2011 August

Archive for August, 2011

How to Perform a Nondenominational Wedding

Tuesday, August 30th, 2011

Non-Denomination Wedding

Online churches like the Universal Life Church Monastery have long offered a way for anybody to get ordained online and marry their friends and family in personalized, meaningful settings, but many ministers still have questions about the logistics of wedding officiation and the legality of online ordination. We thought we would take a look at a couple of ordained ministers in the ULC to illustrate how fun and easy it can be to perform a wedding ceremony for your loved ones.

Erica Ried Gerdes, a performer and choreographer, and Bex Schwartz, a writer, director, and performer, are two women who exemplify the creative energy and dedication of newly-ordained ULC ministers. The women both decided to become an ordained minister online in order to marry friends and relatives who knew and trusted them. Like many new so-called “mail-order ministers”, the women had to do a little research and navigate around the roadblocks to performing legal weddings, and their stories may go far in answering questions and assuaging the concerns of other ULC ministers.

So what did Ried Gerdes and Schwartz learn from their experiences? One of the

Marriage paperwork

first things a prospective minister asks is how difficult it is to obtain a legal minister’s ordination credential through an Internet church. Schwartz cheerily explains how simple the ordination process is: “It is a piece of the cake, as they say! You go to the ULC's site and click a few buttons, and, bam, you are ordained”, she tells Claire Zulkey on her WBEZ 91.5 blog. But that is just the ordination process itself. What about getting registered? Schwartz explain the necessary steps for wedding officiation in New York City, where she performed her wedding: “If you want to perform weddings in NYC, you need to register with the City Clerk's office as an officiant”, adding that one simply needs to obtain the ULC New York City wedding officiant package, which includes all of the necessary paperwork, “and fill out the forms with the city of NY. Then you go down to the City Clerk's office and exchange all the forms and then they bring out a giant book and you get to sign it”. Showing its support for the LGBT community, the ULC Monastery also offers New York City same-sex wedding officiant packages, which are legally identical to the regular package but are custom-tailored for same-sex couples. Of course, this only counts for New York City, but if you do not live there, do not fret—the ULC Web site will guide you to sites which provide wedding laws for other states and countries (as mentioned above). Fortunately, ministers ordained online can solemnize marriages in most U.S. jurisdictions.

Once the technicalities of getting ordained and registering as a new minister are sorted out, there are other concerns people have about performing a modern nondenominational wedding ceremony. One of these is how to integrate the bride and groom’s unique personal tastes and preferences into the ceremony in order to make it relevant. Fortunately, online ordained priests and minister already tend to be friends and family or bride and groom, but it is still helpful to point out the ways in which the wedding officiant can make the ceremony perfect. One way, Schwartz tells Zulkey, is to go over samples of wedding ceremonies from the religious backgrounds of bride and groom, either choosing or rejecting one and then tailoring it to fit the bride and groom’s preferences. Another way is to incorporate stories or anecdotes about the bride and groom that will amuse guests and make them laugh. Of course, it is also important to consider personalized wedding vows, which may require assigning homework to bride and groom asking them to draft the vows that best express their feelings for one another. Perhaps most important of all, as Ried Gerdes notes, is to get a clear idea from bride and groom of exactly what basic theme they want for their wedding: “quirky, traditional, long, short, family related or not, religious, secular, readings, songs, etc.” The point is to get a crystal-clear idea exactly how bride and groom want their ceremony to be designed and conducted, and what themes, narratives, and values should be integrated into the ceremony based on feedback from bride and groom.

In addition to these issues, new ministers should anticipate the occasional patch of rough waters in planning and performing wedding ceremonies. Schwartz and Ried Gerdes both describe some of the more challenging times in their ministries, giving other ministers an opportunity to do their homework, as it were, and prepare ahead of time. For Schwartz, the most challenging part of wedding planning and performing is making it special for the couple: “The most challenging part of the ceremony is scripting it so it is truly unique and representative of the couple. Every couple is different and deserves their own special language and I need to make sure their ceremonies make them happy.” Ried Gerdes expresses a similar concern: “Writing the ceremony is rough, ‘cause you want it to be special to each couple, and when I send it off for approval, I think that is the most nerve-wracking part–what if they hate it?! I get nervous if/when they send revisions.” Some of these challenges are made easier, however, by wedding planning guides and resources such as Baker’s Wedding Handbook: A Resource for Pastors. The point is to get as much feedback as possible from bride and groom and organize this into an eloquent narrative which provides a profound and accurate portrait of the love that brings them together on that day.

These bits of advice only touch the tip of the iceberg, of course, but they do cover the basics. Obtaining a legal minister’s ordination credential is easy since the church’s belief that everybody should be allowed to minister is a protected freedom; it is important to discuss ideas with bride and groom ahead of time and get feedback from them about their values, personal stories, and aspirations; and, finally, to avoid disappointment it is vital to prepare a wedding script which integrates these elements in a powerful and relevant way. Becoming a wedding officiant and performing marriage ceremonies for loved ones can be a daunting task, and it raises many questions that often go unanswered, causing a great deal of head-scratching, but, as the stories of Ried Gerdes and Schwartz illustrate, it actually turns out to be much easier than the old-fashioned way, not to mention the fact that it allows you to play a vital role in the lives of people you know and love.

