Question What's the United Churches Consortium?

Repost from Old Forums:

What's the United Churches Consortium?

Its only mention is in Insanity Prerequisite Part 3 . And we only know that Reverend Englund is connected to it?

It's a consortium of united churches.

Kristin Darken wrote: A more 'honest' way of admitting that churches are money collecting organizations and that they rarely work alone.

Most churches are part of a hierarchy of some sort. The Catholic church is fairly obvious, but most other denominations share a governing body with senior ministry who provide a centralized 'interpretive' source of what it all means and what that particular denomination believes. They are the organization which actually receives all the donations, local churches may or may not work directly from donations... usually they have a budget of some sort for upkeep and salaries.

Consortium is a bit more capitalistic a name for a religious group than most... but not altogether inappropriate.

Ah. ... I assume that the UCC is just for Christianity... Do other religions have similar things?

I agree with Kristin that it's likely to be about money. My guess, from context, is that it's some sort of inter-church thing that pays for stuff that they all agree that needs to be done but they don't particularly care for taking the responsibility directly. Like supporting Rev. Darren Englund's when he goes in his demon-killing expeditions -- they all agree that it has to be done, but few of them will do the job themselves.

The Catholic Church being a major exception, since they do have a dedicated body of exorcists and demon-fighters, according to the Merry stories. So it's likely to be for the most part some sort of inter-denomination Protestant thing, They might or might not collaborate with the Catholic Church or even non-Christian religions for furthering common goals. I mean, I expect the Whateley Muslims, Taoists, Shinto, Buddhists, Sikhs, Zoroastrians and such to also take a dim view of Mythos entities meddling in the Earthly plane, and theological differences might take a back seat to getting rid of those damn GOOs.

I'd take that reference as a simple arm-wave since the author probably felt Rev. Englund needed a denominational affiliation, and wasn't willing to put him in with one of the more usual conservative-Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christian denominations.

My own congregation pays its way completely - it's completely funded by its members - and also donates to the Unitarian Universalist Association. That's typical with denominations that are organized according to the Congregational method - the congregation is the paramount authority; the central body handles administration, seminaries and similar issues. In our case, it certifies seminary graduates as ready to seek a congregation and be ordained. We are, by the way, "theologically diverse." I just attended a Druid Arthur Alban and a neo-pagan Yule.

There are several major inter-denominational organizations of varying sizes and influence.