Manifesting the Dream: On Religious Orgs, Pagan Abbeys and our Order in particular

Pentagram - Church of Santa María d'Azougue,Betanzos, A Coruña, Galicia, Gallaecia

In previous posts, we have already covered: how to join or create pagan communities; and historic and modern cloistered communities. Next up in our Abbey series; more of the benefits of establishing modern religious organizations and how we envision our Order creating those spaces.

Advantages of our non-denominational (and not just different varieties of Wicca) pagan organization, and religious institutions in general, are many.

Incorporation and Societies

A legally religious corporation or society in Canada has the ability to:

- Own property. i.e. creating and maintaining safe space. Not just renting. Including ministry work such as permanent churches, inner city safe spaces, etc.

- Ordain, a perform legal ceremonies, such as marriage. Currently, the only forms of Paganism that have organized to this degree in Canada are Wiccan. I'm not Wiccan, and like Spiritual Humanism and other forms of Humanism, the evaluation of one's channelling of the divine should NOT be a requirement for clergy. We can all do that. Or not, depending on your personal belief system and your skill level. Heh. All I need to know is, say, can you MC a good wedding or funeral, or counsel well, and does your community support you? That is mostly enough to satisfy the need.

- Support Native Elders and other professional religious who are having difficulty obtaining legal status or are being otherwise hassled by institutions. It's friggin' hard even to do smudges working with prisoners and guards or in hospitals or schools sometimes, for example. Legal docs can help solve some of those problems by lending legitimacy to fellow professional religious that request it.

- Projects get easier to do, like co-ops, or microloan programs, publishing houses, or abbeys. Also encourages full time clergy, such as nuns, monks, and other priests.

Our problem in paganism in particular has always been organization and communication, and everyone has to re-invent the wheel in every new location. A seriously inefficient, as well as illogical, situation. A national supporting body, providing information and other resources, would save oodles of time, money, and effort. There is also the problem of where those who have different influences from many traditions, like Christian witches or Jewitches or eclectics, go to worship and get together, to organize, and to be validated and do work in the world. Pagan Humanism is ideally suited to provide that space. Paganism have always been tolerant of other traditions, as well as pantheist, and can provide an emotionally and spiritually satisfying experience for those who might otherwise not feel welcome in most other communities, without insisting on following any set of traditions or deities, or even, and this is the kicker, any deity at all. It's always better to be MORE inclusive than less, wouldn't you say?

Structure

Our choice, being who we are, is:

- Collective environment, with overseeing bodies to ordinate, provide continuity and support, and solve disputes. Like the entire Green Party of Canada, it's not actually difficult to achieve, especially with modern tech. Groups or individuals can propose projects, expenditures, visions, etc. The entire body can vote on providing funds, support, or other resources. Projects are all volunteer, no assignments. That way everyone brings their entire energy, and they can leave a project or the organization when they wish. A gestalt entity.

- Board of Directors - Emergency and day to day decision making, with ratifications by members where required. And to point directly at someone for holding the bag on certain issues, as it were... Also, required for a non-for-profit corporation in Canada, it turns out...

- Council of Elders - As a body of second thought, for those decisions that need some further consideration, if the Board may have got it wrong, if there is a dispute that the Board can't solve, and for moral and ethical drive.

- Up to three Leaders, largely as Spokepersons. Because you need someone the press can talk to... Movements have a tendency to fizzle out when the Leader(s) leaves or dies, unless they are deified, which is rare. Although it is actually easier to encourage members to join with a created Cult of Personality, and group loyalty is higher, it is far more vulnerable to corruption and ultimately more fragile if the Leader dies, leaves, or is discredited. Though harder to get going and generate group identity, I have no intention of having everything we've all worked for dissipate because we lose the face on the stamp. However, it can be handy to have a face as a known symbol and to rally around, so spokesperson Leaders are still a darn good idea. Used correctly, of course...

