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Creationism for Indiana Schools?

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Are Indiana public schools going to start teaching religion? It looks like a realistic possibility. As the Democrat-controlled Washington state Legislature advances a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, a Republican-controlled Indiana Senate committee has approved a bill that would allow creationism to be taught in Indiana public schools, further showing the stark religious and ideological divisions within the United States. But, as many ULC wedding officiants, priests, and ministers will agree, creationism doesn’t belong in public school science classrooms, and there are several reasons why: creationism isn’t science, it teaches the story of only one religious tradition, and it is best suited to the field of comparative religion.

With regard to the first of these, creationism shouldn’t be taught in public school science classrooms because, well, it simply isn’t science. Naturally, the senators backing the bill, Senate Bill 89, will contest this. According to Dan Carden of NWI.com, “[s]tate Sen. Scott Schneider, R-Indianapolis, who voted for the measure, said if there are many theories about life’s origins, students should be taught all of them”. This, of course, assumes that the theory is scientific to begin with, and should therefore be compared with other scientific theories. But it isn’t scientific, says John Staver, professor of chemistry and science education at Purdue University: “Creation is not science”, Carden reports him as saying. “It is unquestionably a statement of a specific religion.” Staver is right: creationism is the doctrine of the legally ordained minister, not the research scientist. Evolution is a scientific theory, which means it follows the principles of the scientific method, while creationism is not. The science classroom is supposed to teach students to compare scientific theories with other scientific theories, not to compare scientific theories with religious theories. Therefore, the public science classroom should not be teaching students to compare evolution with creationism.

Besides, even if we do teach creationism in public school science classrooms, whose creation story should we teach? The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America bars Congress from passing any law respecting an establishment of religion, and decades of judicial opinion have interpreted this to apply to individual state legislatures as well, the reason being that conflict arising from religious preference can occur at either the state or federal level. Besides, the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution requires states to provide every citizen the equal protection of the law, so it is unfair as well as unconstitutional to ask students to study the Christian creation story, but not the creation stories of Hinduism, Buddhism, Native American religions, paganism, indigenous religions, or any other world religion. This is why people choose to become a minister, not a public school teacher. We might resolve this dilemma by teaching all religious creation stories in public schools, but this is logistically impractical, if not impossible, so it is simply more realistic to bar the teaching of any religious creation story in public schools. Passing a bill to teach creationism in Indiana would be unfair and unconstitutional, then, because it would violate both the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

This last point begs the question, how, then, does religion fit into public school curricula? After all, we might argue, it is impossible to avoid any mention of religion, because it is such an intimate and influential part of the human experience. To understand ourselves better as human beings, then, we must address issues of religion in some form or another. It is true that a discussion on human nature requires mention of religion, but it is not true that it requires the subjective endorsement of religion, as many people who get ordained online in a nondenominational church will already agree. For example, a history lesson on the profound social transformation taking place in Europe in the sixteenth century would be incomplete without mentioning the role of religion, but this does not require the teacher, school district, or government to endorse religion. And while it is unrealistic to teach all religious creation stories in a science classroom, we might still be able to find a place to do so in a comparative religion classroom–the only caveat is that no religion must ever be endorsed over another religion, and religion must never be endorsed over non-religion. So, even if Indiana does find a way to weasel Christian creationism into public school social science classes, it cannot be subjectively endorsed.

To sum up, creationism cannot be taught in public school science classrooms in Indiana or anywhere else in the United States, because it isn’t science to begin with, it is unfair to teach one creation story and not another (and unrealistic to teach all of them), and it belongs in comparative religion classes, where all religions are treated equally and objectively. As many of our own ULC ministers and pastors already know, the Universal Life Church Monastery has always held the position that religion should never have any legal or official influence in any tier of government in the United States, in order to prevent religious conflict and to show respect for the unimpeded advancement of science in its own right. Perhaps you agree, but perhaps you don’t. We are always open to hearing your thoughts on these issues, so feel free to make them known on the ULC Monastery Facebook discussion page or our social network for ministers.

Sources:

National Center for Science Education

NWITimes.com

WSBT.com

Tags: Christianity, politics, science
Posted in Academics, Christianity, Politics, Science, evolution, faith | No Comments »

Opening Doors for Student Ministers

Monday, January 9th, 2012

As people find themselves pinching pennies left and right in the poor economy, more students are finding out the benefits of online ordination, and the Universal Life Church Monastery is one place they’re turning to. From Arizona State University and Ohio State University to the University of Iowa, the church has proved to offer promising opportunities for students of public research universities across the United States. The University of Georgia is also one of these schools, with over 115 students and professors claiming the title of minister ordained online. Often, the decision to become a minister in an online church is based on financial and ethical considerations.

Because younger university students tend to be poorer than middle-aged adults, online ordination provides a suitable financial alternative to spending years and thousands of dollars on obtaining a traditional minister credential. One University of Georgia student to realize this fact is Michael Bryson, a third-year English major from Watkinsville, Ga. “I found out I could be legally ordained online“, Megan Ingalls of Red and Black, the UGA student newspaper, quotes him as saying. “One of my friends got married and spent around $400 on an officiator. I found out online it was very easy and free”. As Bryson shows, for students and other low-income people who want to perform wedding ceremonies, baptisms, funerals, and other sacraments, getting ordained in an online ministry works because the applicant is not judged by his or her financial status.

