"Every man who feels a desire to preach is a preacher," says Kirby James Hensley. " And I never met anyone who wasn't a preacher." As president of the freewheeling Universal Life Church Inc., of Modesto, Calif., Hensley is a man of his word. Last week alone he appointed more than 1,000 new ministers in his church, and if a clergy head count is any index of growth, the Universal Life Church may well be the fastest-growing denomination in the U.S. There are already well over 18,000 ministers in Hensley's church. If the present growth rate continues, it could have more ministers than the Roman Catholic Church has priests in the U.S. before the year is out.
Of course, it is somewhat easier to become a minister in Hensley's church than to join the Catholic priesthood. All a candidate needs is a postage stamp. He will be ordained a minister by return mail. Any man, woman or child can become a minister in the Universal Life Church. The only thing that Hensley demands is a name and an address, so that he can fill out the certificate. After that, the new minister is on his own. In California, and according to Hensley, in many other states, he can perform marriages (if he is over 21), officiate at funerals, dedicate churches, baptize, take up collections and ordain other ministers. He can visit hospitals or jails any time—and some of Hens-ley's ministers don't have to go far to do that. Until officials of California's penal system warned that Universal Life ministers would get no special privileges, Hensley was doing a brisk business in the state prisons.
A Good Membry. The man who has elevated so many people to the clergy cannot read or write, although he has a mail-order Ph.D. from the Hollywood University of Los Angeles and an honorary doctorate in metallurgy from a school in Nebraska. Hensley, 57, grew up in the mountains of North Carolina and attended a one-room schoolhouse for a few years where he "done everything but learn to read and write." He hit the road at 13, first encountered religion during the Depression on his way to a youth camp. When he tried to emulate a street-corner preacher for his campmates, they roared with laughter. What he had thought was a red Bible was in fact a dictionary.
Eventually, he learned to tell the difference. With a new bride, he moved to Oklahoma, became a young people's leader for the Church of God, soon felt the call to move on to California. There he organized churches of God in Bakersfield, San Jose and Sunnyvale. He also became a relatively successful contractor, prosperous enough to hire people to read to him from the Bible. "My wife and other people would read the verses to me, and I would mem-brize them," he says. "I have a good membry, and sometimes I would stay up all night long just listnin' to the Scriptures. I membrized the Bible from Genesis all the way through, and then I realized I was only helping Peter, Paul and John preach their story. I had my ideas to preach too."
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.