Spiritual Humanism
Update: Just got my confirmation email for my new ordination. Here’s an excerpt:
The Church of Spiritual Humanism promotes religion based on reason. As a member of the CSH clergy it is your charge to strive to base your actions on, and influence others to be motivated by, deliberation and reason and not the irrational, emotional, or subjective. Furthermore your responsibilities are to peacefully follow the proper course of action, and to avoid infringing on the rights of others. You alone are responsible for your actions as a member of the clergy.
Cool, huh?
————————————
Well, those of you who’ve known me for a while know that I’m an ordained minister of the Progressive Universal Life Church (PULC), which is a sort of open church-type organization that will ordain just about anybody who asks for it. And if you send them money, they send you an ordination certificate and a card identifiying you as an ordained minister of their church. Of course, no one really takes PULC, or the church it was based on, ULC, too seriously. NYC law even specifically mentions ULC as a church that’s not qualified to perfomr marriages there in its marriage codes. I mainly got my certificate and card from PULC as a joke, and to piss off my mom. 
But I’ve never taken it very seriously, especially since the beliefs PULC espouses tend to be a bit too christian and bible-based for my personal tastes.
So then I was surfing the web today, and I stopped by ReligiousTolerance.org’s Christian Urban Legends page, which I like to check out every so often just to have a bit more ammunition in case I’m forced to spend any amount of time with the fundie x-tian side of my family. While I was there, I saw a banner ad for Free Ordination! I figured it was probably my old friends PULC or ULC, but I clicked anyway out of curiousity, and lo and behold, I discovered the Church of Spiritual Humanism. They also offer one of those free online ordination deals, as well as pay-for packages with Certificates of Ordination, ID cards, marriage certificates, and the like. But the name of the church sort of struck a chord in me, since I’ve always been a bit of a humanist, sort of Agnostic by default. And I read the blurb on their site:
As Spiritual Humanists we believe that every person has innate right to make a spiritual connection to the rest of the cosmos. Our premise is simple:
We can solve the problems of society using a religion based on reason.
We cannot abandon ancient traditions and practices but we can adapt them to our new understanding of the universe. Religion must be able to adapt to new knowledge about the universe without rejecting the deep spiritual connections to human history and the natural world that we are a part of.
Now, see, that actually makes sense to me. Weird, huh? Of course, the kicker is that I’ve always joked about being a Saganist, based on the works of Carl Sagan, especially his book The Demon Haunted World in which he gleefully debunks a lot of the nonsense floating around the world. And the wordplay with ’satanist’ is just icing on the cake. 
But anyway, at the bottom of the page, they have this quote from Mr. Sagan himself:
A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge.
Carl Sagan
Well, I didn’t have much choice in the matter at that point: I registered with them, and I’m now an officially recognized member of the clergy of the Church of Spiritual Humanism. I then proceeded to check out their forums, to see what kind of folks I’d just tied myself to, and they actually seem to be a fairly sane, helpfull, open minded and intelligent bunch. And checking out their legal questions forum topics, it turns out that the Church of Spiritual Humanism is *very* official, at least, official enough for NYC, which is amongst the most anal of jurisdictions for that, so, hey, bonus!
So now I’m saving up a bit of cash to order out one of their Clergy Packs so I can have the certificate and ID card (which looks much, much cooler than the one I got from PULC), and they even include some books explaining more, and a marriage certificate. Imagine that: I’m now a member of a church who’s beliefs I actually agree with!
So… who wants me to officiate at their wedding?
January 16th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Greetings and welcome to the Church of Spiritual Ministry. I. too am an ordained minsiter with them. I have a website where I do my IT/Web consulting and my ministry. A mix of religion, business and political advocacy. Drop by sometime at http://www.cyberbsolutions.org - the ministry home is on Yahoo Groups/logos_institute.
April 9th, 2005 at 3:38 am
Hi,
I was searching online for topics related to spiritual humanism, and came across your blog. I am also a member of the CSH clergy, and an active participant in the CSH forum. So first I want to say thanks for all the nice things you said about us!
I don’t know if we’ve spoken there yet or not, but I hope you’ll come back and visit the forum often. We always enjoy hearing from new voices with a fresh perspective. In the meanwhile, if there’s anything I can do to help, or any questions I can answer for you, just post on the forum or send me an e-mail.
By the way, I live in NYC. Yes, it is one of the strictest places in terms of allowing clergy to officate weddings. And yes, CSH clergy are fully accepted there! Cool, huh?
Are you in NYC?? I ask for two reasons. First, we are having a gathering of some of the forum members there at the end of May. If you live in or near NY, you might want to join us and meet some of us in person. Second, a friend and I are working on creating a physical CSH church in the area, so if you’re nearby, I will keep you posted and you can come to our grand opening!
In the meantime, congratulations on joining the CSH family!
April 9th, 2005 at 9:30 am
Hi there Maureen!
First off, thanks for stopping by my site and for the kind words. I was actually fairly active in the forums over the for a while, my nick was Katsushiro. I drifted away from the forums after a while, though, to focus on my own site and other things in my life, but I do drop by there occasionally to see what folks are talking about.
And, yes, I still consider myself a CSH minister. 
I might start showing up there again more often if I have the time.
I used to live in NYC, but for the past few years i’ve been back home in Puerto Rico, so I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it to the big meeting, but I assure you that if I was there, I’d love to go. And I wish you the best of luck on the physical CSH church, that’s something I’d *love* to see.
Anyway, thanks again for dropping by, and perhaps I’ll run into you over there on the forums again soon.
-K.
April 10th, 2005 at 2:59 am
You’re very welcome, K. I will look forward to seeing you there. You can’t miss me - only 8 months and I’m on my way to 3000 posts (can ya tell I like to talk?
)
One of our members who lives in Hawaii is coming into NY for Memorial Day weekend, so we planned our gathering around her visit. So, if you ever get to visiting NY, let me know, and we’ll have another gathering for you too!
July 19th, 2005 at 9:54 pm
[...] The Post that Started it All - The first real mention of the Apartment - The First BedBlog! - First Post with Pictures - First mention of Second Life - First time a company I link to drops me a comment - First post full of RAGE - Attack of the Comment Spam!!! - First mention of the Vile Vermin - The Madrid Bombings - First Mention of Spiritual Humanism and my general Skeptic views - First real rant on moving out of the apartment and my NYC dreams - Glitch hits the scene! - Coming to grips with the 2004 elections… - The first podcast! (And in 2004, no less! Suck on that, Tecnetico!) - Yuki passes away… [...]
May 26th, 2006 at 6:45 am
I am jealous of this blog. I agree with the last few comments and posts. Glad I came across your blog.Very fun page :-).
July 24th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Hello, Everyone:
I was ordained here also, as well as ULC many years ago. It’s a hoot. I don’t enjoy these forums for very long, however, because they tend to become very clique-y. And ULC has become unbearably Xian-influenced.
I notice that the SH forum is no longer functioning. I dismantled my own message board, as well.
Come see me at OpinionSoup.com.
dh, webmaster
http://www.opinionsoup.com/
Rock & Roll Church of All Nations
webmaster at opinionsoup dot com