician and parolee Barry A. Hazle, Jr., of Redding, California, was returned to prison by his parole agent, report Denny Walsh and Sam Stanton of The Sacramento Bee. After serving a one-year sentence at the California Rehabilitation Center Norco on a drug possession charge, Hazle was ordered to attend a ninety-day in-patient drug treatment program as a condition for his release. Hazle agreed to this condition, but he clarified to prison officials before his release that he wanted to attend a treatment program “that did not contain religious components”, according to federal court papers; nevertheless, he was assigned to Empire Recovery Center in Redding, a twelve-step program operated by Alcoholics Anonymous which is characterized by a strong evangelical, religious tone and references to God. When Hazle asked to be moved to a non-religious treatment facility, he was told incorrectly that there was none in Northern California, and his parole agent, Crofoot, told him he had to continue at Empire or he would be returned to prison. Hazle remained there for a time, but submitted a written appeal to Crofoot on 3 April 2007. Three days later, Empire staff-members notified the parole agent that Hazle was being “disruptive”—yet still “congenial”—and that same day Crofoot arrived, arrested Hazle for refusing treatment, and had him locked up in the Shasta County Jail. Eventually, Hazle was returned to prison and spent over three months there.

He was, in essence, imprisoned for being a conscientiously objecting atheist.

Hazle finally turned the tables on his parole agent and the state in September, 2008, when he sued officials with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The department responded one-and-a-half months later with an injunction stating that parole agents have no authority to force parolees to partake in religious-inspired treatment if the parolee objects to its faith-based approach. At the trial, the state maintained that Hazle was returned to prison because of behaviour which interfered with the program’s operations, but U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell, Jr., and even Crofoot himself, disputed this claim and pointed out that Hazle was not violently or wilfully obstructing the program’s operations—rather, he was peacefully resisting participation in it. The judge ultimately ruled that the state’s argument lacked sufficient evidence, and that it impinged on Hazle’s right to freedom from religion as guaranteed by the Constitution. The lawsuit remains in litigation, and a trial-by-jury is set to begin 22 June 2010 to determine whether and how Hazle’s constitutional rights were violated; meanwhile, monetary damages are to be agreed upon either by trial or settlement.

The distinction between obstructive behaviour and peaceful non-participation or resistance is important in such a case, but even if Hazle had interfered with the successful operation of the program, should he still have been returned to prison for it? After all, the only reason he would have shown such behaviour would be the fact that he was compelled to participate in religious-themed treatment in the first place. The real source of the problem, then, is not any reaction on Hazle’s part, but rather the state-mandated attendance of a treatment program the core principles of which reflect a specific theology or doctrine and which conflict with the beliefs of the participant; moreover, once Hazle had shown any disruptive behaviour, the department could have resolved the dilemma immediately by moving him to a secular treatment facility, which they should have done at the outset upon hearing his first objection; hence it is the department’s negligence which is ultimately to blame.

Ideally, state officials would take it for granted that a state-mandated treatment program should consist of a secular arrangement of professional therapists, science-based curricula, and drug-abuse rehabilitants, and not preachers, sermons, scripture, and a congregation of potential converts, but this assumption often falls by the wayside when such officials pretend that their position gives them immunity to carrying out constitutional obligations.

As a non-denominational, interfaith church which defends freedom of and from religion, Universal Life Church Monastery finds the actions of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation unethical, unfair, and unconstitutional. We would like to know if any of our ordained ministers have had similar experiences, and, if so, we invite them to open up a discussion on the issue in our ministers’ forum.

Read our Guide to Divinity to learn more about atheism, agnosticism, and non-religion.

Source:
The Sacramento Bee

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With the recent spate of studies on the science behind intercessory prayer, a growing number of people have come to question whether seeking the aid of a divine power or concentrating intention on the healing of the sick can be demonstrated and proven scientifically. While many doctors, scientist, and philosophers challenge the assumption that prayer can be tested scientifically, others suggest that it is not only possible, but a cheap, effective, and widely overlooked method of healing. Can prayer be scientifically studied? If it can, and if it has been, what do the results show?

