Church of the Churchless

Who needs useless Universism?

My frustrating involvement with Universism ended a few years ago when this supposed non-religion turned out to be as fundamentalist freaky as any other faith (if you click on that link, scroll down past this post to find the history of my Universist involvement).

I hadn't thought about this naturalist philosophy, which foundered under the massive ego and administrative cluelessness of its founder, Ford Vox, until I received an email a few days ago from someone who wondered Why Universism?

Good question. I've shared Alexander Szeto's message below. His list of humanist / naturalist organizations is a handy guide. I enjoyed taking a quick look at the web sites.

Religious naturalism and pantheism seem to be philosophies compatible with my world view. But so is Taoism, which has a several thousand year philosophical head start on modern non-religious conceptions of the cosmos.

Universism was much more of a gimmick than a substantive evolution of naturalistic understanding. At first I liked the idea of people meeting locally under a non-dogmatic banner, discussing the big questions of life. It turned out, though, that it's tough to organize folks who resist top-down metaphysical organizations.

The groups Alexander mentioned serve a purpose, for sure. I just feel comfortable with my not-belonging now, so haven't felt a need to join up with any of them.

Here's the message:
---------------------------------------------

Dear Brian,

I am a big fan of you.  I agreed with most, if not all, of what you have said on your blog.  I have a question regarding Universism. I asked because I have personally considered it seriously and found it appealing but I have one thing that I don't understand.

I asked you because I am aware that you were into it and have called for local meet-ups. Although it is dead now, something I still don't understand.

If Universism is a naturalistic (non-supernatural) religion, there are already non-supernatural philosophies around. The two most notable are humanism and naturalism.

Why people don't just go to humanism or naturalism and flock to Universism (though briefly)? Especially non-understandable is that organisations subscribing to these existing philosophies are already around for a long time.

International Humanist and Ethical Union www.iheu.org
Council for Secular Humanism www.secularhumanism.org
American Humanist Association www.americanhumanist.org
The Humanist Institute www.humanistinstitute.org
Religious Naturalism http://www.religiousnaturalism.org
World Pantheism Movement http://pantheism.net

What is the difference between Universism and humanism/naturalism?

Best!
yours,

Alexander Szeto
President
Spiritual Seekers Society (Unitarian Universalist)
ssshk.tripod.com
ssshk.freeforums.org

Death of a religion: Universism’s strange demise

It isn’t often that we get to observe the birth and death of a religion. Especially a non-religious religion. Universism is, or was, such a beast. Its brief rise and sudden fall offers some instructive lessons concerning the dangers of institutionalized belief.

I’ve been writing about Universism since I discovered it last July. At first I considered it a kindred unfaith that was completely compatible with my churchless leanings. I then plunged deeper into Universism and organized a local Salem Universist discussion group.

But then the central Universist Movement started to turn weird. My posts became more critical, starting with “Herding cats, Universism’s challenge,” moving to “A friendly critique of the Universist Movement,” and culminating with “I abandon Universism.”

Today I decided to see what was up in the world of Universism and found that the weirdness has continued. The founder of this so-called “faithless faith” seemingly is just about the only person remaining on the Universist sinking ship. Ford Vox has taken over the organization’s website which features this language at the bottom of the page:

Universism has been seen on CNN, in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, U.S. News & World Report, and many more. Universism is a trademark and copyright of Ford Vox. All rights are reserved.

OK, but it’s hard to imagine Jesus copyrighting Christianity or the Buddha getting a trademark on Buddhism. And I’m not sure what it means to reserve the right on a philosophy that claims to have no dogma other than the open-minded search for truth. Ford Vox has a healthy ego, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you’re out to energetically counter the ill effects of traditional religions.

However, the Open Letters to Ford Vox posted on The Freethought Fellowship forum reveal what a mess he made of what could have been a promising movement. For example, John Armstrong, the spokesman for Universism, says:

I regret to offer my resignation as the spokesperson for Universism as well as the editor/author of deism.org. Unlike some, my reasons is not that I don't like you personally nor is it because I don't agree with the principles of Universism. In my heart, I still hope that some movement like it will succeed where Universism failed. My reason is that I feel Universism, whether or not you restart it in some other form, is a lost cause.