Source:

WBEZ

Posted in Alternative Religion, Non-Denominational Weddings, Spirituality, Wedding Trends, marriage, marriage equality | No Comments »

Bible Shows Human Errors, Scholars Say

Monday, August 22nd, 2011

Contrary to the claims of evangelical Christians and many Orthodox Jews, the Bible does not appear to be the unalterable, inerrant word of God. Hebrew scholars been undertaking a project to publish an authoritative critical edition of the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament for Christians) and trace every change made to the text over the millennia. What they have found is that the original Hebrew Bible was significantly different from the one Jews and Christians revere today. This does not make the Bible useless, however; it merely makes it human.

A group of Hebrew scholars have been working on publishing a comprehensive critical edition of the Hebrew Bible out of a small office in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. According to Mattie Friedman of The Huffington PostBible Project scholars have spent years combing through manuscripts such as the Dead Sea scrolls, Greek translations on papyrus from Egypt, a printed Bible from 1525 Venice, parchment books in handwritten Hebrew, the Samaritan Torah, and scrolls in Aramaic and Latin”. The work is so painstaking and attention to detail so rigorous that the group have completed only the first three of the Hebrew Bible’s twenty-four books (Christians divide the same texts up into thirty-nine books) since they began the Bible Project, as the endeavor is known, in 1958. Another book will be completed sometime during the following academic year. At that rate, the entire edition should be completed just over two hundred years from now.

But the wait should be worthwhile, as the project is already giving us a glimpse into how the Hebrew Bible has changed over time. It would seem that the current text many Jews and Christians rely on for divine guidance is, in fact, the product of centuries of human intervention. For example, Bible Project scholars have produced a chart listing all of the variations of a single phrase from the Book of Malachi. In our current version of the book, the phrase states “those who swear falsely”, but in quotations from rabbinic writings dating to around the fifth century, it states “those who swear falsely in my name”; meanwhile, a passage from Deuteronomy referring to commandments given by God “to you” once read “to us”, showing a crucial difference in meaning. But inconsistencies can prove even more significant: our current version of the Book of Jeremiah is one-seventh longer than the version which appears in the two thousand year-old Dead Sea scrolls. Importantly, some prophesies—such as the one about the Babylonians seizing and returning Temple implements—seem to have been added retroactively, after the events actually happened.

Then there is the question, what is the exact nature of these changes and discrepancies? Bible Project scholars attribute the great bulk of them to textual anomalies, scribal errors, and other human mistakes which inevitably became a part of the Hebrew Bible and were inherited generation after generation through both oral and written traditions. In other words, the Hebrew Bible we use today includes these human errors within its pages.

What does all of this imply for the authority of Judeo-Christian scripture? It basically means that Jews and Christians are preaching from a holy book created by humans. The Bible Project’s discoveries pose fundamental theological problems for Jews, because Jews view the Hebrew Scriptures, which include the Torah, as divine prophecy, but some of these prophesies seem to have been added after the event by human scribes. It also affects the meaning of Biblical teachings themselves. If older, more reliable texts say one thing, but newer texts in current use say another thing, which version is authoritative? Older versions of the Hebrew Bible, such as the Aleppo Codex, are considered more authentic because they are closer to the literary source, hence religious zealots all over the world may be using flawed or bowdlerized Biblical material to justify their moral convictions. And the fact that the “Word of God” apparently is not immutable and has changed over the years at the hands of humans implies that God has either changed his mind over the centuries, allowed humans to tamper with the texts that he inspired, or never played a role in the composition of the texts in the first place. At any rate, the Bible Project’s discoveries are important for modern-day people to know about, because they show that the stories and teachings fanatics use today to defend potentially harmful moral prejudices may not entirely support those prejudices after all.

Besides, even if the teachings found in the completed Bible Project edition end up aligning closely with those found in newer editions, so what? It still would not prove that every word of the Bible is divinely inspired—it would only prove that bad habits are hard to break. But we already know that there are at least some major discrepancies.

Despite its flaws, the Hebrew Bible is not an entirely useless work. It is still an epic literary masterpiece reflecting the legends, lore, and ethos of an historical people, and it seems unfair to expect human beings to inherit a perfectly embalmed vessel of God’s message generation after generation, century after century, without God overseeing every tiny human action. Inevitably, if human beings do indeed have free will, they will deliberately tamper with a manuscript here and there or accidentally make an incorrect pen-stroke, thus altering the content of Scripture and the Holy Bible for lifetimes to come. This does not mean that it is untrustworthy; it simply means that it was written by human beings, and it is silly to expect perfection in an imperfect species to begin with. In fact, this observation makes it easier to accept the Bible, because it suggests that the Bible was not the work of a schizophrenic, inconsistent, self-contradictory deity, but the work of people, whose foibles we can predict. If we can rely on human beings to make errors, we can rely on these errors to be reflected over the centuries in their greatest religious narratives. At the end of the day, they still tell us something about ourselves.

Source:

The Huffington Post

Posted in Academics, Catholicism, Christianity, Churches, Evangelical, The Bible, faith, humanity | No Comments »

Are Well-Educated People Really Less Religious?

Monday, August 15th, 2011

The divide between secular, well-educated people on one hand and religious, poorly-educated people on the other may not be as stark as some think, at least in the United States. Recently released data from a highly-regarded survey suggests that well-educated people may be just as pious as poorly-educated people—depending on how one defines piety. The findings characterize a uniquely American range of attitudes toward religious belief, one which runs the gamut from the “my way or the highway” thinking of fundamentalist Christians to the modern-day faith of nondenominational ministers ordained online.

Philip Schwadel, a sociologist with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, looked at data from the General Social Survey, a highly-respected cumulative and nationally representative survey conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. The survey, which provides cumulative data from 1972 to 2010, is a useful source of information for social scientists who study religious practice among lay people, the religiously lapsed, and those who aspire to become an ordained minister to serve their community. Schwadel arrived at his conclusion based on specific definitions of religiosity and God, making important distinctions between the way well-educated and poorly-educated people practiced their religion. Ultimately, he found that well-educated people were just as religious—but in a markedly different way.

