Like everything else, it's on the Net, now.
Universal Life Church Online. Click on prayer requests, ministry materials, confessional.
"As a legally ordained minister, you may perform weddings, funerals, baptisms, spiritual healing, counseling and other functions of the clergy," the church proclaims.
Click to become ordained. It's free; no study required, no questions asked. For a few bucks you can become anything from a doctor of divinity ($20) to a doctor of religious science ($35). The church offers, to anyone asking, at least 104 religious titles, from abbe to cantor to dervish, to monk, rabbi, shaman, vicar and wizard. All in the name of freedom of religion and equal treatment under the law.
Thirty years ago this oddball church in Modesto, California came to attention in the way of mail order clippings, sent from student to student. Students who protested the Vietnam War.
Become a mail-order minister. So what? So look at your draft card.
It was the spring of 1969, and America was at war: in Vietnam, against the Viet Cong and the Army of the Republic of North Vietnam; in the streets of America, against its own children, its own soul.
Gov. Ronald Reagan had asked the California Legislature to drive criminal anarchists off the campuses. Love it or leave it, the hard hats said. Students protesting the war, and pretty much everything else, were on strike.
More than 540,000 Americans were fighting in Vietnam. War opponents broke into the central draft depository in Chicago and destroyed records. The Smothers Brothers television show was canceled as too politically controversial.
Students all over the country thought they were doing their bit to end the war. The war that, as it turns out, even Robert McNamara knew to be wrong.
Marching, petitioning, sitting in, even staring down National Guard rifle barrels was one thing. Taking a personal stand was another.
Becoming conscientious objectors, for some wasn't an option -- neither was the National Guard. As for loving or leaving the country, there were many boys who loved America, and wouldn't consider Canada.
The Universal Life Church offered the best of both worlds: a statement to the Powers of War that hell, no, we won't go. A way to avoid the draft. And, maybe, the best yet, a chance to thumb noses at the powerful. One letter and an unsolicited $4 donation, and you were ordained. A copy of the official certificate would be sent to the local draft board and.... Nope, the Draft Board said. Merely being a minister doesn't cut it. The law said you had to be an active, official minister, with an active, official church.
Bishop Kirby J. Hensley of the Universal Life Church had the answer. They sent out an official charter certifcate for your very own church (for the mere charge of $7). The church also, for that price wrote to your local draft board, and pointed out that ministers of the Universal Life Church must receive all benefits granted any other denomination. The new Draft Cards would be sent from the Powers of War, with the new classification on them -- 4-D. The "D" meant divinity, exempt from the draft.
The Universal Life Church kept no records on the number of young men who used ordination as a way to dodge the draft, but they were legion.
"There were thousands." said Andre Hensley, son of Kirby, now a board member and general office manager for the church. "It did work for some people in the beginning...But when there started becoming more and more people doing that, they changed the guidelines, and no longer exempted our ministers."
The church ordained about 3 million ministers during the Vietnam era, Hensley said. "During one two-month period in 1969, we ordained about200,000 people."
The Selective Service System has no records listing 4-D classifications by denomination, a spokesman said. But in 1969, the exemption was held by 106,652 young men. That year 283,586 men were drafted.
These days, of course, nobody dodges the draft. Nothing to dodge since July 1, 1973. In Modesto, the Universal Life Church has grown to about 18 million ordained ministers. No telling how many swamis, reverend mothers, patriarchs, messengers, imams, gurus, druids, arch deacons, and, (yes, even this) angels.