The reason Universism is a lost cause, frankly, is you. Again, I like you personally and respect you for the idea you came up with but I'm convinced that you can't manage a freethought movement and you're never going to let it go. Your apparent need to control the movement so tightly is just never going to work and it will inevitably antagonize any followers you manage to find. Freethinkers don't like strict management.

Yes, you can’t herd cats. Nor try to tell people who want to think for themselves what to think. My involvement with Universism, which included rewriting the Universist Movement FAQs to make them more coherent and understandable, has taught me that an organized un-religion is prone to the same defects as the organized religions which it supposedly is an alternative to.

In short, the problem is organization. As soon as two or more people are gathered together in an organized fashion, things are likely about to start going downhill. That’s how the universe works: entropy or disorder naturally increases.

But if you start with disorder and stay disorderly, there’s no problem. Nothing can fall apart if it isn’t put together, as the Tao Te Ching wisely advises.

Tao abides in non-action,
Yet nothing is left undone.
If kings and lords observed this,
The ten thousand things would develop naturally.
If they still desired to act,
They would return to the simplicity of formless substance.
Without form there is no desire.
Without desire there is tranquility.
And in this way all things would be at peace.

I’ve become a believer in a Religion of One. I’ve got mine, you’ve got yours, everyone else has theirs. No problem. Each to his or her own. Problems begin with a Religion of Two, and escalate from there.

I love my wife and she loves me. But when one of us tries to convert the other to our own way of spiritual thinking, you can feel tension in the air. It’s uncomfortable. And unnecessary.

What Ford Vox never realized is that dogmatic religious belief can’t be countered by equally dogmatic non-religious belief. As the cliché goes, two wrongs don’t make a right. Closed-mindedness is healed by open-mindedness.

Universism potentially could have become another home for free thinkers and untraditional spiritual aspirants. However, it needed to leave all the doors and windows open so that fresh ideas could flow freely. Instead, the founder’s ego tried to make the Universist Movement a monument to him. And that’s why it failed.

Monuments are set in granite. Which is exactly what the world doesn’t need: more rigid religious commandments etched in stone.

I abandon Universism

Well, it was sort of fun while it lasted, belonging to the “faithless” religion of Universism. But the Universist Movement is acting too much like a traditional religion for my taste, so I’m jumping ship.

I just deleted the Universist banner on this blog. A symbolic gesture that definitely won’t go down in history along with Luther’s pinning of his Ninety-Five Theses to a cathedral door but, hey, it’s a statement.

It seems that whenever an independent, free-thinking, counterculture movement gets organized, it starts to take on the qualities of whatever it is rebelling against. By all accounts Christianity was cool so long as it just consisted of Jesus and a handful of disciples.

But look at it now. Rigid, dogmatic, judgmental, controlling, hierarchical, divisive. I’d hoped that the Universist Movement would be different, but trolling through the Universist Forum yesterday I read about a pissing match between Universist leaders (Ford Vox, mainly) and a bunch of freethinkers.

I didn’t have time to read all of the posts thoroughly, so copied the URLs of the most relevant pages concerning this controversy for reference today. If you click on this link you’ll see what I found when I went back to those pages just now:
http://universist.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=8389

“This menu has been disabled.” I recall that one of the gripes the freethinkers had about Vox and his management style was that he doesn’t like criticism and tries to stifle opposing views. Guess they were right.

The criticisms of the freethinkers are still reflected on The Freethought Fellowship forum in the “Is Universism a Failure?” and “What is ‘universizm’…really?” topics. I don’t claim to understand the ins and outs of this split between the freethinkers and the Universists. What bothers me is that there would be any controversy of this sort at all.

With some reservations I signed up for Universism last July, calling it a kindred unfaith. At the time I wrote that I sympathized with John Horgan’s decision not to join the Universists or any other areligious group. In an essay called “Keeping the Faith in My Doubt” Horgan said:

First of all, I’m just not a joiner, more out of laziness than anything else; I avoid commitments that might jeopardize my sports- or sitcom-watching time. An organization for freethinkers--one of the Universists self-definitions--also strikes me as oxymoronic, like an anarchist government. Isn’t the point of being a free-thinker eschewing categories like Satanist, Scientologist or Universist?

Yes, it is. Still, I enjoyed my six months as a Universist. Learned how to set up a Salem Universists MeetUp group (which needs a new organizer now). Met some nice people who I still want to stay in contact with. Had some interesting conversations at our Salem Universists meetings.

