Daniel Zimmerman is a spiritual leader who doesn’t believe in religion.
“All religion is a joke until you believe it,” he said in a raised voice. “Every church out there has got it all wrong.”
Zimmerman runs a monastery in Arizona and for the last six years, he has been ordaining ministers through his Universal Life Church Web site.
“We welcome people of all faiths,” he said. “We ordain anybody and everybody.”
According to Zimmerman, there are no exceptions, no fees and no questions asked.
“You visit our web site at www.ulc.org and type in your name and your email address. Once you’ve done that, you are a fully-ordained minister.”
Zimmerman said the three-minute process is fully legal.
Participants are then qualified to officiate at weddings and start their own church, regardless of their beliefs.
Understandably, the church’s practice has attracted crowds of the curious and the critical. Kevin Jensen, a campus evangelist at The University of Memphis, wonders how meaningful such methods can be.
“What makes a person a minister is the authority given to them by a church, in recognition of their leadership and their skill in helping other people,” Jensen said. “It doesn’t sound like there is any recognition of a person’s authority or their expertise in Zimmerman’s online process.”
The Universal Life Church is a denomination founded in 1962 by a former Baptist named Kirby Hensely. According to its Web site, the church boasts of almost 20 million members.
Of his church mission, Zimmerman said, “We want you to have all the freedom, food and sex you can get. We want you to have fun and live your life, and then, after that, think about the spiritual side of things.”
According to Zimmerman, the church exists to promote freedom of religion. He said there are no rules that govern its members so long as they do not infringe on the rights of others and live within the law.
“Christianity says that life is a punishment for original sin because somebody somewhere sucked on an apple,” Zimmerman said. “The Buddhists say you relive everything bad that you do in the next life. The Universal Life Church says you’re born good, so make up your own rules and live it up.”
Zimmerman said his church holds strongly to its claims of maintaining no authority over its members.
“You make all the decisions,” he said. “Nothing I say means anything.”