One opponent of the scientific validity of prayer is secular humanist and former Pentecostal healer Hector Avalos, who argues in his essay “Can Science Prove That Prayer Works?” that we can never prove scientifically that prayer works because prayer cannot be scientifically tested in the first place. Since a point-by-point summary of his points would not be feasible in this article, suffice it to say that for Avalos, experimenting on prayer is absurd because the god being prayed to is the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent Judeo-Christian god, and that because this god is unknowable, it is impossible to know that this god answered a prayer; moreover, for him, it is impossible to isolate a control group of non-prayed-for people, because there are people in the world praying for all life.

But what about prayers that do not involve such a being, or such a geographic scenario? What about prayers to a finite god or demi-gods, or a pantheistic god of which each living being is a part, or no god, or prayers which require a measure of propinquity or familiarity between the people involved? Avalos’s argument does not seem to account for these cases, for the following reasons.

1. It may be possible to tell objectively when someone is or is not praying for their loved one by monitoring brain activity in a laboratory setting. If so, scientists should be able to detect when people are praying when they should not be, and vice versa, and thus scientists should be able to isolate a non-praying control group.
2. According to Larry Dossey, most medical studies do not rely on statistical significance in the first place, so critiquing a medical study on prayer, but not a medical study on some other phenomenon, would be unfair. Of course, one might argue that all this says is that medicine needs to adhere to stricter scientific standards.
3. What if prayer only happens when the praying person is in the presence of the ill person, or when the praying person has encountered the ill person? In this case, it does not matter whether there are people elsewhere in the world praying for all life, because the scientists conducting the experiment are not testing the abilities of the people who are doing this—they are only testing the abilities of the praying people who are present. Therefore, it is possible to set up a control group of humans or animals that are not being prayed for by a person who is present.
4. While they may be unable to experience it, humans can conceive of infinity: infinity means never-ending, and a circle consists of a never-ending line. Therefore, it is possible to conceive of an infinite being in order to attribute the cause of a healing to that being. Even if humans could not conceive of infinity, a person may be praying to a finite deity.
5. If a deity is imperfect—not omnipresent, omnipotent, or omniscient—then it may be incapable of healing a sick person; if a deity is pantheistic—in which case everything is a part of it (as in Neale Donald Walsh’s Conversations with God)—then the it is causing and, in turn, curing its own illness. Thus, prayer would not be pointless—the point would be for the entity to experience the act of curing itself (manifested as lower life-forms).
6. Whether or not an experiment can prove which god answered a prayer—Yahweh, or Krishna, etc.—it has still proved that prayer works.
7. Who cares whether prayer is natural or supernatural? It is unnecessary to prove that prayer is supernatural in order to prove that it works. Many scientifically verified phenomena would once have been deemed “magic“.
8. If one is not testing for prayers answered by the Hebrew god, it is unnecessary to factor in this god’s selective refusal of prayers when setting up control groups.

If one’s idea of prayer is to beseech the healing aid of a non-Abrahamic or pagan deity on behalf of a person who is present or whom the praying person has encountered, or if the act does not involve a god, but channeling positive thoughts towards such a patient, it might make more sense to conduct experiments on prayer than Avalos claims. Moreover, Avalos does not consider the more straightforward benefits of prayer: according to one study conducted by Florida State University psychologist Nathaniel Lambert, “Those who had prayed for their partner harbored fewer vengeful thoughts and emotions: [t]hey were more ready to forgive and move on”, while this forgiveness was boosted by an increase in “selfless concern” subsequent to the act of praying.

So there seems to be some evidence to suggest that it would not be absurd or impossible to experiment on prayer in which the patient is present or familiar with his or her benefactor, or in which the deity is not wholly unknowable, as in Baptist, Lutheran, or other evangelical Christian churches, or in which no deity at all is involved. And even if prayer has no remote spiritual benefit, it may have personal and psychological ones, as Lambert’s study suggests. As always, we would like to hear our ministers‘ thoughts on the usefulness of prayer and how it has affected their lives.

Read more about secular humanism in our Guide to Divinity.