Funding

Donations vs. grants vs. fundraising vs. products and services:

Donations are always lovely, but never to be relied upon. We can't ever count on donations or grants. They are the gravy, not the meal. WAYYY too many pagan groups, for example, have hoped that the community will simply 'help them out'. It doesn't happen. The old abbeys used to support themselves by being as self-sufficient as possible, taking students, making products of use to the community, like medicine. It has to be funded with the same eco-capitalism in mind. The ends definitely does not justify the means in this case. Or most cases, really. 

In a University, there are oodles of disciplines working side by side, and each is finding fulfilment and increasing their own knowledge, but they are all working together. Modern abbeys must, as all abbeys have in the past, support themselves. We can produce items that are in keeping with the spiritual pursuits of our members, such as sacred crafts, but we can also consider services such as a publishing company, group home, health food co-op, holistic healing and retreat business, money lending co-op, pagan and women's insurance org., and an arts group. When we can, of course. Methods to support ourselves and our families in Right Lifestyle: with safety, purity, determination, and honour, should be a huge draw. (Hel, I was fired twice in one year for my religious beliefs alone; rather than my safety and ethics code, which were also too high, apparently. Darn integrity...) I also want more pagans or alternative lifestyle folk to be able to count on financial assistance for insurance, mortgages, etc. (without some idiot passing judgement), financial instructions like co-ops, microloan programs, and eventual credit union and insurance mutuals. It only took the women's mircroloan program in India ten years to go from a few hundred dollars to ten million. This isn't India, of course, but that kind of growth is still possible here. Don't let anybody tell you it's gotten better for women in the financial world, either. I've run and started my own businesses, and had a life insurance licence. It has been hell trying to get anyone to deal with me fairly. (And I'm smarter and more attractive than the average bear. Heh.) Apprenticeships will also help attract and train people, if we already got Masters teaching certain skills... We are open to the ideas, passions, and expertise of our members.

Currently, we generate income and promote with:

1) Retail and wholesale herbal and stillroom product business - online and itinerant.
2) Training and apprenticeship
3) Lectures and speaking engagements
4) Food and whole foods co-ops

With capital, those can easily expand into:

1) Microloan programs
2) Physical retail locations
3) Training centres
4) Hospitality ventures
5) Healing and retreats
6) Cloistered communities

The Order is a facilitator for projects and expressions of spirituality. We can back members and non-members, providing space, funding, networking, or guidance.

Membership Criteria

Different levels of involvement will be available for different levels of commitment.

- Cloistered community: nuns, monks, hermits, etc.

- Professional in-the-world members: priestess and priests, Celebrants

- Lay members: beguines, outreach workers
- Volunteers

Different levels of privileges, e.g. voting, and differing resource support for different levels. For the most casual, they must only agree to accept and facilitate everyone's else's path, or be in agreement with our principles and goals, etc. Again, alot like the Greens. Heh. I'm not re-inventing the wheel or anything. I'm lazy. More like a combination of a full church, like Unitarians, plus the broadened focus of a Pagan United Way. For the most devoted, such as nuns, we will offer even more than other Orders of dedicants: room and board for as long as they stay with us, training, sponsorship in formal education and other bonuses for them and their families, and if they chose to leave us, a repayment of their sweat equity and any investment monies with interest, depending on how long they were with us. That way, no one feels they are taking too much of a personal risk, even when dedicating their lives to spiritual pursuits.

- No one can be ousted, except by conviction of criminal act that is in the moral realm. (Parking tickets don't count.) But no one has to work with you either, and if everyone wants to have you transferred 'cause you're acting like a dictator or miss the point of the project or any number of serious personality conflicts, that's final. You can decide where else you want to go or to be solitary, and still supported at your level of commitment. Thus, hermitage can be encouraged, and power plays or groups cliques discorporated.

- One of our goals will be to ordain locals, regardless of their affiliation. Humanist priests are usually called Celebrants. One of the primary questions an applicant for ordination have to prove to us is that you can professionally MC ceremonies. Local signatures and maybe a video would easily show that. Nobody can certify you as a Divine conduit, really. I CAN tell if you can give a satisfying performance for a wedding, though... 