When it came to belief in God, church attendance, and regular reading of the Bible or other holy book, the better-educated group turned out to be surprisingly religious. According to Schwadel, with each additional year of education, the likelihood of attending a religious sermon or worship service increased by fifteen per cent, and the likelihood of reading the Bible at least occasionally (among Christians, at least) inrreased by nine per cent with each additional year of education. Additionally, the likelihood of a conversion to atheism does not increase with each additional year of education, and well-educated people still tend to believe in God.

However, there were some important differences between well-educated and poorly-educated people. When well-educated people did read the Bible, they were less likely to interpret it as the literal word of God, and they were more likely to view God as a universal “higher power” than as the anthropomorphic, patriarchal archetype found of the Bible. Perhaps most importantly, the survey revealed that well-educated people were less likely to believe that theirs was the one true religion, and were more open-minded about the potential truth in other religions (and probably unconventional practices like online ordination for weddings), reflecting a less provincial, more cosmopolitan worldview about spiritual truth. And while well-educated people believed priests, ministers, and other clerics should be allowed to express their religious views on social issues, they were more wary about the role of religion in secular government.

It is important to remember that the survey is a nationwide survey conducted in the United States and reflects an attachment to religion as a way of creating a personal identity. It simply shows that well-educated people in America seem to be as religious as poorly-educated people. Maybe this means that they are more likely to be open to things like getting ordained to perform a wedding in an interfaith ceremony. In other countries, such as France, Denmark, and the Netherlands, well-educated people may not be as religious as poorly-educated people, and this may be because the superior social safety net of these countries negates the need for religious faith. It is certain a possibility that deserves consideration. Furthermore, it is very important to remember what we mean by “religious”. As we have seen, well-educated people’s idea of religious devotion is crucially different from that of poorly-educated people. For now, therefore, we cannot generalize these findings and claim that well-educated people around the world are just as religious as poorly-educated people, and we cannot say that well-educated people share the same kind of religious beliefs as poorly-educated people.

Share your thoughts as a nondenominational wedding officiant. Given the results of the General Social Survey, do you believe that well-educated people are as religious as poorly-educated people, or should we be careful how we interpret the survey’s statistics before drawing any hard and fast conclusions?

Source:

The Daily Mail

Posted in Academics, Christianity, Churches, Science, Spirituality, faith | No Comments »

Russell Brand Performs Wedding Ceremony

Friday, August 12th, 2011

The list of celebrities deciding to become ordained as a minister to marry couples in unorthodox ceremonies seems to be growing even longer. People like David Byrne of the Talking Heads, Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, andcomedian Kathy Griffin have already had the opportunity to perform a modern wedding ceremony as a minister ordained online. Now actor and comedian Russell Brand can be added to the list of celebrity ministers, and it would seem that Brand obtained his ordination credential from the Universal Life Church.

Brand recently decided to officiate a wedding ceremony during one of his stand-up gigs at a casino in Santa Barbara, California. The lucky couple were Scarlett and Will De Boor. Unfortunately the words chosen by the cheeky British humorist cannot be enumerated here in their entirety without permanently scarring the delicate eardrums of young children, but suffice it to say that the unorthodox ceremony was replete with an assortment of irreverent, prurient quips in which bride and groom promised to love and cherish one another, despite their many unnamed foibles as a modern-day couple. To be certain, the off-the-wall exchange will challenge many people’s ideas of modern wedding vows. However, the De Boors will be able to say that theirs was a perfectly legal wedding ceremony, since ordination is more or less a formality in the United States now, unlike in Brand’s homeland of Great Britain.

Apparently Brand decided toget ordained online in the Universal Life Church. At least, British comedy newsmagazineChortle suggested as much in their article on the ceremony when they wrote, “The Universal Life Church has ordained more than 20 million people for free online, and many states, including California, allow ministers to conduct legal marriages.” Because it is now easier for people to become a wedding officiant online for free in the United States, the De Boors will be able to say that theirs was a perfectly legal wedding ceremony, and Brand, that his role as ordained wedding officiant is perfectly legitimate, thanks to laws protecting against discrimination on the basis of religion.

We at the Universal Life Church would like to congratulate the De Boors on their unusual and memorable wedding ceremony, and Brand on his decision to use stand-up comedy as a medium for helping redefine the traditional wedding ceremony and allowing such memorable events to become a reality, all the while revealing a lighthearted side to ULC ordinations. We look forward to seeing what other quirky wedding ideas the inimitable satirist from Essex has in store.

Source:

Chortle

Posted in Celebrity Ministers, Wedding Trends, marriage | No Comments »

Warren Jeffs and Joseph Smith… alike?

Friday, August 12th, 2011

Polygamist Mormon sect leader Warren Jeffs shares some qualities with founder of Mormon faith

Polygamist and sex offender Warren Jeffs has been convicted of two counts of child rape

Warren Jeffs, leader of a Mormon sect called the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS), was convicted on August 4 of child rape. The victims of the sex crimes, two girls who were 12 and 15 when the crimes were committed, were forced into Jeffs’ harem of polygamous wives at the Yearning for Zion Ranch in West Texas, a compound owned by the FLDS. Among other forms of sexual misconduct, these underage “spiritual wives” were coerced into participating in “heavenly comfort” training sessions in which they performed sexual acts with Jeffs to, as he claims, revive him spiritually and bring them closer to God. Due to the severity of his crimes, Jeffs will serve a lifetime sentence in prison and will not be eligible for parole until he is 100 years of age.

