Creating a non-religious vegan "church"

[Lisa Qualls]

Hi.  I need a lot of help on a project.  I have started working with a small group of activists in the DC area to start an organization modeled after churches and community centers.  We want to be a tangible presence so that anyone who is interested in learning how to live vegan can come to us to learn and get personal assistance, the same way someone looking for a church can go to a church in any town.  We want to provide community support for vegans and pre-vegans, and we want to provide continuing education, the way that church does for religious people.  Eventually we want to include retirement support for vegans.

Our plan so far, has been to lay the foundation and begin having open meetings in places like community center meeting rooms and Unitarian Universalist meeting rooms until we build enough money to have our own buildings. 

Building this thing takes a lot of time.  The people working with me are already busy activists, as am I.  Realistically, I could do this project full time, but I have to fit it in on evenings and weekends, which means it will take more time to bring it to reality than I would like. 

I am hoping to find skilled, anti-speciesist, uncompromising (honest and direct without being nasty) strong vegan people (ideally close to DC, or at least very willing to communicate online and by phone) able and willing to spend time every week on this project.  We have been doing week-night teleconferences and weekend meetings.  The entire core group is meeting every 2 weeks alternating live meetings with teleconferences, with email communication regularly.  The committees (currently we have an ad-hoc editorial committee writing our documents, a locations committee planning where to have open meetings, and a fund raising committee) meet as needed. 

If you are able to contribute and spend time on this project please contact me.  [e-mail]

[Tim Gier]

Hi Lisa,

 

Thanks for posting this here. Hopefully it will help you get the support you are looking for as well as helping ARZone members think about different kinds of activism and outreach they can do in their communities. I know I am struggling to find the right balance between doing the kind of "new vegan support" I think you are talking about and the kind of education or activism that will help more people reject speciesism and the other ideologies of oppression in the first place. Like Barbara, I am nowhere near DC, but I'd be happy to try to help in any way possible from a distance. 

[Lisa Qualls]

Thank you, Barbara.  The only reason I used the word "church" in my title is to give people on this forum an understanding of the types of services we will provide.  We are modeling the center after churches and community centers (using some of the strategies that we think work well for them and providing vegan versions of many of their services), but we will not be calling it a church and we will never make religion a part of our regular open meetings because we are for everyone.  A long-term goal is to have a vegan center in every community so that we have a very tangible presence and are a constant reminder of real veganism.   I do not want the center to be tied in with any church, but one of our plans is to rent meeting rooms in UU buildings in the beginning.  Our hope is that if we time our meetings for the end of their services some  UUs may come out of curiosity.  However, we will not be a part of any church.  I am hopeful that our vegan community may have a religious/spiritual group within it, but we will NEVER be within any church.  They must come to us, not the other way as is currently the norm.  The most important thing is veganism, and everything else is a sub-group. I am not sure that I can totally explain the center here, so please do not read too much between the lines.  I am happy to clarify if I have not communicated well.

[Lisa Qualls]

Thank you, Tim.  I admire your work so much, and I was hoping you would be interested.  As you may have read in my reply to Barbara a long term goal is to have a center in every town.  I am in the DC area and someone in North Carolina is involved already. 

Like you, I am always trying to think of the new thing that might work.  I feel like we really need something new.  I believe that this is the perfect time for the center because the popularity is just starting to increase, which also means veganism is in jeopardy as people want to do the popular thing instead of the right thing.  The center would hopefully protect veganism while growing it.  And it would grow veganism for a variety of reasons.

Our next meeting is on Aug 14 at 3p, and if you wanted to teleconference in I would be very happy to have you.  This meeting should give you a really good understanding of what we are doing.

[Maynard S. Clark]

Why call it 'a church', but there are value-based communities that commit to integrities of various kinds.

 

Social psychologists have looked at dynamics and values and resource-relationships, so you may want to BEGIN in a non-hostile way (which may be part of your approach, anyway) - to approach comparatively social systems (multigenerational faith communities and multigenerational secular communities that have endured over time - let's say, at least 50-100 years - if there ARE any secular communities that are neither ethnicities/familial or governments/nations) and see what to you is desirable and what is not desirable.

 

At least have some ideas other than being pro-vegan that you think you MIGHT want to see in your intentional community.  But right now, as you've framed it, it's really merely an 'intentional community', and Margaret Mead's study on 'Communes' and other studies on such phenomena show that very few of these 'communities' survived over very long periods of time.  They break up because of petty human animosities, and they have beforehand typically abandoned the wisdom traditions which might have helped them address human fallibility.  In their humanism, they fail to account for the dark side of homo sapiens at the small group levels, and then there are the global issues with planetary degradation, which 'small groups' typically do not address very well.

[Lisa Qualls]

It is really hard to fully paint a vision for others; I am not sure if I have done that.

Do you have any links to share, Maynard?  I have never been aware of this sociological study.  I can do some searches on "intentional community" and Margaret Mead, but if you have a particular link that you think would help, I would like to see it.

I am having a hard time understanding everything you are saying, especially your first sentence. 

[Maynard S. Clark]

"value-based communities" - groups of folks joined together around a value system

"integrities" (what people deeply believe in and realize consistently, without hypocrisy) "of various kinds" (different value systems)

 

[Maynard S. Clark]

www.All-Creatures.org is a nominally "Christian" group of very pro-vegan pro-animal persons.

www.SERV-Online.org is the SERV - Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians

 

What happens - happens

 

You surely don't want transcendental Assurance that any of this is going to work in history, do you?

[Lisa Qualls]

I'm sorry.  I really don't understand much of what you write.  When you make comments without much discussion I don't know what you mean.  I would have to know you well to be able to decipher any of what you have posted.

You do know that the group has nothing to do with religion and the only reason I said "church" in quotation marks was to convey that we will provide services and generally be to veganism what church is to religon.  It seems to have worked really well for religon.