But financial considerations are only one reason students at the University of Georgia are deciding to get ordained online in the Universal Life Church Monastery and other churches. Another reason young, well-educated people are turning to online ministries is the fact that they tend to be relatively liberal and open to new and different lifestyles. One of the weddings Bryson has performed since getting ordained was “for a former employee. The preacher refused to perform the ceremony because she was pregnant”, Ingalls reports him as saying. It’s not an uncommon complaint among people who want to find a wedding officiant, but that’s what churches like the ULC Monastery are for. People turn to internet churches because of their tendency to embrace nontraditional couples, such as same-sex couples, interfaith couples, couples who choose to have premarital sex, or interracial couples (yes, there are still bigots out there who refuse to marry people who have different skin color) without judgement.

And, of course, like everybody else, a growing number of University of Georgia students are discovering that online ordination makes it easier for people to marry their friends and relatives. This is one of the reasons why online ministries are such a desirable alternative to traditional ministries, as ULC Monastery spokesman Andy Fulton tells Ingalls: “Easily the best aspect of the ULC Monastery ordination for college students is that it allows them to perform informal, fun and inexpensive weddings for their friends and family”. In other words, students and faculty members at UGA becoming online ordained ministers not only to save money and marry people from marginalized groups who are turned away from more traditional ministries, but also to make it easier for people to marry those they know and love, rather than send them off to a stranger who happens to have a piece of paper that says they’re ordained. So, there is also the level of intimacy and meaningfulness university students and professors are taking advantage of.

More young, smart people like Bryson are rejecting the restrictions imposed on couples by traditional churches and joining nondenominational congregations, where they can fully realize their desire to recognize loving, committed unions. More and more, they are realizing that sex, race, nationality, and even faith are insufficient reasons to deny a couple recognition of their love. And that’s where churches like the ULC Monastery step in–to provide a platform for young, fresh minds with their own access to spiritual wisdom to pay tribute to these loving couples without having to face unfair and unrealistic financial and doctrinal impediments. After all, as the ULC Monastery believes, we are all children of the same universe. So, here’s to the student minister.

Source:

Red and Black (University of Georgia Student Newspaper).

Tags: academics, churches, religious freedom, spirituality, wedding trends
Posted in Academics, Churches, Religious Freedom, Spirituality, Wedding Trends | No Comments »

Musical Comedy Features ULC Wedding Vow Renewals

Friday, December 23rd, 2011

By now most of us are familiar with the many unconventional ways ULC ministers have re-interpreted the traditional wedding ceremony. Often, this involves some form of performance art, from stand-up comedy routines to rock concerts. Now, one minister ordained online in the ULC will be performing wedding vow renewals for audience members during a musical comedy on the often amusing trials of married life. It’s just another example of the creative and innovative approach ULC clergy members take to performing wedding ceremonies, wedding vow renewals, and other special occasions.

The wedding vow renewals will be held during a performance of the musical play Let’s Pretend We’re Married, created and performed by Philadelphia comedians Jennifer Childs and Tony Braithwaite, at Act II Playhouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. As hinted at in the title, the play will follow the domestic exploits of a number of famous married couples from film, television, and radio, including Edith and Archie Bunker, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, Sonny and Cher, and Burns and Allen, all of whom will be played by Childs and Braithwaite themselves. Sally Henry of Broadway World calls the play a “delightful, musical comedy celebration of the world’s greatest, and most complicated institution”.

Braithwaite, who decided to become ordained online in the ULC ministry, will be performing the wedding vow renewals, whilst Childs will be the flower-girl (albeit a grown-up version). Adding to the unconventionality of the occasion, the comedy duo will be offering different themes for each couple’s ceremony: a Las Vegas theme, a Hawaiian theme, and a traditional theme for those who wish to play it safe and stay “classic”. And apparently every couple is welcome. Braithwaite and Childs will also be offering wedding vow renewals to same-sex couples, as Henry notes: “All married couples are welcome (including visitors from New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Iowa!)”.

It’s quite an unusual combination, to be sure. Fans of both musical theatre, situation comedies, and alternative wedding and wedding vow renewal ceremonies should have plenty to look forward to. According to Henry, the score for the play will include selections from George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Stephen Sondheim, and Tom Lehrer. So, not only will audience members have the chance to watch couples renew their vows of love and commitment to one another with the help of a ULC wedding officiant, but they will have the opportunity to revel in the sweeping soundscapes of classic musical scores, with each ceremony set to a different theme: gambling “glitz”, tropical “paradise”, or good, old-fashioned, whitebread traditional. Certainly not a performance to write off as boring, from whatever angle you look at it.