But now I feel that there already is too much religious divisiveness in the world. I don’t want to add to it by supporting the Universist Movement’s rather heavy handed attempts to become a non-religious organized religion.

I’ve come to agree with Horgan. Here’s how he ended his essay:

Instead of banding together, maybe we unbelievers should set an example by going in the opposite direction. We should renounce all isms that claim to speak for our most profound personal beliefs. Or rather, since we seem to be headed in this direction anyway, each unbeliever could create his or her personal ism with its own name. Since Universism is taken, I’ll call mine “Horganism.” You can revile it, admire it, or ignore it, but you can’t join it.

OK. I’ll become a fervent believer in “Hinesism.”

A friendly critique of the Universist Movement

Last night CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” featured a story on Universism, a faithless movement that calls itself a religion. Well, it is, sort of. CNN termed it the “Seinfeld of religion” because Universism believes in nothing.

I’ve started a Universist group here in Salem and have corresponded quite a bit with Ford Vox, the movement’s founder. The CNN story spurred me to expand upon a friendly critique of Universism that began with “Herding cats, Universism’s challenge.”

A transcript of the CNN story can be found as a continuation to this post (I cleaned up the initial rough transcript by comparing it with my recording of the program). What you can’t see from a transcript is the setting of the Universist meeting in Alabama that was filmed by the CNN crew.

To my mind it reflected one of the central problems I have with the Universist Movement: for a philosophy that believes in nothing, it is overly centered on the beliefs of Ford Vox and other core organizers. Ford is shown standing at a podium with a microphone, addressing an audience who, when they talk, seem to be speaking to him, not to each other.

This isn’t the way our Salem group operates. When we get together, it’s a freeform discussion all the way. Now, I realize that a national organization needs to have leaders who speak for the group. But I’d suggest that the Universist leaders should act in accord with my pithy summary of Universism:

I don’t know anything about God or ultimate reality.
Neither do you.
So let’s get together and share our not-knowingness.

By contrast, the official Universist creed is much more involved. It includes lots of confident statements about morality, science, religion, truth, and the like that belie the uncertainty that is supposed to be the hallmark of Universism. This contradiction came out in the CNN story.

Ford Vox says, “The idea is that there is no external truth, that there is no objective truth that we should all strive to adhere to. Rather, there is an ongoing, continuing search for truth.” And in explaining why Universism is against faith, one of the movement’s “theologians,” John Armstrong, says “Faith basically we define as letting other people think for you.”

OK. But then shouldn’t Universism be devoid of truths that members seemingly are supposed to accept? Why can’t Universists simply congregate around the banner of not-knowing? What reason is there for any central creed of Universism other than, we’re all clueless when it comes to God, spirituality, and metaphysics.

My impression is that Ford Vox, whom I admire and respect, has come to some profound personal realizations about what life is all about. That’s great. However, those are his realizations. Not mine. Not yours. His. They shouldn’t be the foundation of a movement that says every person has to find his or her own meaning, and that nothing should be accepted on faith.

Here’s another problem I have with Universism: it takes itself too seriously. All the humor in the CNN segment came from the reporter (Tom Foreman). Ford and John should have been the ones making fun of the Universist Movement, in line with another religion’s sage advice, “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!”

Having been a publicist in another career incarnation, I know how tough it is to come up with witty responses when you’re nervously appearing on-camera. Still, I feel that Armstrong missed a chance after Foreman said to him, “Some people would say this religion already exists and it's called…college.”

Armstrong looked like a deer caught in the headlights when he should have laughed and said something like, “You’re absolutely right. Just without so much beer.” Or on a more serious note, “That’s true. Except in this religion nobody ever graduates; we’re all lifelong learners.”

Instead, he said after a considerable pause: “I had never thought of it that way before.” And Foreman ended the segment with, “Is it possible?”

I’m attracted to Zen and Taoism because neither philosophy gives a hoot about being dignified and respectable. Fools are the norm, particularly in Taoism. By contrast, traditional religions care a lot about looking like they have their act together.

Since Universism is all about not-knowing, uncertainty, and doing your own spiritual thing, it should project a light-hearted carefree air. But that didn’t come across in the CNN story.