The conviction and sentencing of Jeffs brings about the long-awaited end to a trial which began when he was extradited to Texas in December of 2010 in order to be tried for the aforementioned sex crimes which he committed. The two victims comprise a small fraction of Jeffs’ 24 underage wives, of a total of 78 polygamous spouses he is reported to have.

This is not the first time Jeffs has appeared in front of a judge and jury for criminal misconduct. In May of 2006, Jeffs was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List when he fled his home state of Utah to avoid going to court after being accused of arranging the unlawful marriages of underage girls. Jeffs was arrested by August of 2006 and, little more than a year later, was sentenced with two counts of rape as an accomplice. Between the time of Jeffs’ arrest and conviction, a Mohave County court found him guilty of two counts of sexual conduct with a minor and two counts of incest in a completely separate pair of crimes.

The practice of polygamy has been cast into doubt by this trial

Jeffs routinely justifies his sexual abuse of underage women in religious terms; a tape played during the prosecution catches him referring to the sex acts he performed with his victims as a gift from God and a method of purification.

In addition to enforcing strict modes of antiquated dress and living, FLDS leaders like Jeffs have been know to redistribute wives amongst its male members and excommunicate men from the faith altogether to reduce competition for potential wives. The FLDS, which claims to have over 10,000 members and left the mainstream Mormon faith over 70 years ago, openly accepts polygamy and the marriage of underage girls; many of the young women Jeffs married were happily given away by their parents.

Despite his sect’s split from mainstream Mormonism, Jeffs likens himself to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter Day Saint Movement and the Mormon faith. While conventional wisdom sees Jeffs’ actions and beliefs as reprehensible, it is not unlikely that Smith might not have felt the same were he alive today.

Both men were advocates of “celestial” plural marriage, where men are required to take multiple wives in order to reach the highest levels of “exaltation”, or godhood, in heaven. Both men firmly believed that adherents of their faiths should have the ability to disregard laws which run contrary to their religious practices. Smith even preached the idea that “congress has no power to make a law that would abridge the rights of my religion,” a concept which both Smith and Jeffs used to justify the breaking of laws. Like Jeffs, Smith frequently had trouble with the law throughout his life. Among other things, Smith was tried for pretending to find lost treasures, marrying other men’s wives, and suppressing free speech.

Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon faith

While many may believe that no modern, conventional religion incorporates beliefs or practices akin to the FLDS’ cult-like and law-breaking ones, the modern-day Mormon faith is the successor to a long lineage of a bizarre spirituality. Here are some of the founding principles of the Mormon church, as preached by Joseph Smith, which modern-day Latter Day Saints still believe in.

Joseph Smith was visited as a teenager by God and Jesus. They told him that the Christianity of the day had been led astray by Satan and that Smith would one day found the “true church”.

An angel by the name of Moroni visited Smith and told him of an ancient Hebrew history which lay buried near his home in New York. Through the guidance of Moroni, Smith was able to recover several golden tablets, on which this history was recorded, and translate them from the “reformed Egyptian” language which Smith claimed they were written in using specialized seeing stones called “Urim and Thummim”. These translations were formed into the Book of Mormon, which is considered to be scripture by Mormons.

The Hebrews who left the golden tablets were led by God front the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea to America in three groups between 2200 BC to 600 BC. Amongst these Hebrews were prophets of God and people who were inspired by Jesus Christ (even though he would not be born for another two thousand years).

Smith claimed that American Indians were the descendants of non-believers who traveled with the God-following Hebrews to America and then wiped out them out through a long series of conflicts.

Jesus visited the Americas during his short lifespan and converted its inhabitants, according to Smith.

Smith received revelations from God throughout his life. These revelations were transcribed into a book called Doctrine and Covenants, which is considered to be scripture by Mormons.

The only true Christian church is the Mormon church, as Smith was able to restore the “true church” through the revelations he received from God.

The Universal Life Church Monastery has prepared this article to point out the dangers of religious fundamentalism, the bizarre nature of Smith’s teachings and to draw a connection between the man who started the Church of Latter Day Saints and a man who now claims to be his spiritual descendant. While Jeffs’ religious justification for the immoral treatment of women in the FLDS may seem reprehensible to most, over ten million Mormons throughout the world follow the teachings of Joseph Smith, a man who advocated similar practices and propagated unconventional – and sometimes questionable – Christian beliefs. If Smith was able to convince millions of people throughout the world to adhere to his peculiar belief system, could a man like Jeffs do the same in the future with his perverted take on Christianity (especially given the similarity between the LDS and FLDS)? Could a cult-like organization like the FLDS one day evolve into the next home-grown American religion?

While Mormons claim Joseph Smith died as a martyr for his beliefs in a jail in Carthage, Illinois, there is significant historical evidence that Smith was killed in a gun battle with a mob he had incited by urging the destruction of a newspaper which published unflattering statements about him. If it were given the opportunity, the ULC would urge Jeffs to decide whether or not Smith was wrongfully assassinated as a true man of God or if, as a self-styled prophet who believed he was not beholden to the laws of the land, Smith was an unfortunate victim to animosity he created.

Note: this piece was not meant to bad-mouth Mormons or the Mormon faith… just the crazy ones.

Posted in Alternative Religion, Spirituality, sex | No Comments »

Tribal vs. Federal Same-Sex Marriage Laws: What’s the Difference?