As Braithwaite and Childs show, alternative ceremony ideas aren’t limited to just weddings, but apply to wedding vow renewal and commitment ceremonies too. After all, to create truly lasting memories, sometimes it is necessary to buck the trend and do something a little bit off-the-wall. Perhaps we can apply the same principle to performing funerals, performing baptisms, or performing other sacerdotal rites. Of course, the trick is how to strike a balance between spontaneity and reverence. Of course, all that’s required is to get ordained online and do a little digging around about the do’s and don’ts of performing ceremonies as a minister in an online church. (But that’s what we’re here for.)

Tickets to Let’s Pretend We’re Married can be purchased by visiting http://www.act2.org, or by calling the Act II Box Office at 1 (215) 654-0200.

In other musical entertainment news, three time Tony award-winning music theatre legend Carol Channing gave a very warm and charming video message at Broadway Sings for Pride: the Winter Holiday Concert. The event is an organized effort by music theatre artists to show support for the LGBT community through the performing arts. As anybody who watches the video can tell, Channing’s support for the community is evident in her heartfelt message of love, solidarity, and inclusion, a message which nicely echoes the Universal Life Church Monastery‘s own motto, which is that, male or female, black or white, gay or straight, young or old, we are all children of the same universe.

Source:

Broadway World: Carol Channing on Broadway Sings for Pride

Broadway World: Act II Playhouse Presents Let’s Pretend We’re Married Limited Engagement 1/11-22

Tags: be a minister, comedy, music, musical comedy, perform a wedding, Universal Life Church, wedding service, wedding vow renewal
Posted in Academics, Catholicism, Christianity, Progressive spirituality, Religious Freedom, Spirituality, The Bible, Wedding Trends, Women's Rights, evolution, faith, humanity, marriage | No Comments »

What’s the Best Answer to Evangelical Extremism?

Monday, December 5th, 2011

How should Americans respond to evangelical extremism in the United States? Some liberal commentators have suggested that evangelicals need to start showing as much commitment to their nation’s interests as they show to their religious faith. But is it really a good idea to tell evangelicals, “You should place greater priority on nationalistic fervor than on religious fervor”? After all, both religion and nationalism, in their more extreme forms, constitute a type of bigotry. Replacing one type of bigotry with another seems a little counterproductive if our goal is to participate fully in the global and human communities.

Certainly, religious fervor among rich and powerful evangelicals is a growing problem in the United States, and a threat to secular democracy and civil government. David Sirota of Salon points this out in a recent article entitled Are Evangelicals a Threat to National Security? In his article, Sirota cites a recent Gallup poll which suggests that, contrary to popular opinion, Christians are more likely than Muslims to put their faith before their country. The implication is that Muslims will be there for their country before Christians, who have traditionally dominated the cultural landscape of the United States, and who claim a link between American politics and their own religion which should be defended. It is rather ironic, then, that a dominant religious group which views Christianity and American culture as one and the same should put faith before country as compared with a minority religious group.

But, as mentioned above, asking Christians to put country before faith, and not the other way around, is potentially dangerous since it simply replaces one type of ideological zeal with another.

The first reason why this is dangerous is that it presupposes the assimilation of differing groups into American society. Sirota makes this suggestion when he cites the Gallup poll to disprove the stereotype that Muslims pose a greater security threat to the U.S. than Christians. In his attempt to do so, he unwittingly assumes the arguably conservative position that being American means being the same as everybody else. But, of course, this is nonsense: there is no official language of the United States nor an official religion for the government to peddle as the true language or religion of the nation. Clearly, though, Americans have to get along with one another. Why, then, not promote the idea of integration of different peoples in the form of a “cultural mosaic”–a system in which each citizen participates fully in a secular government while retaining their own unique customs and identity? But Sirota never even mentions integration: even he implies that Americans are supposed to be the same as one another. And then comes the burden of deciding whose language, religion, dress, customs, etc. will be the American prototype for everybody else to emulate under a policy of assimilation, and how we arrive at this decision remains a mystery unless we assume it is supposed to be white, male, heterosexual, English-speaking, and Christian (which, of course, defeats Sirota’s vision of Americans putting country first in a secular nation-state). So perhaps we shouldn’t be responding to fundamentalist evangelicalism with calls to assimilation.

But Sirota’s response to fundamentalist evangelicalism is questionable not only because it promotes assimilation over integration (and thus paves the way for making Protestant Christianity the national prototype for Americans to assimilate to), but also because it substitutes nationalism for religion, which isn’t very productive if our goal is to eliminate all forms of fanaticism. In its more xenophobic, chauvinistic form, nationalism purports that one person’s nation is better than another person’s nation in a sort of ridiculously macho “My dad can beat up your dad!” kind of showdown. But this just teaches people to identify with their nationality over their humanity, which is ridiculous since each person belongs to both their nation and planet Earth, and, besides, a lot of countries are better than the United States in many things: France has a better health-care system, Japan has a better transportation infrastructure, and most countries in the developed world have much lower per capita murder rates, so unbridled nationalism is just sort of provincial and arrogant. There is, after all, a vast wonderful world outside the United States. So, rather than telling evangelicals to be more nationalistic than religious, what liberals like Sirota might try doing is encouraging evangelicals to identify with their humanity over their nationality or religion, for while we all may come from different nations and hail from different religious traditions, we are all human beings. (This, by the way, is compatible with integration, in which different groups retain their unique customs and characteristics.)