Pagan Humanism solves the issue of the different pagan paths very nicely. This is really a boon for those who are having difficulty finding their place in major religions or philosophies, like Christian witches or atheists, or being recognized by government as legitimate.

Abbey of the Green Flame

Imagine: an actual place where one can dedicate one's life to voluntary simplicity, learning and using one's knowledge for humankind's benefit, providing a retreat to those who are ill and helping those who are ill to achieve full health, practising one's art, all without worrying about how to make one's daily bread... Interest has already been expressed for this kind of co-ordination and professionalism several years ago. I would join one if I could find it. If you can't find it, make it, is my motto... 

My abbey will be a modern one, designed to meet the needs of modern nuns and monks, not a re-creation. Collective structure, wholistic design, green tech... The entire abbey will be pagan humanist, with many diverse beliefs and practices able to be accommodated. Rather like the inclusiveness of Unitarians, but more active and In the World, if you will. Different Paths, like Facilities, will allow everyone to study, perfect, and perform the lifestyle of their Calling. The Path of the Spoon, for example, teaches cookery and food as an act of worship, providing Masters and a place to practice in that space, without requiring dedication to Deity. My own speciality is the stillroom, and I train in the traditional manner...

However, I personally need a Celtic reClaimist subset for those of us of that persuasion, so my own sect will be a female Brigantine order in the style of the original kelles, with a focus on the Flame of Kildare as Her manifestation. Music, bardic arts, poetry, healing, the warrior arts and scholarship will be the main focii.  A full religion, not just a congregation and some ceremonies. A Circle, but much bigger. I'm focusing on women because they usually get the circle concept faster, but men and other genders are free to join, of course.

One of the projects I'm embarking on if I move to Newfoundland is a co-ordination with local universities to complete a scholarly work that translates their research of the local folk trads into a practical Celtic magic manual. In Canada, European pagan heritage and beliefs have up until now only be recently recognized as a rich tradition of 'folklore', but it now has whole University departments dedicated to it. Like their music, some of it remains uncorrupted from the 16th century. My partner comes from the Codroy Valley, which is nearly all Scottish, many of whom came from Cape Breton. They still speak with a Scottish accent. There are also those of French decent, English that is linguistically nearly identical to Shakespeare's, and Irish. All remain relatively uncorrupted, as they left before the Removals, or Potato Famine, or Corn Laws decimated their relative folk cultures. Currently, there are in flux of scholars from the UK and other European countries who come to study the more primitive, more culturally complete music, tales, dance, and other folk traditions in Canada. For the Celtic nations, many of these traditions are accumulated in the halls of academia, but not yet reClaimed by Celtic trad witches of the world. A lifetime's worth of work, and many books, await the dedicated cult leader, I mean, spiritual guide. Heh, heh.


Each of our Founders and Affiliates has their own vision for doing sacred work in the modern world, with more inclusion of diverse spiritualities and encouragement of fulfilling lifestyles. One of our affiliates, The Copper Horse Abbey, for example, focuses on wholistic wellness for animals; horse medicine and natural training in particular. Pagan Humanism is a rich, accommodating environment and we very much welcome other viewpoints, input, energy, and spirit. Make suggestions or join us as a member, volunteer or group affiliate! We are here to support you!

How to Start a Church - Legal Pagan Religious Organizations in Canada

So we just got our religious not for profit officially off the ground!  And it was surprisingly easy, especially compared to elections regulations...

Many pagans have a few problems with legally recognized groups.  As a very self-directed spirituality, there is some debate on the validity and desirability of institutions and organizations.  I understand and sympathize with those anarchist views, but there are also some serious benefits that we are not able to partake of if we continue to insist that we remain outside official structures.  To that end, I wanted to create a legal corporation to allow those groups who do not, in fact, wish to go to all the bother, but still get some of the goodies - like events, insurance, property purchases, ability to perform weddings and have a legal or full-time clergy, etc...