Saturday, August 6th, 2011

On 1 August 2011 the Suquamish Nation, located northwest of Seattle along Washington state’s tangled coastline, became the second Native American tribe in the United States to legalize same-sex marriage. The first tribe to do so was the tiny Coquille Nation in Coos Bay, Oregon. The new legislation was possible because these tribes are federally-recognized sovereign nations, so their laws are not necessarily subject to state constitutional bans on same-sex marriage. An important question arises in light of this legal step forward: If a same-sex marriage is performed on tribal land, why can’t it also be recognized by the state or federal government? Ideally, it should be, if the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution has any relevance.

By the way—almost everybody has an opinion on this topic, so we want to know you think as a minister ordained online in the ULC Monastery.

But first let us take a brief look at the tribe’s decision. The new legislation was spearheaded by tribal member Heather Purser, an openly lesbian Seattle resident. For months Purser had been attending tribal meetings and requesting that the council amend the tribal constitution to legalize same-sex marriage. After meeting somebody special, she attended a tribal meeting in March and reiterated her request, and the tribe voted unanimously to enact the amendment. In June the tribe held a public hearing on the matter, and on 1 August the amendment was finally adopted, with no opposition. Purser’s old sister, who attended the March meeting, told the Seattle Times that “for Heather it means acceptance and recognition from out tribe”.

What does all of this have to do with people who become ordained online as priests or ministers, you may ask? More than you might think.

Currently the U.S. federal government does not recognize any same-sex marriages that are recognized by local state, tribal, or ecclesiastical governments. Consequently, these marriages are not granted federal protections, which include Social Security survivor benefits, equal treatment under the IRS tax code, and equal immigration rights (among over one thousand other protections). The culprit? The Defense of Marriage Act. Native American tribes which recognize same-sex marriage and religious organizations which recognize same-sex sacramental marriage face a similar challenge. Just as the federal government discriminates against religious denominations which support same-sex marriage, it discriminates against tribal governments which support same-sex marriage. By acknowledging marriage as defined by one religion but not another, the government is engaging in religious discrimination, and by acknowledging marriage as defined by one tribe but not another, the government is engaging in tribal discrimination.

There is a good reason why this policy is unjust, and why those who decide to get ordained in a nondenominational online church have a vested interest in the issue for their own reasons. The reason why same-sex marriages recognized by Native tribes should also be recognized by the federal government is found in the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Specifically, the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to grant equal legal protection to every citizen:

[N]o state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Clearly, if the federal government is imposing this requirement on individual states, it must be expected to meet this requirement itself. If the federal government, through the Equal Protection Clause, requires itself as well as every state to provide every citizen equal protection of the law, and the federal government provides heterosexual married couples more protections than Suquamish same-sex married couples, the federal government is violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The same goes for the states. The federal government cannot allow heterosexual married couples more protections than same-sex married couples within a state without violating the Equal Protection Clause, and it cannot allow heterosexual married couples in one state more protection than same-sex married couples in another state without violating the Equal Protection Clause. As long as the federal government is following the self-same requirements it imposes on the states, it must grant equal protection under the law for every person in every state in order to abide by its own Equal Protection Clause.

And, of course, the same goes for people who belong to any one of the various religions of the world. Under the Equal Protection Clause, the federal government cannot recognize all marriages solemnized by one religious denomination, but not all marriages solemnized by another religious denomination, without violating its own Equal Protection Clause. Same-sex couples married by people who decided to become a wedding officiant or marriage minister in order to solemnize same-sex weddings would deserve the same protections as other married couples—if the federal government were to practice what it preaches.

Now, there are some who will argue that the federal government is not compelled to do this. “The Fourteenth Amendment protects individual rights from abridgement by state governments”, they say, “but it does not protect these rights from abridgement by the federal government itself”. But that makes no sense. Saying that the federal government’s own Fourteenth Amendment protects individual rights from abridgement by the state, but does not protect them from abridgement by the federal government itself is like saying that a mother should be able to tell her children not to do drugs whilst she herself is shooting up with heroin. It is just absurd. If equal protection of the law is a universally justifiable principle of natural law and ethical reasoning, it logically follows that it applies to the federal government with as much force as it applies to state governments. Thus, even if the federal government is not technically bound to its own Equal Protection Clause, this does not mean that it should not be—it only means that a new amendment needs to be enacted to ensure that it does.

In summary, the point is that if same-sex marriage is recognized by a Native American tribe such as the Suquamish Nation, it should also be recognized by the federal government in order to meet the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment—which must, to be fair, apply also to the federal government itself. Currently same-sex tribal marriages are not recognized by the federal government. Ministers in churches which recognize same-sex marriage have a voice in this larger discussion about the relationship between tribal and federal governments, because the same-sex marriages they perform are not recognized by the federal government either, even though the marriages of other denominations are. For this reason, we would like you to join the debate and share your thoughts as a minister in the ULC Monastery by visiting the church Facebook discussion forum and minister’s social network.

Source:

The Seattle Times

Posted in humanity, marriage, marriage equality | No Comments »

U.S. Air Force Cancels “Jesus Loves Nukes” Program

Thursday, August 4th, 2011

If the right-wing jingoism asphyxiating the United States in the presidential campaign arena is not bilious enough to make you retch until your entrails spill forth, consider the secret Jesus Loves Nukes program formerly run by the United States Air Force. The program, led by military chaplains, trained missile officers to believe that the Bible justifies the use of atomic intercontinental ballistic missiles on civilian populations. Although the program was suspended after being exposed in the media, it illustrates perfectly the danger of using religion to excuse just about any military tactic.

