Several years ago, my good friend John wanted to get married, and he wanted me to perform the ceremony. I looked into this and discovered two things: one, that some states run a tidy little business allowing non-ordained people to perform marriages for a fee; and two, that the Universal Life Church ordains ministers for free, and they are allowed to perform weddings in all fifty states.
This has a long and slightly complex history that depends on the very definition of marriage: a legal contract between two people that is recognized by the state. This is, of course, a civil marriage; a religious marriage is not recognized by the state at all. In the US, states recognize the civil ceremony as happening simultaneously with the religious service, and religious leaders -- priests, rabbis, ministers -- are legal officiants in addition to sacred ones. In other countries, for instance France and Belgium, a civil ceremony must be held before the religious event.
So, in order to allow a religious leader to be a legal officiant, you have to back up and define this person. A Bucks County, Pennsylvania, case quotes the relevant statute as "a minister, priest or rabbi from any regularly established church or congregation," which leaves the definition of those terms up to individual judges, but ULC ministers have been upheld as legitimate officiants in several cases.
In 1959, Kirby J. Hensley, acting on the First Amendment clause stating "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," decided to establish his own church, the Universal Life Church. He came up with a religion with a single creed, Do only that which is right, and an underlying respect for whatever other spiritual beliefs people want to hold. Some take this more seriously than others. Some have unsuccessfully tried to use their ministerial status to avoid military service or income taxes, but most ordained ministers just want to perform marriages and other services.
Personally, I love the idea of a church with a single creed. Let's see it again:
Do only that which is right.
That's a fine basis for a religion. Lots of personal responsibility there, and it avoids bringing those messy "others" into play, as the Golden Rule does. Plus, no need to suspend disbelief on a wide variety of supernatural beings and events that may or may not be allegories. Taken to an extreme, I can find the principles of Buddhist thought in this one sentence, and even spin it to advocate a lifetime of mindfulness practice.
Anyway, I became a ULC minister in 2002, and I've now performed four weddings. The first was the marriage of John and Amanda shortly after that date in Dennis on Cape Cod. This was an excellent wedding, maybe my favorite ever, with a lot of music integral to the service: John played a song to Amanda on his twelve-string, and Amanda sang a song to John with her bridesmaids a cappella. (In a sort of belt-and-suspenders action, we also paid the Commonwealth of Massachusetts a small fee that allowed me to perform this specific wedding for these two people at the set time and place only. This was unnecessary, but I only discovered it later.)
A few years later -- 2006? 2007? -- I officiated at a "short and sweet" ceremony for Rachel, the daughter of one of my oldest friends, Dave Martinez, and his wife Judy, at the Grange Hall in south San Jose. "Short and sweet" because that was the name of a ceremony we adapted from a book of examples I got from the library. And it was a sweet ceremony, outdoors, with lots of old friends from my generation in attendance.
In August of 2007, I performed a wedding for two folks I didn't know, Dave and Debra Ashby, the neighbors of my father in Santa Clara. Dad and I drove to the beach in Capitola, and I read their ceremony on a structure at the edge of the water while Debra's mother and daughter, as well as a couple surfers, looked on. They seemed quite happy, high school friends who had reconnected years later. A few months later they moved away. I wonder if they think of me from time to time?
On Halloween of this year, at the Rose Garden Court behind the Disneyland Hotel, I officated for the wedding of Gabriel and Crystal. Gabe is the son of those same old friends Dave and Judy, and the older brother of Rachel. This was easily the most traditional wedding I've done, with rehearsal dinners and receptions and Mickey Mouse ears and Venetian masks and such like. G&C adapted their ceremony from a commitment service they found on the web, so the words had a nice contemporary ring, with none of the built-in servitude found in some others. It was a lot of fun, it was over quickly, and all the various constellations of people around them made it extremely interesting. (As an aside, Gabe and Crystal had already done a civil wedding and so my presence was merely ceremonial. However, I think in the eyes of the Do What's Right god, I played an important role. Here's a picture of me looking approriately ministerial.)
Lots of good memories, right action, and spiritual comfort for a free five-minute ordination.