The way I see it, Universism wants to wear a religious cloak and be known as a religion. It wants to have an official creed and ministers (plus a ring and T-shirts). Yet, as was emphasized last night, nothing is under the religious trappings.

So why put them on at all? Spiritual nakedness is fine with me.

Here’s the CNN transcript:

Herding cats, Universism’s challenge

It’s not easy to herd cats, as a memorable Super Bowl commercial showed us. Similarly, I’m wondering how the Universist movement (a “faithless” alternative to traditional religion) is going to be able to organize hard-to-corral freethinkers, atheists, agnostics, deists, and the like.

Here in Salem, Oregon I’ve organized a Universist discussion group. I’ve also helped Ford Vox, the founder of Universism, rewrite the movement’s FAQs (frequently asked questions). So my observations are from a friendly perspective, in contrast to those who see the rise of Universism as work of the Devil and the Anti-Christ.

In our Salem Universist meetings we haven’t yet discussed Universism, per se. The topic just hasn’t come up. Sort of strange, isn’t it? Universism bills itself as an alternative to faith-based religions, yet says that it is a religious philosophy. A philosophy without substantive content, in which the individual search for truth and meaning is all-important, not preset answers.

So when we Salem Universists get together there’s no mention of Universism. We simply talk about what’s going on in our lives, and how we’re trying to grapple with the Big Questions. Is there a God? If so, what kind? What’s our relationship with the cosmos? Does life continue after death? To name a few.

There’s nothing uniquely “Universist” in all this. We’re being open-minded, non-dogmatic, and respectful of each others’ opinions. The Universist movement says that these are desirable qualities, but so does almost everybody.

Thus I’ve been trying to figure out what connection exists between talking with friends in a coffee house or living room, and Universism central—which has a fancy web site and is garnering increasing media attention (CNN’s Anderson Cooper probably will air a story about Universism next week).

Increasingly it seems to me that there is a clear distinction between the organization called “Universism” and people who are drawn together under the Universist banner, or otherwise, to discuss spirituality, philosophy and the Meaning of It All. You can’t herd independent thinkers into a corral that they don’t want to enter, even if the fences say “We don’t fence you in.”

I mean, the nature of every organization is to be organized. And when you organize, you necessarily make decisions that affect the entire organization—not just one person. Yet the central tenet of Universism is that each individual is responsible for determining his or her own philosophy of life and morality. Which produces a conflict. Mild, perhaps, but still a conflict.

After Hurricane Katrina hit I got emails from Universism central saying that a charitable arm of the movement had been formed to solicit donations for medical equipment. As Scrooge-like as this may sound, I wrote to the head Universist honcho and told him that there are lots of charitable organizations that my wife and I donate money to. Hopefully, I said, Universism won’t get drawn into becoming a “do-gooder” group when this isn’t its stated mission.

Similarly, this excerpt from a message that went to Universist activists raised my eyebrows:

We’re organizing a Universist ministerial corps to perform weddings, funerals, other ceremonies and spiritual counseling. Universism of course holds that none of us have any special authority about religious matters. Our ordination of Universist ministers will simply certify that this organization is comfortable with these individuals representing themselves in an official ministerial capacity as Universists.

Maybe this is appropriate, but I was attracted to the Universist movement because it didn’t seem to have the attributes of a religion. Yet here we are with ministers being appointed by someone with the authority to anoint them as certifiable Universists, even though the organization says “none of us have any special authority about religious matters.” Again, a contradiction.

I support Universism. However, when I first wrote about it I expressed some qualms about joining up with an organized “ism.”

Cats don’t change their spots. I’m still resistant to being herded. Even into an expansive corral.

Salem Universists fail to answer life’s big questions

No answers, but great conversation about the questions. That’s how our Salem Universists monthly get-together went last night at the Blue Pepper coffee house. A couple of new members (who are a couple themselves) joined us: Eva and Matt.

As Eva says on her Meetup member page, she and Matt recently escaped from Roseburg. Progressive, open-minded, and non-religious people that they are, living in Roseburg turned out not to be a good fit for these ex-San Diego residents. Eva noted that in southern California diversity is embraced; in most of rural Oregon, Christian conservatism is the accepted norm.

Here are a few remembrances from the meeting.