The “ethics” program, as it was called, consisted of religion-based military training founded on the “Christian Just War Theory”. The unofficial “Bible” of the program (other than the actual Bible itself) is a forty-three-page Powerpoint presentation featuring a number of non sequiturs and subjective, personal, non-scholarly Biblical exegesis justifying the use of nuclear weapons on civilians. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation obtained the documents under the Freedom of Information Act after thirty religious missile officers, mostly Roman Catholic and Protestant, contacted the foundation complaining about the program.

What they found was jaw-dropping.

The Powerpoint presentation gives numerous passages and citations from the Bible supposedly justifying missile warfare. Among these are the Old Testament stories of Abraham organizing a war to save Lot (Genesis 14) and how God motivated “judges” to fight and deliver Israel from its oppressors. The presentation also cites New Testament passages such as Luke 4:13, in which John the Baptist implies that baptism is not incompatible with warfare, Luke 7:10, in which Jesus uses the Roman centurion as a positive example of faith, and Acts 10:2, 22, 35, in which Paul interacts with a “devout and God-fearing” Roman army officer. The problem with these examples is that they are all non sequiturs. It does not follow that people of faith should

go to war or annihilate civilian populations just because some Roman military officials were very pious,

or a Roman could be baptized and remain a soldier at the same time, or Abraham wanted to kill massive numbers of people to save just one person, or people believe they are hearing the voice of God to liberate themselves through war. In none of these cases does it follow that the religiously faithful should kill civilians—it only means that they have.

Conveniently, the Powerpoint presentation omits the mass slaughter of the Canaanites at the hands of the Israelites. When the Israelites returned to the land of Canaan under the military leadership of Joshua, they believed that a god or higher power called Yahweh told them to slaughter every man, woman, child, and goat in the land. The reason was that the Canaanites were full of sin because they did not practice the same Also included in the presentation are St Augustine’s Qualifications for Just War, which are based on “just cause” (to avenge or to avert evil; to protect the innocent and restore moral social order) and “just intent” (to restore moral order, not expand power; not for pride or revenge). But when a people are fighting a war with such vague motivations as “restoring moral social order” or “avenging evil”, almost any belief or practice, being founded on a different tradition or theology, might be deemed sufficiently reprehensible to justify killing civilians. Besides, St Augustine’s Qualifications for Just War (at least as interpreted by the U.S. Air Force) is internally contradictory. Under “just cause”, it states that war is permissible “to avenge…evil”, yet under “just intent”, it states that war is “not” permissible “for…revenge”. Well, “revenge” and “to avenge” both refer to exacting punishment in a resentful or vindictive spirit. Both are founded in malice and hatred, so it does not make sense to say one is acceptable but the other is not acceptable in a document outlining your justifications for war.

religion and customs as the Israelites did—not because the Canaanites were actually harming the Israelites. Today we would probably call the slaughter of the Canaanites genocide. Perhaps the chaplains who designed the curriculum for the “Jesus Loves Nukes” program knew that most people would have a hard time swallowing the argument that this Bible story, too, illustrates just cause for bombing civilians—even though it is from the same “inerrant word of God” as the other passages.

The nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during the Second World War were also cited in the document, and, naturally, the official excuse was invoked to justify these two humanitarian disasters, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. According to the official excuse, the Japanese and Germans made it clear that if they had made an atom bomb first, they would have used it against their enemies. The utilitarian rationale for bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, goes the argument, was that the Americans needed to bomb Japan’s cities in order to prevent a ground invasion that would have cost many more lives. Of course, this is still hotly debated, and opponents argue that this is speculative, extremely hard to prove, and may even have initiated the Cold War. We will never know whether the Japanese and Germans would have carried out such an attack, but we do know that allied forces preemptively dropped bombs on German and Japanese civilians.

Similar disturbing, is a quotation by Nazi rocket scientist Wernher von Braun found on one of the document’s slides. The United States arrested von Braun at the end of the war, brought him back to the United States, and used his scientific genius to help launch America’s rocket technology program. During his tenure with the Nazis, von Braun admitted to handpicking Jewish labor slaves from the Buchenwald concentration camp to build the V-2 missiles which he designed, and which ripped through London. Somehow glossing over all of this hypocrisy and inconsistency, the U.S. Air Force went on to cite von Braun’s religious moral justification for using missile weapons:

We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation, to what victorious nation we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else. We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured. [emphasis von Braun’s]

Essentially, then, the U.S. Air Force was citing a Nazi war criminal and slave-driver’s idea of morals to teach officers that Christians should have control over weapons of mass destruction. Christians would decide with the utmost discretion which innocent groups of people deserved to be obliterated by atom bombs, because the Bible guides their moral decision-making (except for that pesky part about the slaughter of the Canaanites.) Theoretically, then, anything deemed Biblically immoral, such as homosexuality, adultery, fornication, or touching the skin of dead pigs, justifies bombing innocents in order to protect…innocents…and restore moral social order. At the same time, however, slavery would be okay, because the Air Force trusts the words of a Nazi who used Jewish slave-labor to build his bombs, and the Bible tells us that fathers can sell their daughters into slavery to pay debts (Exodus 21:7).

Thank goodness the program was cancelled. One might argue that it violated the United States Constitution’s ban on religious tests for government office as well as the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution. In addition, it is highly dangerous to use the sacred text of warlike Bronze Age tribal leaders as a modern-day moral compass, or to distort Christian ethics as a pretext for the mass obliteration civilian populations—especially when the motive for such action is so riddled with bad logic, tenuous assumptions, and biased textual interpretation. The Universal Life Church Monastery is glad to see Catholic and Protestant Christians defend human rights and stand up to the United States Air Force by contacting the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and we hope that all branches of the U.S. military refrain from further religious war propaganda.

