Those of you who have clicked on my recent blog links, might have seen that my blog is the official site of the Church of Universal Soul. Here is a little history of the church.

During the 2012 election I was upset by the number of ministers violating the non-profit status of their churches by campaigning from the pulpit. I was, and still am, in disagreement with the policy to allow churches to be non profit institutions, especially given the fact that some churches are money making machines. I decided to start a church and try to use it’s non profit status for good.

My first blog, Prophecy, details my thinking behind the church. The term “Universal Soul” comes from the theory that the universe is made up of spirit (or soul) in three manifestations: matter, energy, and spirit. I hypothesized that just as there is an equation that describes the connection of matter to energy, there should be an equation to describe the connection of energy to spirit.

Another aspect of the religion was that the spirit was inspired by the movie “This is Spinal Tap” to issue an eleventh commandment. The commandment was “Thou shalt not proselytize.”
At the height of enrollment, we had two members, me and Winterlight Bray, who was born on the solstice and named by hippie parents, and who was a music buddy of mine. Our outreach program was hampered by the 11th commandment.

One of the church programs was the Tufnel Instrument Co-Op, named for Nigel Tufnel who had the bright idea of building and amp that went to 11, instead of 10, which is described in my post labeled Priming the Pump. It had some instruments, both donated and bought by the church, to lend to people experiencing homelessness. You can read about in my post labeled Priming the Pump. Because of my social anxiety, I was not good at promoting the library and it went unused, except for one party at Opportunity Village.

The post also mentions the Tufnel Land Co-Op (TLC), which never really took off. When I was in a group trying to work for the unhoused, an anonymous donor offered a sizeable contribution for the purpose of creating a low barrier homeless shelter. I offered the church as a non profit that could receive and take care of the donation, but my offer wasn’t accepted and another non profit was created. I asked one of the facilitators of the group if my offer had actually been presented to the potential donor, and she said, “I don’t remember”, which I think was a weaselly way of saying no.

A coupe of years later, Winter and his wife Sofie were severely beaten by the Eugene police, and used that experience as incentive to move to Idaho. After that, our church meetings were pretty boring, with just me there.

A couple of years ago I realized that the church had run it’s course, so when the bill for the $50 non profit registration came due, I decided to put an end to the church. I donated the instruments from the co-op to a guy named Banjo, who was interesting in starting a non-profit instrument library. I don’t know how successful that project was.