My wife, Laurel, walks into the meeting room (late as usual), looks at Eva, and says “Don’t I know you? Haven’t I seen you somewhere?” Indeed, she had. At the Minto-Brown off-leash dog park a few weeks ago, where Eva’s two purebred German Shepherds and our Shepherd-colored half-breed brought the women together to talk about all things doggish.

And now they see each other again in a completely different setting. A small world. Karma. Coincidence. Destiny. Random event. None of us knew which, if any, of these words fit the situation. “Interesting,” we could all agree on.

Eva (Mather) originally is from Germany. I enjoyed hearing her talk about the differences between Europe and the United States. “In Europe it’s considered bad form to ask someone you just met what his or her job is,” she said. “Here, it’s usually one of the first questions: Glad to meet you, Joe. What do you do?”

Luckily I hadn’t asked Eva and Donn what they did when they introduced themselves. It never occurred to me. I’m not much interested in people’s professions, actually. Job talk usually bores me. Last night I mentioned that I can’t stand chit-chat, which is why I enjoy the Universists meetings so much. By and large we talk about fairly deep subjects: life, death, happiness, despair, and, yes, dogs (yesterday, at least).

I enjoyed Donn’s story about a fishing trip on a coastal river that he took recently. A large fish was caught (a salmon, I believe). Someone grabbed a bat and starting hitting the fish on the head to kill it. Donn heard him say, “You can tell when it’s dead by the cold eyes.”

Donn may be on the way to becoming a non-fisherman, for it suddenly struck him that one moment the fish was a conscious living being, and another moment it wasn’t—after being hit on the head. He looked toward the banks of the river and saw cows standing in a field. Conscious cows, watching the boat go by.

How similar are they and the fish to us? It’s impossible to say. But we all agreed that animals in general, and dogs in particular, are considerably more intelligent and aware than most people give them credit for. Laurel observed that some parrots not only can speak in coherent sentences (not just “parroting” words) but also appear to have ESP, being able to say what their owner in another room is thinking about.

“The universe is connected,” Eva said. Even more amazing, she told us, is that it exists. I could relate to that statement. I’ve often thought myself about the marvelous mystery of the two simple words: existence exists.

Eva spoke about looking out a window one morning and feeling so thankful that she and the universe existed. For it could have been otherwise. Nothingness could have been rather than being. Or more accurately, nothing could have been, not even nothing.

With life there’s a lot to be thankful for, and you don’t have to be religious to recognize that. For two hours we in the Blue Pepper conference room shared what I’d call a “spiritual sense” that felt a heck of a lot more real than the preachy churchy variety.

Plus, I could sip a vanilla latte and eat a bagel with cream cheese during our unchurch’s unservice. Works for me.

Universism makes front page of LA Times

The faithless are rising! At least, they’ve risen to the front page of the Los Angeles Times, where “Doubt is Their Co-Pilot” raised the national profile of Universism, a national movement that I’m proud to be a part of.

The founder of Universism (Ford Vox) told me that he’d given my phone number to the LA Times reporter but she never called. Sigh… However, the article does mention Salem, Ore as one of just a handful of Universist discussion groups in the United States, so I sort of made the front page of the Times.

You just have to read between the lines. Really deeply. That’s what I told my daughter, Celeste, who phoned last night to tell me about the article’s mention of Salem.

I gently chided her for not keeping up with her father’s Church of the Churchless weblog, since she didn’t know that I myself had organized the Salem Universists—who now number a whole 10 strong (if you include a guy from Pennsylvania who joined to keep up on what we’re doing, 9 if you don’t).

The article notes that the 8,000 Universists in the country are equal to the number of worshippers at a single mega-church service. I say, “big deal.” Truth isn’t determined by a majority vote. Einstein was one man. Who just happened to be right about how the cosmos is put together.

Of course, the central tenet of Universism is that no one is right about religious truth. At least, no one can prove that he or she is right while others are wrong. This is what separates Universism from dogmatic religious groups, which is to say, all religious groups (for dogmatism is the lifeblood of religiosity).

The LA Times reporter recognized this refreshing characteristic of Universism, but unfortunately she chose to end her article on a “downer” tone. Read Ford Vox’s comments on the piece to get a better balanced picture of the Universist meeting the reporter attended.

The article ends with a quote from Universist newbie Kathleen White, who drove two hours to attend the meeting only to encounter a firm embrace of uncertainty that she called “frustrating.” “I don’t think it will be enough to keep me coming back,” she said.