Sources:
Council for Secular Humanism
Association for Psychological Science

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One would think that when America’s “founding fathers” developed the concept of separation of church and state and enshrined it in the nation’s constitution, it was end-of- story, case closed. But for some reason, the case remains quite open in the United States, while in other western democracies (France comes to mind), the answer is a foregone conclusion. In other words, the question whether religion should inform politics is still relevant for many Americans—whether or not the answer is a patent “no” for the rest.

The debate in fact is so complex and multi-faceted that there is even a liberal position which holds that religion has, can, and should inform politics, but that the way many conservatives are using it is unethical, manipulative, and even a form of terrorism. Huffington Post contributor John Elerick is one such individual. In a recent blog entry titled Using the Bible as a Political Weapon is Terrorism, the cultural theorist argues how House Minority Leader John Boehner unethically used scripture to manipulate the political process when he said the passage of President Obama’s health-care bill would lead to “Armageddon”. Elerick does not object to the use of religious texts to influence the political process, however, but rather argues that such texts should be used for the purpose of healing and hope.

But this well-meaning approach still conflates religious motivations with political obligations, and such behavior is expressly forbidden in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Exactly what should be the relationship between religion and politics, according to Elerick, and how does he justify it? For him, the historical precedence of religious influence on government is sufficient evidence for its appropriateness: “At one time, embedded within the fabric of our history, there was this worldview that welcomed the body politic into conversation with religious ideology”, but, despite their frequent conflict with one another, “they found a way to support each other rather than manipulate each other”. Elerick then goes on to say, with a sentimental reverence for the past, that just as Easter reflects the resurrection of Christ, “maybe we can all come together and embrace the resurrection of Jesus as a new kind of resurrection of this old worldview”. But saying that faith and politics should mix just because of historical precedence is like saying that something should be a certain way just because it was. It is a fallacy: that something was a certain way does not necessarily mean that it should be—the past may merely reflect past errors.

It was these past errors in mixing religion with politics that Thomas Jefferson and the other founding fathers took into account when crafting the U.S. Constitution and including the religious non-establishment clause of the First Amendment. John Adams echoed this principle in Article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli, a 1797 document affirming the harmonious relations between the United States and Muslim countries:

As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen,—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

It is striking that such a cool, secular attitude in American politics should be eclipsed two centuries later by an ardently pious one. Nevertheless, one commenter on Elerick’s article pointed out, “[r]eligion cannot coexist with politics because monotheistic belief systems are not subject to compromise[,] whereas the art of politics leading to good government requires reasonable compromise[,] especially in a democracy like ours”. The assertion that the two cannot co-exist seems a bit extreme—surely the First Amendment, by guaranteeing freedom of religion, assumes they can—but perhaps it is true that the one cannot inform the other without creating a contradiction between two essentially incompatible things. Now, one might ask, “But the religions of the world teach universal values such as love and charity”, but if such values are universal in the first place, they are not just religious, and secular people hold them too. It is the religious-specific theology behind such values, not the values themselves, which conflict with secular government.

If people like Elerick want politics to be influenced with the “good” teachings of the world’s religions, this might be perfectly okay, but perhaps they should be treated in their secular capacity and separated from their religious context, which often colors or qualifies them with a specific theology or dogma. In other words, the podium is not a pulpit, the House Speaker, not a preacher. We should keep principles such as love, hope, and charity in the debate without weaseling in a specifically faith-based outline or rationale for them.

As a non-denominational, universal church, Universal Life Church Monastery stands by its doctrine that every person has the right to exercise any or no religion in accordance with his or her own conscience; however, we invite our ministers to offer their own thoughts on the idea of taking the “good” parts of religion and inserting them into the political system.

Sources:
The Huffington Post
Wikipedia: Treaty of Tripoli

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Many ministers ordained online in the Universal Life Church Monastery come to us seeking advice on the legal status of their ordination, how to find clients in search of a wedding officiant, and how to be a better minister overall. The main concern often pertains to the technicalities of how to celebrate the rites of a minister, including weddings, baptisms, funerals, etc. However, being a minister is not just about carrying out these rites; indeed, perhaps the most important part of a reverend’s ministry is to tend to the needs of the poor and sick. It may not be a materially profitable task, but it can certainly be a spiritually fruitful one.

