June 30, 2001

 mfinley.com   
"Mail Order Ministry"

by Michael Finley
(c) 2001 by Michael Finley

NOTE: I recently came upon an unfinished manuscript of mine from about 10 years ago, about my life as a hippie from the years 1968-1971. The book covers all sorts of archetypal events from the era -- riots, love-ins, doping, hitchhiking, rock festivals, suicides, overdoses, and even a couple of assassinations. It is a gruesome account of things going mostly wrong. I hesitate to fix the book up, for fear of leading young people like my own kids astray. But under all the smoldering paraphernalia, there seems to me to be a useful story here of high spirits and friendship, and it is my intention to do whatever is necessary to bring this old story back to speed. Don’t do what I did, but read about it, and plot another path. - mf

I had read somewhere, in the summer of 1968 -- perhaps in an issue of Paul Krasser's magazine The Realist, of which I'm sure I was only the subscriber at my high school -- that there was an outfit in California, a cult you might say, that would ordain anyone to the ministry, and that thousands of draft age men were using these preprinted divinity degrees to maintain deferred status from the U.S. Selective Service. Having a vague plan in mind for freeing myself from the world of squares and transporting myself to a better, higher plane, I jotted down the address:

Universal Life Church
c/o Rev. Kirby J. Hensley
1769 Poland Road
Modesto CA 95358

And after a few months, I came upon the address and wrote to it. I was wise enough even at age 17 to think, You don’t get something for nothing. But in this case I did get something. I never sent the Universal Life Church so much as a dollar or a return stamped envelope. But a week later I got a letter with a divinity degree in it, stating that I was entitled to all the rights and privileges accorded a man of the cloth.

I was enrolled at Wooster by that time, in my sophomore year. I gleefully showed the document around to friends and requested that from that point on I was to be referred to as the Very Reverend Finley. I saw the degree as not only a useful tool in confounding my draft board, but also the antidote to my Presbyterian college's chapel requirements. How could they demand that I attend chapel services if I was already a minister in anther faith?

I went down to the Wayne County offices in downtown Wooster and applied for a license to perform marriages. Later, I was to cross into West Virginia and Pennsylvania and get paperwork for the same privileges in those states, too, and when I arrived in California I sent off for the same forms, but never received any.

Just to have something to talk about, I made up a marriage ceremony. It was a simple thing. I simply waved my hand ritualistically over the heads of the happy couple, swigged wine from a jug, and proclaimed "Go, and sin no more!"

I bought a black Roman collar dickie from a religious supply store, and wore it under a wool suit while I went for long, deliberate walks around town. The idea was to get into a ministerial frame of mind. I wanted to approximate the gravity of a real minister, so I practiced thinking about the things I thought ministers thought about -- the fires of hell, the problems of wayward youth, the themes for next Sunday's homily. Now that I am older I realize ministers spend more time thinking about building funds and career tracks than about hell. What did I know.

The joke was good enough that about 40 classmates were eventually ordained. I was pleased to see other people thought it was a cool idea -- but I secretly bridled at them stripping the exclusivity of the idea away from me. Also, obviously, when everyone was a minister, that being a minister meant less. The whole point of the ministerial joke is the solitariness of the spiritual leader tending to his flock, the intermediary to God. When everyone was a minister it was more like a Frisbee party.

But there was nothing I could do about that. After all, I got the idea from a magazine. And Kirby J. Hensley wasn't interested in my exclusivity. The more I found out about him, the more of a troublemaker he seemed to be. He was an old-time Pentecostal preacher in North Carolina, but something flipped him out. I hoped it was the war, or the way his church handled civil rights, or some struggle over doctrine.

It appears, however, that he was just dissatisfied with the doctrinaire attitudes of Pentecostalism. So his idea was to create a new kind of church in which people could invent their own beliefs. In classic American style, He divorced his first wife

In 1955, disappointed with the Pentecostal church, Reverend Kirby J. Hensley divorced his wife and decided to venture on his own to find his religion. He inspected many religions, judging what each had to offer spiritually. After 5 years of studying, Hensley concluded that the proper religion may differ for each man, and everyone is entitled to choose his or her own religion. No one should be criticized or condemned for wanting to practice the belief of his or her choice.

Whatever it was, it pissed him off so much that he started a bogus church for the sole purpose of screwing the system up. To anyone at all, he was willing to confer the privileges which religion had zealously guarded over the years -- freedom from investigation, freedom from taxation, freedom to say the most outlandish things, freedom to worship in unusual ways and to ingest weird things as part of the ceremony, even the freedom of sanctuary from worldly authority.

Over the years, many movements would make their way to Modesto to take advantage of these glittering freedoms -- draft resisters, tax protesters, goofball cults, and grifters. Dogs, fictitious individuals, death-row inmates and dead people are said to be among the ordained elect.

My fate was to use this tarnished vessel to launch a strike against my school, my society, my family and the U.S. Government by creating an unprosecutable religious enclave on the palm-lined streets of Hollywood, California.

Next -- "Upon This Rock I Will Build My Church"

The Universal Life Church is still alive and kicking online at: http://www.ulconline.com/

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_{COPYRIGHT (c) 2001
by MICHAEL FINLEY}

Mike is available to write for your publication or organization right now. Call him at 651-644-4540. Or e-mail him.

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