But Ford says that she did come back to a second meeting, driving another two hours from Huntsville to Birmingham, Alabama (I figure that if Ford can round up twenty-two people in an Alabama town to come to a Universist meeting, our growth potential here in Salem, Oregon looks good, given that Oregon is one of the most unchurched states in the country).

The next meeting of the Salem Universists is Thursday, December 8 at The Blue Pepper coffee house—7-9 pm (in the loft area). If you live in the area, come and sip some uncertainty with us. We support each other in searching for answers to life’s most important questions. Just don’t expect any agreement about what may be found.

Our churchless discussion group

Last night we Salem Universists got together for our third meeting, this time at the Blue Pepper coffee house in downtown Salem. Once again our discussion covered a lot of ground: fear of death, reality of evil, contacts with departed souls, moving from fundamentalism to open-mindedism, among other subjects.

I’d told my fellow Tai Chi students about the group and invited them to drop in on the meeting. Jill and Connie did. In the two hours that we spent together on the couches in the Blue Pepper loft I felt like I came to know them much better. As I did Laura, Tom, and Laurel, the Universist old-timers.

Yes, I even learned some new things about my wife. And I’m pretty sure the same was true for her, since I spoke my mind in a somewhat different way than I had before. All six of us revealed deep thoughts and feelings about how we view God, the afterlife, human relationships, the meaning of it all.

Chit-chat is fine. I love to talk about politics, sports, and other typical coffee house conversation topics. But when we get down to conversing about what means the most to us—our deepest beliefs, hopes, fears, sureties, uncertainties—that’s when the covers get stripped away and I feel like I’m truly beginning to understand the heart of someone else (or myself).

I’m enjoying how our group is able to come together around the general search for life’s meaning, rather than a specific answer. I mean, until now every religious or spiritual group that I’ve been involved with has been centered on a discrete path. If you don’t want to buy into that path, then you’re always going to be an outsider.

But last night the six of us talked about our decidedly different paths. Our commonality was that we all are still searching. None of us believe that our spiritual path, as defined or ill-defined as it may be, is the only way. That’s refreshing.

I never felt any judgment or negativity from anyone else, no matter what I said. We agreed and disagreed politely, though often firmly. I talked quite a bit about my fear of death and uncertainty about what will happen after I take my last breath.

Per usual, I found it easy to answer the question, “Why are you so afraid of death?” “Because I’m going to be dead!” I was inspired by how other people seemingly are ready to embrace dying. I’m not. Hopefully when the moment comes, I will be.

If I am, some of the credit will go to the people who listened to me last night. We all need people to lean on, the churchless as well as the churched. Members of organized religions have a built-in support group that they see every Sunday (or whenever).

I’m pleased that we Salem Universists are starting to form our own source of spiritual support. It isn’t answers that I need from other people; it’s an affirmation of my questioning and a simple “Yes, I hear you.”

Salem Universists meet, noisily

Here we are, six Salem Universists, gathering outside of the Coffee House Café last Thursday evening. This was the first meeting of our non-dogmatic spiritual support group, loosely organized under the Universist banner.

“Loosely” is the operative word, as I wasn’t organized enough to check and see if the café had a band playing on Thursday nights. I’d pictured us sitting on the Coffee House’s comfortable couches, sipping lattes and discussing deep philosophical issues.

As soon as I walked in the door, clutching a Universist flyer to my chest so a few members I hadn’t met yet would recognize me, I quickly realized that we still could discuss inside—but there’s no way we’d be able to hear each other.

So, failing to find another downtown coffee shop open and quiet at 7:30 pm, when Salem begins to roll up its streets, we huddled around a streetside table. We had a great conversation, interrupted only by mufferless vehicles cruising by. It sure was obvious that Salem, like most American cities, isn’t geared around pedestrians; it’s geared around cars.

It also was obvious that people with all sorts of different outlooks on life can come together most pleasantly when everyone has an accepting open mind.

Jacque, Laurel, Laura, Tom, Patricia, and I covered lots of ground in our 90 minute get-together. We shared our basic spiritual outlooks, which ranged from skeptical agnosticism, to universalist Christianity, to meditation mysticism, to the teachings of a soul-guide channeler, and more besides.