One ULCM bishop, Marcus Croman, of Kitsap County, Washington, has taken a rather creative and resourceful approach to proving how rewarding it can be to help the needy. After finding out how many homeless children went to school in North Kitsap, he told his wife, Tonya, that he wanted to buy an old ambulance and use it to hand out food to the homeless. In Tonya’s words, “He’s constantly thinking there’s got to be another way, a better way out there to do this to help.” On a recent trip in their new mission, the couple stocked their new vehicle with 22-gallon containers filled with fourty sack lunches, which the couple had prepared themselves. The Cromans even paid for the meals and used ingredients donated from Tonya’s catering business. Marcus plans to make their efforts a part of a non-profit organization he recently started, Kingston Rescue Mission, which was recently approved by the state.

Do the Cromans have an ulterior motive, like some religious charities and non-profit organizations which lure the homeless into worship services in exchange for feeding them? Apparently, the cheif purpose of the Cromans’ ministry is to show the indigent that they are cared for: “Marcus Croman said that his mission while on the streets isn’t to preach. It’s to reach out to those uncomfortable with, or unable to visit, a food bank.” For Croman, the homeless do not necessarily need to be saved, nor do they need to hear a sermon—they simply need food, and it is through this act of giving itself that the Cromans fulfill their spiritual duty to their fellow man and woman.

But don’t feel as though your voice has no purpose—giving to the needy can always be supplemented with prayers and sermons, and these latter endeavors serve to increase social awareness, bolster one’s personal commitment to the cause, and emphasize the need for intervention. Whatever approach one takes, giving is a very simple act, but a highly rewarding one for young clergy members who seek a depth of purpose behind their work. If you too are searching for this elusive sense of purpose, don’t limit yourself to the same ministerial routine—volunteer in your community, orchestrate a charitable effort, or start up your own charity. Help the less fortunate to get to the same place you are. If we are on this earth for any reason, surely this is it.

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Universal Life Church Monastery has been a pioneer in the struggle to protect the rights of ministers who are ordained online, which at times has been a gradual and piece-meal journey. There are still outposts in the United States where the local judiciary has ruled against the sacerdotal rights of ministers ordained online to legally perform wedding ceremonies, and Virginia is one of these places. It is our hope that our ministers will join us in this fight.

At the crux of the issue is a letter sent by Virginia Attorney General Randolph A. Beales to Thomas M. Moncure, Jr., a clerk in the circuit court of Stafford County, in November, 2001. When Moncure inquired of Beales whether individuals issued ministry credentials by the original Universal Life Church of Modesto, Ca., qualify as ministers according to the Code of Virginia, Beale responded, “it is my opinion that it is within the discretion of the clerk of the circuit court to make an order authorizing such minister to celebrate the rites of matrimony”.

Universal Life Church Monastery is contesting this opinion and challenging the legal authority of court clerks to disqualify Universal Life Church Monastery ministers from performing wedding ceremonies in Stafford County for two main reasons. The first of these is that the Beales’s decision applied only to the original Universal Life Church in Modesto, and this organization is entirely separate from and independent of Universal Life Church Monastery of Seattle. As such, Beales’s opinion therefore does not automatically apply to the ministers of Universal Life Church Monastery. However, even if it did, there is still a problem with it: it potentially contradicts federal and constitutional law. Title 18, U.S.C., Section 241 of the U.S. Constitution, which deals with conspiring against rights, forbids two or more persons from impinging on the free exercise of the rights granted by the Constitution or U.S. law, while Title 18, U.S.C., Section 242 prohibits any individual from using the pretense of legal authority to deny another individual their constitutional or legal rights. Finally, both Universal Life Church, Inc. vs. United States (1974) and Universal Life Church v. Utah (2002) have set federal legal precedence proclaiming the wedding officiation rights of ministers, pastors, or preachers ordained long-distance.

We encourage each and every one of our clergy members to participate in this effort by contacting the Virginia Attorney General as well as the Stafford County judiciary and circuit court. Our struggle to preserve the ordination rights of all ministers, regardless of denomination, may be difficult, but with our ministers’ help, and with a strong, ardent voice, it will be achievable.