Of course, Sirota might be implicitly promoting a more benign and cosmopolitan form of patriotism characterized by efforts to improve one’s own country through grass-roots efforts, etc., and this is a noble cause as it recognizes that nationalism begins with the uncompromising attitude that no imperfection exists in the first place, but if this is Sirota’s intent, it isn’t exactly crystal-clear.

The irony in all of this is that religiosity and nationalism are intertwined in American culture anyway (unfortunately), so telling evangelicals to place greater priority on patriotism than on faith is rather redundant. Sirota acknowledges that American culture and Christianity are often seen as interchangeable: “Christianity is seen as the dominant culture in America — indeed, Christianity and America are often portrayed as being nearly synonymous, meaning expressing loyalty to the former is seen as the equivalent to expressing loyalty to the latter”. In this sense, he notes, there is no separation between the American government and the Christian religion. This view is the product of efforts on the part of evangelicals to create an artificial synonymity between the two, and, unfortunately, to some extent they have succeeded. Liberals like Sirota can’t tell evangelicals to put their country before their faith if those same evangelicals have craftily and successfully blurred the boundary between the two, making loyalty to one the same as loyalty to the other. Rather, what we should be doing is confronting evangelicals for making this inappropriate association in the first place and dismantling it. But the next step should not be to encourage them to place priority on xenophobic chauvinism–it should be to encourage them to place priority on secular civil democracy, as their Muslim peers seem better able to do.

The point is that liberals like Sirota seem to have good intentions when they tell evangelicals to put their country before their faith, but ultimately even that approach is misguided, since it just replaces one potential form of bigotry with another. And there are three ways in which Sirota inadvertently and indirectly makes this possible: by unquestionably extolling the notion of assimilation instead of integration, by promoting nationalism over religion without acknowledging the potential for zealotry in both, and by overlooking the fact that evangelicals are already trying to create an artificial association between nation and religion in order to obviate choosing between the two. With regard to the last of these, clearly this conflation of politics and religion should not be happening, but we need to acknowledge that if we are telling evangelicals to place their country before their faith, they will think this ludicrous, since in their minds the two are one and the same. So, essentially, what we should be doing is telling evangelicals to be less fanatical, whether it involves religion or patriotism. For their Muslim peers seem to have a better perspective on fanaticism living in the United States.

Source:

Salon

Tags: be a minister, Evangelical, extremism, online ministry, religion, religious fundamentalism, universal church, Universal Life Church
Posted in Academics, Catholicism, Churches, Evangelical, Politics, Religious Freedom, Science, Spirituality, What would Jesus do, faith, humanity, technology | No Comments »

Russell Brand Brings Ministry to New Comic Heights

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Recently on the ULC Monastery blog we wrote about Russell Brand’s online ordination in the Universal Life Church and his subsequent role officiating weddings on-stage alongside his often shockingly irreverent, “I-know-you-didn’t-just-go-there” comedy routine. Brand once again took his art of uniting hearts and igniting laughs to the stage, this time in the Mullins Center at the University of Massachusetts. This time, however, the comedian married not one, but two couples, integrating humor with the solemnity of marriage for an overall off-the-wall evening.

The decidedly alternative wedding ceremonies came after a late start to a performance characterized by Brand’s trademark taboo shock humor, as Kate Evans of The Massachusetts Daily Collegian writes. Brand made up for his tardiness with hugs and kisses doled out to audience members, then dived into the act itself, brandishing his prowess in everything from bawdy jabs at popular culture to improvisational comedy. Referencing the Twilight series of teenage vampire films, the ULC minister made an impertinent joke about what vampire lovers do when their mates accidentally leave their sanitary pads at home, joking that her worst time of the month will end up being his best, and at one point he even invited an audience member up on stage and called his parents on his telephone to notify them that he had converted to homosexuality over his love for another audience member. All in all, it was an awkward evening for the squeamish prude, but a cathartic relief from life’s trials for everybody else.

After the unabashedly vulgar comic segment came the ceremonies themselves, which certainly weren’t over-sanitized to humor the conservative sensibilities of the unsuspecting puritan. In a spontaneous twist, Brand, who decided to become a minister to perform weddings during his comedy routines, found a couple in the audience at the beginning of the show that he vowed to marry by the end, and this is exactly what he did, bringing together in holy matrimony Vincent and Francesca, who had been together for three years. But that’s not all. Brand followed up this wedding with a second that brought together a couple that had been together for seven years, proving that it takes more than seminary school training and a traditional minister’s credential to validate a happy, loving union. Truly, it must have been an enjoyable bizarre and surreal evening for couples and audience members alike.