Weigh in on the discussion. Do you think it was appropriate for the U.S. Air Force to institute a training program which taught missile officers that there is religious justification for bombing civilians?

Source:

Gizmodo

Marshall Space Flight Center History Office

Posted in Christianity, Evangelical, Spirituality, The Bible, faith, humanity | No Comments »

Catholics Challenge Vatican Ban on Women Priests

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

For centuries, the Roman Catholic Church has reserved the priesthood for celibate heterosexual males (ironic, perhaps, since they are celibate anyway), but now hundreds of Roman Catholic priests from around the globe are challenging the ban on ordaining women and married men as priests. Although some religious scholars question their efficacy, especially given the rigid, entrenched hierarchy of the Church, such demonstrations are a sign that old attitudes are beginning to crumble. And not without solid reason, either. Looking closely at the rationale behind the Church’s position, we will observe that it rests entirely on a logical fallacy.

The challenges to Church law span countries and continents. In June, three hundred Austrian deacons and priests showed their support for ordaining women and married men by issuing a “Call to Disobedience”. During every Mass, the priests and deacons recited a public prayer calling for church reform. Next-door, in Germany, underground women priests (known collectively as “Womenpriests”) have been ordaining other women as priests in defiance of Roman Catholic orthodoxy since 2002. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic in the United States, similar demonstrations have taken place. Roy Bourgeois, a member of the Maryknoll religious order, faces excommunication for delivering the homily in a ceremony in which a woman, Janice Sevre-Duszynskaas, was allegedly ordained. Bourgeois received a letter from the Vatican asking him to recant his position on the ordination of women or face excommunication. He has refused to recant, but has not yet been excommunicated, and 157 fellow clerics have signed a letter in support of Bourgeois and his actions. Incidentally, Sevre-Duszynskaas is also a member of Womenpriests—she had been fighting to be ordained since 1998. Over the years, she has gained notoriety for disrupting services and conferences calling on the ordination of women.

The Church’s position on women priests was summarized in an apostolic missive, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued by Pope John Paul II in 1994. In that letter, the pope declared that the Church “has no authority whatsoever” to ordain women as priests. The argument given by the Church for its position is that all of the apostles of Jesus Christ were men, and that the all-male priesthood cannot be changed because it has always been the practice. In other words, according to the Church, if the priesthood was originally male-only, and if it has always been male since the founding of the Church, it should remain male-only.

The Church’s argument is invalid, however, because it is founded on a logical fallacy known as argumentum ad antiquitatem, or “appeal to tradition”. According to this argument, a thing is good or correct simply because it is traditional—that is, the argument states “this is right because we have always done it this way”. Basically, people making this argument assume two things: 1) that a certain way of thinking is the correct way just because it was the original way, and 2) that past justifications for the practice apply to the present. These assumptions are faulty for two reasons: a thing was not necessarily good or correct when it was introduced, and past justifications for a practice do not necessarily apply to present-day situations.

We can see John Paul making this same fallacious argument in his epistle defending the Holy See’s opposition to the ordination of women.

In the letter, John Paul argues that denying priesthood to women is valid because this was the original practice of the Universal Church of Rome. This claim is unsound, because the original practice might have been based on incorrect grounds—it is not correct simply because it is the original way. If we accept that women possess as much intelligence, wisdom, spiritual insight, and leadership skill as men do, and consequently women and men make equally effective priests, the original practice of male-only ordination is wrong. Besides, some religious and biblical scholars have suggested that Mary Magdalene—not Peter—was Jesus’s favorite apostle, according to the Gnostic Gospel of Mary (which the Church deems apocryphal), so the claim that all of Jesus’s apostles were male might be false too.

Additionally, even if there was good reason to bar women from ordination in the past, the same reasons do not necessarily apply today. Today, people have hugely different demands placed on them—in order to sustain and participate in the new economy, more men need to take up traditionally female roles (such as nursing). Meanwhile, the priesthood is seeing a dwindling number of competent priests, and women are needed to fill the traditionally male roles and keep the priesthood afloat. But there is little reason to think that women should have been barred from ordination in the first place, being equal to men in their ability to serve as spiritual leaders.

So, no, the fact that male-only ordination has always been the practice of the Church does not mean that it should be.

It will be interesting to watch the events in Austria, Germany, and the United States and see where they lead. The rebellious actions of people like Bourgeois and the members of Womenpriests may barely make a dent in the ecclesiastical hegemony of the Church, but the numbers involved in the demonstrations are growing and seem to be gaining the force of a tsunami. Who knows whether it will come crashing down on the centuries-old institutionalized patriarchy stagnating within the world’s largest Christian denomination? Hopefully, as the number of rebel Catholics increases, others will be inclined to join them in the effort to institute church reform. The Universal Life Church Monastery supports these efforts, believing that men and women have equal access to divine wisdom and can learn from one another’s teaching and guidance in an environment of mutual respect and cooperation.

Give us your thoughts. After all of these centuries, is it time for the Roman Catholic Church to allow the ordination of women as priests?