Read the letter to Kenneth T. Cuccinelli, II:

Letter-va-04052010.pdf

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The Universal Life Church Monastery is no stranger to litigation and legal controversy—even in its days of mail-order ordination, the original Universal Life Church raised questions about the validity of the long-distance ordination process, as reflected in the history of ULC legal cases. Now, with the current advances in technology and the advent of online minister ordinations, the probably has merely assumed a new mask, and online churches still struggle to prove their legitimacy.

In the midst of this longstanding furore, Susan R. Winfield handed down her decision in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia ruling against a Universal Life Church Monastery minister’s right to officiate weddings in the jurisdiction. The question we must ask is whether or not Judge Winfield’s decision upholds the law.

Judge Winfield based her decision on DC Code, §46-406, which deals marriage law and the authorization to celebrate marriage, and which outlines and defines those individuals who are qualified to celebrate or officiate a wedding or marriage legally within the District of Columbia. For Winfield, this section of the code excludes ministers ordained online from performing weddings; however, the problem with the ruling becomes apparent when one examines the code in detail and considers Paragraph 2, which provides details on the characteristics of qualified officiants. According to this paragraph, “every minister of any religious society approved or ordained according to the ceremonies of his religious society” may solemnize a wedding; furthermore, a minister is not required to solemnize a wedding (a judge taking his or her place) in such a religious organization as long as the ceremony is solemnized in such a way as is prescribed by that organization.

But at Universal Life Church Monastery, online ordination is the conventional method according to which every minister is ordained and approved—under the principle that each individual is qualified to become a minister and merely has to ask; in addition, the Church’s prescription and guideline for how to solemnize a wedding is consistent: it prescribes that each minister may celebrate marriage in any way that minister and the bride and groom see fit. There is no reason why opening up ceremonial methods to the minister should be seen as any less prescriptive or authoritative—both reflect the stance of the presiding religious organization on how to solemnize a wedding. Thus, we have established ceremonial procedures whereby both the Church’s ministers are qualified and its marriages solemnized.

Beyond this matter of clerical qualifications and ceremonial style, the problem with the court’s ruling becomes further apparent when we look at the federal legal precedence set by past cases involving the original Universal Life Church of Modesto, California. In Universal Life Church, Inc. vs. United States (1974), the court ruled that formal academic training is not requisite to a minister’s credential, stating, “an Honorary Doctor of Divinity is a strictly religious title with no academic standing. Such titles may be issued by bona fide churches and religious denominations, such as plaintiff, as long as their issuance is limited to a course of instruction in the principles of the church or religious denomination”, but Universal Life Church Monastery claims that each of its ministers is already inherently imbued with the principles it would otherwise instruct its ministers in. The court in this case also concluded, “The fact that the plaintiff distributed ministers’ credentials and Honorary Doctor of Divinity certificates is of no moment. Such activity may be analogized to mass conversions at a typical revival or religious crusade”. Finally, the court argued that it is not the place to measure the practices of one religion against those of another, as this would show religious bias and thereby impinge on the guarantees of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. A similar case, Universal Life Church v. Utah (2002), affirmed and upheld these resolutions.

So there certainly appears to be a motivation based on federal legal precedence, which in turn are motivated by constitutional law and First Amendment guarantees, to challenge Judge Winfield’s decision to bar ULCM ministers from celebrating marriages in the District of Columbia. It is ultimately an arbitrary, unfair, and discriminatory action to deny such ministers their sacerdotal rights to officiate marriages based on the method of ordination and the manner in which the church prescribes the style of ceremony itself.

Our chief goal in covering this case is to inform our ministers who still have questions regarding the legitimacy of their ordination, and to re-assure them of their rights. As a means of achieving this goal, we have included below the entire text of the letter by our presiding chaplain to Judge Winfield. We hope it illuminates the often complex issue for our ministers and the state of affairs as they currently stand.

Read the letter to Judge Winfield:

Letter-dc-04052010.pdf

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Perhaps no issue is touchier for Christians than the true mission of Jesus Christ and the implications this has for the doctrine of grace. The core doctrine of traditional Christianity is the cornerstone on which the faith—whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant—depends. It states that Jesus’s purpose, as an avatar or incarnation of God, was to come to Earth and be punished in the stead of man, who is intrinsically evil, and who must believe in and accept this sacrifice in order to avoid eternal torment. But a new generation of Christians are examining this doctrine with a more critical eye, boldly asking, why must a perfect and innocent deity—whether or not he ultimately rose from the dead—be tortured to death in the first place in order to save me from hell?