I talked some about how nice it is when people are willing to throw their spiritual ideas and beliefs out on a table, figuratively, for others to see. This also is what I’m trying to do here at this Church of the Churchless blog.

Most of the ideas and beliefs here are mine because it’s my blog. But almost all of the comments are from other people who add to the richness of the tabletop thoughtful fare.

When everyone focuses on the ideas and beliefs, a conversation (in person or in cyberspace) goes smoothly. I mean, we then meet in a shared psychic space where each individual is respected and left alone, but the thoughts that have been thrown out for discussion can be examined, talked about, even criticized.

On the other hand, we all know what it is like to have someone act like they want to get inside your head and rearrange the contents. “You should believe this! Don’t believe that! I’m right and you’re wrong! Anyone who doesn’t agree with me is a fool!” You can’t have a real conversation with someone who has an aggressive self-righteous attitude like this. They’re interested in a monologue, not a discussion.

We all were after a discussion on Thursday. That’s the Universist way, which also is the way of other open-minded groups. I said that Laurel and I had thought of attending Unitarian meetings, but what we are looking for is fellowship and conversation with fellow non-dogmatic spiritual seekers.

So it seemed to us that if what we really wanted was the post-Unitarian service coffee klatch, we should organize a group where you skip the sermon and go right to talking, eating, and drinking.

If you live in the Salem (Oregon) area and resonate with the Universist philosophy, consider joining up with us. If you’re looking for spiritual answers, we don’t have them. But we love to talk about the questions.

Greetings to Salem churchless and churched

If you’ve found the Church of the Churchless by reading the Statesman-Journal’s article today about local bloggers (only part of which is posted online), welcome, new visitor.

A note to the churchless: if you think you might be interested in a local face-to-face discussion group about faith, faithlessness, non-religious spirituality, keeping science and religion separate, and similar topics, take a look at my “Plunging deeper into Universism” post.

If you want to join this group, which has been founded under the Universism banner more for convenience than anything else (the Universists are way more organized than I am, and espouse a similar faithless philosophy), you can sign up here. We haven’t met yet, but probably will do so soon.

A note to the churched: if you’re a fundamentalist Christian who saw a mention of the Church of the Churchless and feels the need to save my soul, I appreciate the concern but must respectfully decline any and all offers to get involved with my salvation. If you want to pray for me, that’s fine, but please make it for a Mini Cooper.

For quite a while I’ve been praying for a Mini Cooper S (prayer recently has been updated to a convertible Mini) to God, Allah, Buddha, Krishna, the Tao, and every other deity or cosmic force I have heard about. Since only a Volvo wagon and Toyota Prius continue to reside in our carport, I can only assume either that my message isn’t getting through, or that the being on the receiving end isn’t interested in making my life more joyful and fulfilling.

A note to “God,” whatever your nature might be: if you’d like another fervent convert here on Earth with the capacity to spread word of your majesty, all you have to do is manifest that convertible Mini Cooper S in my driveway in any miraculous or non-miraculous manner you choose, leaving an unmistakable sign/description of your divinity in the passenger seat. I’ll then blog your glory to the world for the rest of my days (when I’m not tooling around in the Mini, at least).

Salem Universists

[Note: I've stepped down as organizer of the Salem Universists group. Reason is described in my "I abandon Universism" post. So far no one wants to take over as organizer, but such might happen.]

Welcome. Here you'll find information about the Salem, Oregon Universists, a group devoted to discussing the big questions of life in a dogma-free fashion. We are tolerant of any and all spiritual, religious, or philosophical beliefs other than intolerance.

This is the weblog of Brian Hines, organizer of the Salem Universists. I'm using this Church of the Churchless post as a web page where people can get information about our group.

You can join the Salem Universists and learn about upcoming meetings on our MeetUp.com listing. When we meet in a public place the date, time, and location are shown to anyone visiting our MeetUp listing. Only members can view information about meetings at a private home.

If you have questions about the Salem Universists, email me or give me a call: 503-371-8892.

Visit the web site of the worldwide Universist Movement. There you'll find much to explore, including this introduction to Universism, answers to frequently asked questions, and a great cartoon guide to Universism (if you read nothing else, look at this).

I've written about my own conversion to Universism in "Universism, a kindred unfaith" and "Plunging deeper into Universism."

And my take on some initial meetings can be read in "Salem Universists meet, noisily" and "Our churchless discussion group."