There are no 'officially recognized' religions in Canada. None. Nada. I know some folks think that Christianity was already an official religion, but it just seems like it, since it's everywhere and many of our laws are based on its tenets. But Canada only recognizes religious not-for-profits (such as churches, mosques, synagogues or druid groves) on an individual basis and then only as corporations. The ability of its representatives to legally officiate at weddings is a separate right granted after certain conditions are met, and it is entirely civil in power. There is absolutely no doubt that we are aswim in a Christian culture, and that the lawmakers wrote laws according to those traditions, but in Canada, it's not official policy, nor is there a mechanism for such. Which makes it much easier for us to push for recognition of holidays from other traditions, and we don't have to put up with the Baby Jesus in our public schools, and our nuns and priestesses can legally perform weddings after they finish the qualifying paperwork as legitimate clergy, and not just as civil marriage commissioners. It's still not a cakewalk, but it remains much easier than other countries. Stats Can does actually put on certain religions on their census form for informational purposes, and these can change. The past few years offered 'pagan' as a option in most places and on most forms, but that is entirely a choice of the statisticians. Paganism IS recognized by the Canadian Military, and that's as about as 'official' as Canadian religions get. 

Up until a few years ago, churches were individually recognized as religious not for profit's largely in the provinces of incorporation, as long as they do not devote more than 10% of their work and funding to social work. If they did, they were considered a social NPO without any of the religious benefits. Each province had different legislation for incorporation of religious NPOs, with a different amount of names or paperwork required.

After weighing the options, we decided to go with the newly re-written incorporation laws as a federal religious not for profit corporation   It requires at least three (3) signatories and two different form submissions.  It used to require by-laws AND a constitution to start off with, but now they are allowed as one document, and isn't required for the first full year. (So, yay!  Procrastination...)  Federal incorporation also allowed us to have signatories in different parts of Canada.   We can have branches all over the country.  Heh. We also have up to a year to elect new Directors, instead of just us, which comes into play if you want to bring in more than $10 thousand a year.  Then you are a "soliciting not-for-profit corporation" and different rules apply, like Board members not being employees... Things like that.  We don't really have to worry about that this week, but I hope we will soon.

Consulting our non-local co-founder as to intent and wording, we came up with by-laws and a constitution anyway, just to be sure we were all on the same page, in part to forestall as many disagreements about direction as possible in future. A few long emails back and forth, and we now had it fleshed out. It remained to fill in the darn paperwork, and that was quite a task.

There are almost no examples of what the actual documents are supposed to look like on line, and we aren't lawyers.  After reading through most of the gibberish, we came up with something we thought they would like. The by-laws we wrote up didn't go to waste, either.   The Mission statements and a few other bits were darn handy for a couple of questions.  A note to the wise, however.  *You cannot cut and paste in any of the forms.  Everything must be re-typed anew, and none of it can be saved.*  Seriously.  Every last bit must be typed in and printed out before you close the window.  Attempting to save it just saves a blank version, so don't even try to do this at night or over a few days, just in case you are prone to crashing.  Weirdest system ever.  I was really concerned that our writing wouldn't be good enough for the bureaucrats so I insisted we type the damn thing, but looking back I suppose we could have just written really neatly.

Another choice we had to make was if we were going to attempt to set ourselves up to be a religious not-for-profit with charitable status at some point in the future. Industry Canada strongly suggests that if you wish to do that, make sure your set-up will allow it when you first apply.  We never did find out what specifically that meant, but I really held out for not bothering anyway.  As a corporation we are able to generate funds the same way everyone else does - by providing goods and services - even if our money then goes out to good works instead of investors.  As a charitable org, however, the government, and the Harper government in particular, really has one by the short hairs. All charitable not for profit organizations are officially required to be non-political in nature. This includes most churches, which are usually NPO's, though some are charitable Societies.  Those Churches, therefore, are most specifically NOT allowed to engage politically, officially or unofficially. Technically, even people representing those churches are not permitted to express opinions, provide services, or in other ways participate politically. Of course, during the Same Sex marriage looniness, many clergy raised their voices, but they weren't supposed to, or risk jeopardizing their churches' status. That naturally never happened to them, but the local Pride Centre, which was also a charitable NPO, did actually have a former board member speak up on the subject (duh) and it lost its charitable status.  For nearly a decade...