The question of the status of Christianity as the one, true path to salvation is at the heart of a new book titled A New Kind of Christianity: Ten Questions That Are Transforming the Faith, by U.S. Christian evangelical Brian McLaren. McLaren’s controversial and unorthodox view of Jesus was the subject of a recent story by NPR religion correspondent and Fingerprints of God author Barbara Bradley Hagerty. The book challenges traditional notions about what Jesus’s mission on Earth really was and the purpose of his crucifixion. As Bradley reports, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., held a convention recently to discuss the ideas in McLaren’s book and assess any threats it may pose to the foundations of the faith in its traditional form; the response showed a general apprehension over McLaren’s ideas. For Southern Baptist theologian Jim Hamilton,”[i]t is a new kind of Christianity that is no Christianity at all”, while evangelical author Bruce Ware said, “I’ve thought of Brian McLaren for years as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but I think in this book, he took the sheep’s clothing off”. Meanwhile, seminary president Al Mohler argues that if Jesus was not crucified to save man from hell, but merely as a common political and religious rebel, “that’s a very interesting chapter of human history, but I’m not going to stake my life on it, much less my hope for eternity.”

Younger generations, Hagerty notes, are more open to the ideas in McLaren’s book, given that they have grown up with greater interfaith tendencies than their parents and grandparents and have developed intimate friendships with people of different faiths. According to Hagerty, studies conducted by Notre Dame professor David Campbell show that two-thirds of evangelicals under age thirty-five believe non-Christians can go to heaven, while only thirty-nine per cent of those over age sixty-five share this belief. As McLaren observes, “it’s really hard to condemn someone to eternal damnation on the basis of their religion when you know them well and have come to love them.”

Exactly what is implied by McLaren’s claims that they should create such uproar? His conception of Jesus’s mission stresses that God did not incarnate to save humankind from hell, but rather to advance a social agenda and create a new world of peace. McLaren uses the three-tier concept of Genesis, Exodus, and the New Kingdom—the very thematic structure the Bible itself—to explain Jesus’s purpose: “Jesus . . . did not come merely to ‘save souls from hell.’ No, he came to launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6)”.

Social and spiritual liberation are the essence of Jesus’s message, McLaren argues; however, critics contend that Jesus came to Earth solely to perform a sacrifice on behalf of humankind: “The only reason Jesus came was to save people from hell . . . . Jesus had no social agenda . . . . [He didn't come to eliminate poverty or slavery or] . . . fix something in somebody’s life for the little moment they live on this earth.” In response to this bold claim, McLaren poses a rhetorical question:

Now what could possibly cause this earnest and educated Christian to assert that Jesus had no agenda regarding poverty and slavery? What could motivate a dedicated Bible teacher to minimize horrible social realities as minor inconveniences or pet peeves— ‘something in somebody’s life for the little moment that they live on this earth’? How could a pious and devoted believer ignore all of Jesus’s [own] words about the poor, all his deeds for the poor and oppressed, beginning with his first public sermon, in which he quoted Isaiah 61?

This argument emphasizes good deeds and social justice activism over a blood sacrifice for undeserving sinners who are too stupid and evil to govern themselves, and it is this that threatens to undermine the deeply cherished doctrine of grace. McLaren seeks to challenge the centrality of this compulsory blood-price, which merely substitutes human for animal sacrifice in order to propitiate a war god—in this case, Yahweh: “The view of the cross that I was given growing up, in a sense, has a god who needs blood in order to be appeased . . . . If this God doesn’t see blood, God can’t forgive.”

So what was Jesus Christ’s true mission on Earth, and how do we find it out? Is the propitiatory blood-price of an innocent the most important thing, and should those who cannot accept this go to hell, or was spiritual and social liberation, a new humanity on earth, the main point? We are more than glad to invite our ministers to participate in this discussion and share their views.

Source:
National Public Radio

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