Of course, Brand’s style of wedding officiation isn’t for everyone, but it goes a long way in showing that a meaningful wedding doesn’t have to be a dour and boring affair, and that, on the contrary, it ought to involve a certain degree of whim and fancy, reflecting the joy and happiness of the couple being brought together. Naturally, we hope to see many similar weddings by Brand in the future, as they blur the boundaries between the solemn wedding the joyful one, as well as re-define what constitutes a proper public statement of love and commitment. It’s refreshing for once to see a couple getting married in a venue besides a church, without the traditional trappings like the giant white wedding gown and the old, moribund priest half-murmuring a series of obsolete vows. And even to hear a rude joke or two. What’s really the harm in that?

Source:

The Massachusetts Daily Collegian

Tags: be a minister, become a minister, British humor, celebrity marriages, comedian, comedy, Get Ordained, get ordained online, humor, marriage weddings, online ministry, perform a marriage, perform a wedding ceremony, Russell brand, Universal Life Church
Posted in Academics, Celebrity Ministers, Evangelical, LGBTQ rights, Politics, Progressive spirituality, Science, Spirituality, Wedding Trends, faith, humanity, marriage | No Comments »

Members of Village People Officiate ULC Wedding

Monday, November 21st, 2011

We all know the Village People for classic hits like “YMCA” and “In the Navy”, and for their eccentric, flamboyant outfits depicting archetypes like the biker, construction worker, police officer, sailor, Native American, etc., and now two members of the inimitable dance-pop group can add “Universal Life Church wedding officiant” to their resume: the two band-members, Eric Anzalone, the “biker”, and Felipe Rose, the “Native American”, recently performed a wedding ceremony in concert for two of their fans, Elberta Smoak and Frank Goldsmith.

The wedding was performed on-stage at the Starlite Theatre in Las Vegas after an email request from Goldsmith, the groom-to-be. Initially Goldsmith assumed the band would reject the request. “I saw that the Village People were playing [in Las Vegas] and thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could email them and get a little rejection letter that said, “We can’t do your wedding, but we’re so happy for y’all”?’” he told Huffpost Weddings, adding, “I’d frame it and give it to [Smoak] and say, ‘Hey, the Village People are happy we’re getting married”. To Smoak and Goldsmith’s surprise, however, the band responded in the affirmative and agreed to perform a modern wedding ceremony for the couple. According to Huffpost Weddings, Anzalone said “[the wedding] was never on my bucket list, but it’s definitely one of those cool things I can say that I’ve done”, adding that it is “going to be one of those things where I can say, ‘Yeah, I performed at Radio City Music Hall. Yeah, I got a star on the Walk of Fame. Yeah, I’ve actually married somebody’”. The “yes” response to Goldsmith’s email turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for him and Smoak and added some rather idiosyncratic, attention-grabbing entertainment value to the band’s repertoire.

The ordination process for Anzalone and Rose turned out to be surprisingly easy. All they had to do was to become ordained ministers in Smoak and Goldsmith’s church, the Universal Life Church, which is exactly what they did. Smoak and Goldsmith registered their ordinations online themselves, but the ordination was consensual: they met Anzalone and Rose for the first time at the Starlite Theatre, where they knelt, placed their hands on the band-members’ shoulders, and said a short prayer as part of an ordination ceremony. That allowed Anzalone and Rose to legally marry the couple, and this is what they did in a short ceremony in concert just before performing “YMCA”.

And that’s how you get married by members of The Village People: send an email, get them ordained in your church, and attend an in-concert wedding performed by a man in leather and another one dressed as a Native American chief. All the right ingredients for an offbeat wedding are there: the celebrities, the flamboyance, the concert, Las Vegas. Even better, because it is a ULC ordination, it is completely legal. Now, we’re not recommending tens of thousands of fans start flooding the band with emails requesting them to officiate their weddings, but is nice to know the band can be so accessible to their fans. The ULC Monastery would like to congratulate Smoak and Goldsmith on their wedding, and we hope to see Anzalone and Rose perform many more in the future.

Source:

The Huffington Post

Tags: be a minister, celebrity weddings, get ordained online become a minister, musicians, online ordination, ordained, ordination, ULC, Universal Life Church, village people
Posted in Academics, Celebrity Ministers, Equal Protection Clause, LGBTQ rights, Non-Denominational Weddings, Politics, Religious Freedom, Spirituality, faith, humanity, marriage, marriage equality | No Comments »

Why Should Church and State Be Kept Separate?

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

By now many of us are familiar with the right-wing argument that religion and government are inextricably intertwined, that the two have always mixed and can never be completely separated, and that the Constitution does not bar religious influence in governance. However, a group of legal experts at a recent forum have criticized this assumption as a myth, maintaining that secular civil government is critical for preserving civil liberties and American exceptionalism. The only problem is our reasoning for keeping church and state separate–what does America being “exceptional” have to do with it, anyway? As a ULC minister, do you find it relevant?

The forum was held on Tuesday, 8 November, at the U.S. National Press Club, a professional organization and private social club for journalists in Washington, DC. (Every U.S. president since Warren Harding has been a member of the club.) During the forum, experts from the fields of law, history, and political science addressed growing concerns about references to God and religion on the part of conservative Republican presidential hopefuls during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. The event was characterized by overwhelming support for separation of church and state as a vital component of American democracy, and suspicion toward how Republicans are disingenuously using God and religion to promote their political and social agendas.