Source:

Ms Magazine

The New York Times

Posted in Catholicism, Christianity, Churches, Religious Freedom, Spirituality, Women's Rights, faith | No Comments »

What is Wicca? National Geographic Investigates

Monday, August 1st, 2011

Slowly but surely, pagan religions are gaining respect in countries traditionally dominated by Christianity. This has been possible in part through greater exposure in the mainstream media, and a new National Geographic documentary on Wicca is one example how people are learning more about modern-day paganism and earth-centered religions. Still, some people harbor an irrational fear of witchcraft, magic, and nature worship, so it would behoove us to take a closer look at these practices and find out what they really teach, in this case by exploring Wicca. What we find is a religion steeped in the numinous, characterized by esoteric ritual, and defined by compassion for humanity and reverence for the power of nature.

Celebrating Nature

One of the chief aspects of Wicca that National Geographic will be exploring is the celebration of nature and the bounty nature bestows on human beings. While there are variations in belief among Wiccans—some believe in literal nature spirits while others treat these spirits as metaphors—in general, Wiccans worship the gods of nature and believe that the gods grant them the power of magic in return for their devotion. Seasonal cycles and connectedness with the rhythms of nature are also important to Wiccans, and they mark these cycles with holidays such as Samhain (“SOW-uhn”—the Celtic new year on 1 November on which Halloween is based) and Beltaine (“BYEL”-tuh-nuh—the Celtic festival marking the return of summer, on which May Day is based). Traditionally, understanding natural cycles has been crucial for human beings to sow and reap crops, but many Wiccans feel that modern peoples can also benefit from honoring these rhythms, since human beings and their environment are always being affected by the movements of heavenly bodies like the sun and moon.

Working with Magic

The powers granted by the gods in exchange for devotion also plays a central role in Wicca—but it is usually not the magic depicted in Hollywood movies—and National Geographic gives us a glimpse at how Wiccans practice the ancient art of magic using the five elements of nature. Some practitioners of witchcraft distinguish between “high” and “low” magic. High magic

is often associated with the sorcerer of powerful institutions who draws on and manipulates divine or natural forces to control his environment for lofty purposes, whereas low magic is associated with the humble outsider—often a woman—who uses these forces for personal purposes, such as healing with herbal remedies. Witches often speak of black and white magic as well; black magic is the use of magic for sinister or selfish purposes, whereas white magic is the use

of magic for selfless or benevolent purposes. It is simply a tool the good of which depends on the intent of the user. Wiccans are well-known for using magic for benevolent purposes, such as healing or protection.

The Central Role of Ritual

Magic plays a major role in Wiccan ritual and ceremony, and the ritual of Beltaine is explored by National Geographic in its documentary on the religion. While many modern-day Western worship services, as in American Protestant Christianity, are highly informal, ritual-impoverished, and centered on abstract discussions of theology, many Wiccans place great emphasis on the importance of physical actions themselves and how these ground us to the earth by manifesting belief through performance. An analogy to this focus on ritual is still found in the Christian Eucharist, or Communion, as well as Christian baptism or christening. While blood-sacrifice historically was practiced by many pagan cultures, the modern religion of Wicca has no connection with such practices and actually teaches against harming any living being. For the most part, Wiccan ritual is a way to draw on the power of the gods of nature through a gesture of devotion and respect.

Underlying Principles

Informing all of these aspects of Wicca are the underlying principles themselves, the National Geographic touches on these in its documentary. Most fundamental of the religion’s tenets is the famous maxim known as the Wiccan Rede, which states, Eight words the Wiccan Rede fulfill: / An it harm none, do as ye will (an is an archaism meaning “if”, and rede is a Middle English word meaning “advice” or “counsel”, hence “well-read”). This couplet, the most famous form of the Rede, was first recorded in a speech by Doreen Valiente in 1964. For modern-day Wiccans, Valiente’s couplet simply teaches that we should be able to do whatever we want as long as we do not hurt others and we show them respect. (A similar doctrine is taught by the Universal Life Church Monastery with slight variations, the general meaning of which is to do that which is right, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others and it respects the law.)

Another basic principle of Wicca is reverence for the goddess, or the life-giving Mother Earth as found in nature, although many Wiccans also recognize a complementary god-and-goddess binary aspect to the divine. Some people are uncomfortable with this latter idea, however, since they believe it simply reinforces the unfair, harmful, and stereotypical gender binary of the aggressive male and the submissive female, which itself is a product of patriarchy, an institution Wiccans have generally eschewed. These individuals have their own unique, non-sexist way of worshipping the divine. This approach actually works well within Wicca, which has been committed to honoring women with positions of authority, leadership, and respect through coursework and training to become high priestess or master of Wicca.

The essence of Wicca teachings might be distilled into the following: a respect for life and the power of nature inspired largely by traditional pagan customs and principles as well as the sensibilities of modern-day movements like environmentalism and feminism. Of course, there are probably other ways of describing or defining the basic values of this faith tradition.

The Future

As they gain more positive exposure in the media, modern-day pagans, including Wiccans, are gradually earning the trust and respect of their neighbors. It will take some time to convince cynics that Wiccans do not slaughter goats or eat babies in satanic blood-rites—especially since they do not believe in either Satan or blood sacrifice—but with a patient commitment to educating people with a positive attitude, Wiccans and their allies will hopefully show that in many ways they are just like everyone else. Well-balanced coverage by influential organizations such as the National Geographic Society will go a long way in achieving this goal, as will greater integration in online social networks, which are ideal tools for familiarizing people with traditionally misunderstood groups. Like other religions, Wicca has something important to teach us—in this case, about our place in and relationship with the natural world—thus, the Universal Life Church Monastery welcomes followers of earth-based religions into its community of ministers, priests, pastors, and other clergy members ordained online.

Learn more about paganism, neopaganism, and other nature-based religions by visiting our Guide to Divinity.

Source:

Goddiscussion

National Geographic Society