Category: Universal Life Church

Aspiring ministers click to save souls

Pastor Jack J. Stahl bombards Lucifer and his minions with horror-movie shouts, hollers and diabolical cackles. He barks a bit of Latin, fires thunderclaps of words thatdontmakemuchsense since they crash into one another like renegade bumper cars. But the ordained-by-mail minister’s 24-hour exorcism hotline kicks Beelzebub’s butt in kitschy style. To perform his little demon laundering, he spins the sing-along tunes of crooner Tom Jones, famous for “What’s New, Pussycat?” The 1981 Clayton Valley High School graduate became an ordained minister in the Modesto-based Universal Life Church, a 40-year heavy hitter in mail-order ministry. Anyone with a computer can become

Mail-Order Ministers

In 1962 he organized the Universal Life Church in order to propagate his rather idiosyncratic faith. “I believe heaven is when you have what you want and hell is when you don’t have it,” he explains. “I believe in reincarnation, an eternal beam in your body that moves from one body to another.