Those in attendance gave a number of reasons for their concern over the growing attempt to blur the boundary between church and state. John Ragosta, author of Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped to Win the American Revolution & Secured Religious Liberty, said that the United States would not have received the respect and support of non-Christians if it were an unequivocally Christian nation, according to Shahid Ali Panhwer and Maha Mussadaq in a story in The Miami Herald. Meanwhile, Jamie Raskin, Maryland state senator and director of the Law and Government Program at American University’s School of Law, argued that while the U.S. Constitution allows people to practice the religion of their choice, government actions themselves should rely on logic and science. He also pointed out that while most Americans may be Christian in a demographic sense, the government itself is not Christian, and forcing right-wing fundamentalist Christianity on to constitutional law would topple two centuries of developments in secular government. The basic message seemed to be that America needs to remain politically secular in order to remain exceptional as a paragon of democracy.

There are many fantastic points being made by people like Raskin: there is an important difference between the majority of private citizens being Christian on one hand, and government being Christian on the other–while most Americans are Christian, the actions of government are not predicated on the majority religious belief, for such beliefs are a private and not a political exercise.

But supporters of church-state separation are still emphasizing exceptionalism as their motive. Why should our commitment to secular civil government be motivated by America being “exceptional”? Isn’t the preservation of civil liberties reason enough? To say that the American government should remain secular (and thus preserve civil liberties) in order to remain exceptional is like saying that it should remain secular in order to look good in front of everybody else. While exceptionalism can be defined as “setting an example”, it also connotes superiority, so protecting secular civil government in order to be exceptional suggests greater interest in looking “cool” than in protecting people’s rights; it suggests a mercenary, “might makes right” sort of attitude preoccupied more with recognition and personal interests than with principles themselves. But that smacks of egoism. Perhaps you’ve asked the same question as a minister ordained online: should the U.S. be protecting civil liberties in order to be “better” than other nations; or should it be protecting civil liberties for their own sake?

Besides, why shouldn’t other nations be expected to serve as examples of successful democracy? Why shouldn’t they be expected or encouraged to develop secular civil governments themselves, thereby preserving the civil liberties of their own people? Placing this expectation on the U.S. alone suggests either that Americans alone have the ability to develop democracy, or that only Americans deserve it. But, obviously, if the U.S. believes that non-Americans deserve the same rights as Americans, it follows that the U.S. should expect other nations to be exceptional too. It is not, in other words, the sole prerogative of the U.S. to embody and benefit from democracy.

We do see the U.S. helping other nations demonstrate this kind of initiative with movements like the Arab Spring, in which fledgling Middle-Eastern democracies are earning the admiration of the world for toppling their erstwhile tyrants. Hopefully we will see more examples of this sort of assistance to other nations seeking the same liberties.

There are many reasons why preserving secular civil government helps to nurture a healthy democracy (some nations, like the United Kingdom, manage to do this through organic secularization), but what should be our motive for doing so? To protect civil liberties for their own sake, or to make ourselves look like the cat’s meow, and the rest of the world chopped liver? If we wish for every citizen of every nation to enjoy the benefits of secular civil government, at the same time enjoying free exercise of religion, it should be the former. The U.S. needs to start fighting this cause because it benefits people, and not to get something out of it, like the sniveling, fawning admiration of weak and dependent foreign nations. That sort of attitude borders on nationalistic.

What do you think as a nondenominational wedding officiant?

Source:

The Miami Herald

Tags: be a minister, be a priest, become a priest, Get Ordained, get ordained online, government, online ministry, religion, separation of church and state, spirituality, universal life, Universal Life Church
Posted in Academics, Alternative Religion, Catholicism, Christian Science Monitor, Christianity, Churches, Equal Protection Clause, Evangelical, Politics, Progressive spirituality, Science, Spirituality, The Bible, What would Jesus do, faith, humanity, technology, washington dc | No Comments »

Protecting Bullies in the Name of Religion

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

It’s almost impossible to believe that a lawmaker would try to insert a religious exemption into a proposed anti-bullying law, but that’s exactly what one Michigan senator tried to do. Now, however, it looks as though that exemption will be removed from the bill, allowing action to be taken against all forms of bullying, including bullying perpetrated in the name of religion. And good riddance to that exemption, too–because the free exercise of religion does not include the right to torment and harass people to the point of suicide. As a Universal Life Church minister, perhaps you have witnessed incidents of religiously motivated bullying. What do you think?

The Republican-backed bill, is known as “Matt’s Safe School Law”, after Matt Epling, a Michigan student who killed himself in 2002 after suffering from anti-gay bullying. Unlike its Democrat-backed counterpart, the bill, which was spearheaded by Senator Rick Jones, would have provided an exemption to bullying motivated by “a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” against homosexuality, other religions, etc., in essence giving bullies license to harass and torment in the name of religion. Gay rights advocates are now applauding the senator’s decision to drop the religious exemption from the controversial bill, although many still think it will do little to protect youth.