So to ensure we have flexibility and the political freedom to operate, since it's much harder to do good works without that, we're just going with the non-charitable status. It only works on Canadian taxes anyway, and donations really should just be gravy, not the sole support.  Gives us more motivation, doncha know..

Oh, the forms; the FORMS!

I have jpegs of all of the paperwork we generated and received, since we couldn't find anything to use as a template when we searched. To make this even easier, I'll go over some of the more trying bits in detail.

 

   

Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (NFP Act): Form 4001: Articles of Incorporation

1) Corporate Name.

Slightly harder than it looks, and we really wrestled with it.  It has to reflect the religious nature of your organization, but you can't use Society, unless it's actually a Society, which has a different structure.  After researching the terms, most etymologies suggest that "church" comes from the old Greek, meaning 'gathering place for Christians' . So after some discussion, we brainstormed on other terms; Gathering, Congregation, Grove, Hive, Circle, Sorority, Sisterhood, Fellowship...  In the end, we went with Order. It's hard to get a good acronym, even though we really tried, so we used Dìsir as the title brand. But you can always change your name later, with Board approval, so we just picked one to get the thing done.  

After we printed the form up, we called the office up to be sure, and since we had only put Dìsir as the name, we wrote the rest of it in pen. Just to make it official, we used blue pen (so they knew it was original) and all initialled the change when we signed off.

4) Statement of the purpose of the corporation.

We used our by-laws statements for that.  We already had them done up, and this looked like the place where they go. No one at Industry Canada said anything...

6) The classes, or regional or other groups, of members that the corporation is authorized to establish.

This is mostly about who have voting rights.  Is it just paid-up members who vote? Or a different group in your inner circle that has the ability to vote on policy and directors?  Who gets notice of AGM's?  If there are two or more levels of voting rights, this is where you state that.

7) Statement regarding the distribution of property remaining on liquidation.

This is actually spelled out pretty clearly in the Income Tax Act, so we just looked it up and copied it.  You aren't allowed any leeway on it, so why they bother to ask I don't know.

8) Additional provisions, if any.

Again, these are pretty well spelled out in the Not for Profit Corporations Act.  We copied and pasted the relevant parts we thought we were likely to apply to us.

All in all, nine (9) questions on that form.  Each incorporater signs (blue ink, remember), and you're done with that one.

Next, you need proof that you have run a NUANS Name search report on the name you've selected, to show that it doesn't conflict with any other corporate names.  We were pretty darn sure there weren't many other pagan humanist religious orgs. to conflict with in Canada, but there might have been another "Dìsir" involved in some business that didn't come up when we Googled the name.  It's worth it not to have that impediment in your application, and it's only a few bucks if you do your own on-line. Include this report in your application package.

Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act (NFP Act): Form 4002: Initial Registered Office Address and First Board of Directors

Four (4) questions, all self-explanatory. It says you can't use a post office box, so we used one of our addresses as the official office.

And that's really all there is to it!  Now you print and submit all the forms, with a $250 'processing' fee. (Link to procedure here) I used the hard copy mail version, which meant that I could include a cheque for the fee, instead of just sending off my credit card number in an email. Which I feel totally secure about, given all the trust I have for the current elected federal government.

If everything is a go, you will simply receive a Certificate of Incorporation, and the subsequent forms and receipts, in the mail about a week later.  No fanfare, but have a bottle of champagne chilled, say. I got a bit snorkled...  Hey, rituals are important for such significant events!

 

Our FB page is up and running, with other congregations and potential members already inquiring about events and services.

I personally love informal gatherings, covens, and individual work, even though I am largely solitary. But many pagans complain that we are not allowed the privileges of other religions - the recognition, the clergy, the outreach work in prisons and inner city, the ability to legally marry...  In Canada, those all come through lobbying from established religious organizations, not some random decision making from the government from census numbers. If we want the goodies the system can provide, we have to create the legal framework that gives us a stake in the game.

Let us know if we can help you or if you have any questions!

Published on Witchvox on June 9, 2013