Religious Science Denomination Launches Graduate Program

The nation’s largest denomination of Religious Science churches has launched a new degree program for its future clergy with an eclectic faculty of religion and science professors with ties to the esoteric-oriented Philosophical Research Society.

The metaphysical church body is replacing its shorter course of minister training with a three-year master of divinity curriculum that will be taught in the first year mostly by telecommuting means--audio and video cassettes plus telephone conference calls at present, and Web site chat rooms and e-mail eventually.

Forty-seven degree candidates, some from as far away as New York and Florida, started classes last week. In the second year, students will attend classes at regional centers in Los Angeles, Huntington Beach, Seattle and Denver.

The faculty, drawn from regular speakers at the Philosophical Research Society, includes Gnostic priest and Jungian analyst Stephan Hoeller of Los Angeles, physicist Amit Goswami of the University of Oregon, Dr. Martin Rossman of the UC Medical Center in San Francisco, and religion scholars such as USC’s Robert S. Ellwood, author of world religion textbooks, and Daniel Matt of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, an expert on the Jewish mystical system of kabbala.

Called the Holmes Institute--after the late Ernest Holmes, founder of the United Church of Religious Science--the graduate school is seeking accreditation and will be open in the future to non-credit students, said Lloyd Tupper, institute president.

Obadiah Harris, president of the 63-year-old Philosophical Research Society, said that most of what will be taught to future Religious Science clergy falls into the category of “consciousness studies.” Integral to that approach is the panentheistic idea that some degree of consciousness is possessed by all things, even seemingly inanimate objects, Harris said.

“It shows that we live in a universe with meaning and purpose,” he said.

DATES

Iconoclastic theologian Matthew Fox, director of the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality in Oakland, will speak Sunday on making work meaningful in the next century as part of the Los Angeles Public Library’s “Big Questions” lecture series at its Mark Taper Auditorium in the Central Library, 5th and Flower streets. Fox, who will speak at 2 p.m., has written 16 books, including “The Reinvention of Work.” The program, moderated by Jack Miles, author of “God, a Biography,” will continue next month with questions on racial inequalities and human genetics. Tickets $8. (213) 228-7025.

* An interfaith celebration of the United Nations on Sunday at the Islamic Center of Southern California will feature Dr. Maher Hathout, spokesman for the host mosque; the Rev. Leonard Jackson, associate minister at First AME Church in Los Angeles; Mobed Zarir Bhandara, high priest for the Zoroastrian Assn. of Southern California; and Joyce A. Kovelman, author of “Once Upon a Soul” and member of the Malibu Jewish Synagogue. The meeting, organized by the Unity-and-Diversity World Council, will be held at 434 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, from 2 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Free. (310) 577-1968.

* Catholics in Media Associates will present the group’s 1997 awards to the MGM/UA film “Ulee’s Gold,” the NBC drama “Homicide” and Edie and Lew Wasserman, who will receive lifetime achievement honors. Lew Wasserman is chairman emeritus of Universal Studios. The Oct. 26 award program will be at the Beverly Hilton Hotel after a 10 a.m. Mass by Cardinal Roger M. Mahony. (818) 907-2734.

* Theologian Ted Peters of Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley will speak on integrating faith and technology at 10 a.m. Friday at California Lutheran University’s Samuelson Chapel as a part of the Founders Day Convocation on the Thousand Oaks campus. Peters also is a research professor at the Berkeley-based Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. (805) 493-3936.

* “Buddhist Perspectives on Life and Death” will be described by the Rev. Shunko Tashiro, professor at Doho University in Nagoya, Japan, at 2 p.m. Sunday at Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple, 505 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles. Free. (213) 626-4200.

* Among the half-dozen CROP walks this weekend to raise donations for Church World Service and local hunger-fighting charities is one in Pasadena at 1 p.m. Sunday. Backed by the Ecumenical Council of Pasadena Area Churches, the 10-K walk will start and end at All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave. (626) 296-3195. CROP walks also are taking place today in Inglewood, and Sunday in Pomona, Bakersfield, Long Beach and Van Nuys.

* Two of six young adults who claim to have had visions of the Virgin Mary for the last 16 years in a small Bosnian village will be featured at the three-day Medjugorje Peace Conference, starting Friday at UC Irvine’s Bren Events Center. Vicka Ivankovic and Ivan Dragicevic will be speaking to an expected 5,000 registrants at the eighth annual conference. $35. (714) 572-9779.

* The Rev. Ignacio Castuera of North Glendale United Methodist Church will give the sermon at the sixth annual AIDS Memorial Service at 10:30 a.m. Sunday at Hope Lutheran Church, 6720 Melrose Ave., Hollywood. Helena Buscerria, a parishioner at St. Monica’s Catholic Church, will lead the music for the service, including a solo by Leanza Cornett, Miss America of 1993. (213) 938-9135.

* UCLA law professor Stephen R. Munzer will give free talks, starting next week, on his research into involuntary and voluntary begging--by panhandlers and the homeless as well as medieval Christian friars and present-day Jain ascetics. Munzer will speak in Room 2448 at the UCLA School of Law at 7:30 p.m. Monday and on Oct. 27. (310) 825-2637.

* Steve Gunderson, a former Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, and his domestic partner of 13 years, architect Rob Morris of Washington, D.C., will speak at 7:30 p.m. Sunday at Hollywood Lutheran Church, 1733 N. New Hampshire Ave. They wrote about their identity struggles, including that as Lutherans, in “House and Home,” published last year by Dutton. (213) 666-0146.

FINALLY

Evangelical, charismatic and some old-line churches have increasingly taken pleasantly vague names in hopes of attracting newcomers.

Mega-churches such as the Crystal Cathedral and Harvest Christian Fellowship have led the way with names that do not mention specific location or denomination and provide an alternative to the word “church.”

The latest to follow the trend is Pico-Arlington Christian Church in Los Angeles, a 75-year-old congregation on Pico Boulevard, aligned with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

Its new name: Fountain of Hope Fellowship Cathedral Church. The last three words, which appear to suggest that the congregation has the warmth of a small fellowship but the grandeur of a cathedral, tend to get shortened in actual use, said the Rev. Ted Moore, pastor.

“Most of the time we refer to it as Fountain of Hope Cathedral or Fountain of Hope Church,” he said.

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