Republicans like Jones had claimed that the exemption to permit bullying on religious grounds was necessary to protect religious liberty, but there are several flaws with this argument, and it is wise to point these out, even if it appears that the religious exemption will in fact be removed. It can be an extremely daunting task to expose the sophistry of religiously justified bullying, because the concept of “religious freedom” has such a powerful, intellectually paralyzing grip on the American psyche, and right-wing fundamentalist Christians have exploited it so craftily as a rhetorical tool to sway people’s emotions, that reason becomes obscured in hysteria. But in a recent issue of Time, editor Amy Sullivan makes several points which help to undermine the Republican position.

The first of these points addresses the concern over impingements on religious liberty resulting from prohibitions against harassment based on religious belief:

[The Republican belief] relies on a warped understanding of religious liberty. Freedom of religious expression doesn’t give someone the right to kick the crap out of a gay kid or to verbally torment her. It doesn’t give someone the right to fire a gay employee instead of dealing with the potential discomfort of working with him.

Put this way, the difference between free exercise of religion and religion-based oppression seems pretty straightforward here. What Sullivan is saying, and something which ministers ordained online should contemplate seriously, is that free exercise of religion does not include the right to torment another person: it only involves the right to practice one’s religion freely in peace, without impinging on the rights of others. Besides, even if bullying were part of somebody’s religious practice, so what? It still doesn’t mean that it should be protected a freedom: the Old Testament commands that we should execute adulteresses, but no civilized person in their right mind would argue that a person has the right to stone a woman to death because she cheated on her husband. So, no, an individual does not have the religious freedom to do whatever they want. And that includes bullying.

In addition to this distorted perception of religious freedom, Sullivan also points out the double standard of religious liberty endorsed by Christians who pick and choose only those freedoms which benefit themselves:

It’s also a highly selective conception of religious liberty. The same religious conservatives who applaud the religious exemption in Michigan’s anti-bullying bill would be appalled if it protected a Muslim student in Dearborn who defended bullying a Christian classmate by saying he considered her an infidel.

We all know Sullivan is right: if a follower of the Islamic faith bullied a Christian student for being an infidel, it is almost impossible to imagine the same conservatives who are backing the Matt’s Safe School Law defending that Muslim student. The law has to be all-or-nothing: if conservatives want to excuse Christian-based bullying, they have to defend all religion-based bullying in order to be fair. But this would be absurd, as it would allow anybody to use their religious beliefs as an excuse for bullying, so the only solution is to prohibit all religion-based bullying.

Sullivan also points out how the conservative focus on allowing religion-based bullying overlooks the real, pressing threats against religious freedom around the world. She points out that while Michigan Republicans spend their time fighting efforts to prohibit bullying on the basis of religion, a Christian pastor is facing execution in Iran for refusing to convert back to Islam, “China openly represses religious minorities like Tibetan Buddhists and Uighur Muslims”, “Christians in Syria and Egypt continue to be targets of violence”, and “Muslims in Europe face civil penalties for wearing religious garb in public”. A person has to have a large “persecution complex”, she says, to overlook these issues and fixate on the right to ridicule gay people. Indeed, put into this perspective, Michigan Republicans’ plight to protect the religious right to bully people who don’t fit into your religious model of the world seems egregiously petty and insulting toward religious liberty, which faces far more significant threats globally.

In addition to Sullivan’s points above, we might address the issue of free speech. A lot of people have defended the bill by invoking the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Lines 1-4 of page 6 of the Matt’s Safe School Law describe an exemption for statements based on religious or moral conviction, and it might be argued that this language, taken in context, protects the free speech rights of students: students would be permitted to express moral objections to homosexuality, Islam, etc. But free speech isn’t the same as bullying. The First Amendment protects a person’s right to express his or her personal opinions, not to harass or torment others based on those opinions. So, even if lines 1-4 were to be included in the final draft of the bill, they could only be used to defend the expression of personal beliefs, not harassment based on those beliefs.

Sen. Jones’s bill and its ominous implications were blasted in a censorious speech by Democratic senator Gretchen Whitmer:

There could not be a more trenchant and concise critique of the bill than Sen. Whitmer’s.

It’s a relief to know that Sen. Jones has agreed to remove the religious exemption in Matt’s Safe School Law. At first glance, the measure appears to protect bullying victims, but on closer inspection, it might do more to protect bullies themselves: if the exemption is taken to refer to anything other than a mere statement of personal opinion, it just grants students the religious freedom to cause others mental and emotional distress, and lost educational opportunities. But, as stated, it is not a religious freedom to torment another person and drive them to suicide just because you disagree with their perceived sexuality. And even if the bully’s “rights” did matter, whose rights matters more? The bully’s right to ridicule another person because that person’s hobbies, mannerisms, or perceived sexual preference offend the bully’s religious scruples, or the victim’s right to study safely in school and obtain an education peacefully, free of the dread of daily torment which, through the endless wearing down of mind and spirit, drives one to embrace the oblivion of death? If we have our priorities in the right place, and we know where our sympathy belongs, it seems pretty obvious that the psychologically tormented victim deserves our loyalty over the religiously offended bigot.

So, we at the ULC Monastery have our fingers crossed that the Michigan legislature will do the right thing and throw out the religious exemption from the Matt’s Safe School Law, or at least make it crystal clear that only free speech, and not harassment, will be tolerated.

What do you think as an interfaith wedding officiant? Get ordained online and share your thoughts by joining the ULC Monastery’s Facebook page or social network for ministers.

Sources:

The Huffington Post

Time

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Posted in Academics, Alternative Religion, Children's Rights, Christianity, Churches, Politics, Progressive spirituality, Religious Freedom, Science, The Bible, What would Jesus do, charity, faith, humanity | No Comments »

Conan O’Brien Ordained by Universal Life Church Monastery

Friday, October 28th, 2011

As New York Magazine‘s Vulture blog has just announced, Conan O’Brien, will be celebrating the one-year anniversary of his Late Night TBS talk show, by officiating the same-sex marriage of a longtime staffer. We’re proud to confirm that Conan is one of the Universal Life Church Monastery’s most recent ordained ministers! Though the date of the wedding ceremony has yet to be released, Conan was ordained with Universal Life Church Monastery on October 21^st and will likely be performing the marriage as part of the shows one week stint of episodes in New York City next week.

The Monastery salutes Conan’s courage to perform a same-sex marriage and to set the example that we are all children of the same universe; gay, straight, black, white, brown, young and old. The church invites all to become a minister of their own beliefs and speak truth to power during these critical times of change.

Tags: be a minister, be a priest, become a minister, become a priest, celebrity weddings, Conan, Conan O'Brien, gay marriage, gay weddings, Get Ordained, get ordained online, marriage, Marriage equality, marriages, online ordination, pop culture, television, weddings
Posted in Academics, Alternative Religion, Celebrity Ministers, Equal Protection Clause, LGBTQ rights, Non-Denominational Weddings, Politics, Progressive spirituality, Religious Freedom, Spirituality, Wedding Trends, What would Jesus do, faith, humanity, marriage, marriage equality, sex, washington dc | No Comments »

The God Particle Revisited

Tuesday, October 4th, 2011

Back in April, you may recall our story exploring some ideas related to the God particle (God’s Work or Satan’s Revenge – Universal Life Church | ULC | Get …) and the possibility of time travel, as well as their possible connections to the development of many organized religions – from certain mysteries of Christianity to Paganism. Earlier this month, physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have made some discoveries that could rattle the world of physics as we know it.

During an experiment, scientists fired a beam of subatomic particles called neutrinos from the particle accelerator near Geneva to a detector 450 miles away with astonishing results.

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity is founded on the idea that nothing in the universe travels faster than the speed of light. It is upon this foundation that most of modern physics is built, and this has stood the test of time for decades. At the particle accelerator, where it is theorized the God Particle will reveal itself, scientists were dumbfounded when the detector clocked the neutrino stream at 60-billionths of a second faster than it would take light to cover the same distance! Though this difference in speed seems tiny, the implications could be huge.

Einstein’s tested theory of Special Relativity states that when objects speed up, time actually slows down. Time stops altogether upon the object reaching 299,792,458 meters per second, at which light slips through a vacuum. If you go any faster, you would be moving backwards in time.

Robert Plunkett, who works with the Fermilab Neutrino Program , was quoted in regards to this experiment as saying that “the devil is in the details.” To what extent is this more than a turn of phrase? In our last examination of the God Particle, we asked our ordained ministers what connection this glimpse behind the veil of reality has with the spiritual realm. Plunkett posited that perhaps these neutrinos are in fact taking a sort of short cut out of our dimension, traveling through a space between spaces to reappear at their destination with unimaginable speed. This inquiry into the fundamental nature of reality, the structure of all that is, even the parts beyond what is apparent to us, is the pursuit of Metaphysical truth. Indeed several ULC Monastery ministers seek to study and preach on this very topic.

Einstein himself submitted that even a small deviation in his supposition of light setting the universal speed limit could open up the possibility of time travel, and tear asunder longstanding notions of cause and effect. If you can send a message faster than light, “you could send a telegram to the past.”

“If [this] is true,” says Alvaro de Rujula, a theorist at CERN, “then we truly haven’t understood anything about anything.” We believe this is a healthy outlook to have, even if all our experiments are going according to expectations. The Monastery preaches of the wondrous and truly awesome nature of the universe of which we all are children. As quantum physics is revealing, there is far more than meets the eye. The math for this brand of science proclaims the existence of at least a fifth dimension, if not eleven in total [explained in layman’s terms here . If we really don’t know anything, as this discovery is leading some of our top minds to consider, we must admit that at most, each of us has a mere glimpse at the truth. From this humble position of ignorance, we can find common ground despite seeming discrepancies in both empirical and religious revelation . We only fail when we close our hearts and minds and do not use our diversity, our tool for piecing together the great puzzle, for better understanding.