Hi Caggers,

I would like to know:

How to check if my Church name has already been taken

And

How to register my Church in the uk

This will be an all faith Church with no preaching. I don't want to say anymore about it yet.

It is not a money making scheme or even a non-profit but entirely free.

It will not be used in order to simply get a license to marry people.

It will be based on Ethics and varying scriptures and open to all. It doesn't matter to me is it is successful or not, I just want to create it and give what I have been living for decades some official substance.

Many Thanks.

Not too sure on this one but I think you have to register as a charity 1st.

I may be wrong but I also think that the religion be it multi faith or singular must be recognized as a religion.

I take the adage of the last census were loads of people put Jedi as a religion, it needed more than 10,000 people to put this to be recognised

. However I do know you just cant call a building a church because everyone would start their own religion and have their house as a place of worship and therefore be exempt from council tax.

Thanks for your reply!

Mine reply just went missing so to re-cap:

Don't know if I would want to register it as a Charity?

"recognised as a religion" is an interesting one. If anyone has any legal links to this I would be grateful. There is widespread refulsal to continue with Church of Status Quo and I see this spilling out into Jedi and what I think is satire Church of The Flying Spaghettin Monster etc.

I expect that everyone registering their home as a church as a Council Tax Sca* is not a good idea.

Should Churches be exempt from Council Tax? The ethical dilemma would be that tax is often used to fuel war and for practices which often are not in alignment with altruism, fairness, truth etc. Although they do a lot of good things too.

Yes churches should be exempt, ill add that the residence or priests house is also exempt. That's were I thought of the council tax exemption.

Yes you need to be registered as a charity as far as I can work out.

The church of status quo is interesting...

Can I go and get "whatever I want"

Thread moved to General Legal Issues.

Regards

Andy

lol @sgtbush

I would like a Church please. And I would like to have it registered by tomorrow

The information on the internet relating to UK law seems sparse.

I found this from a UK site which relates to Charity status but seems convoluted:

https://fiec.org.uk/what-we-do/strand-blog/legal-structures-for-churches

I wonder if its possible to keep it simple and find a Church list to see if my name has been taken already and just register it. I will be then launching a website with links and discussion?

Thread moved to General Legal Issues.

 

Regards

 

Andy

Many Thanks Andy!

Interesting question.

Seems to me there are at least 3 different issues here:

(1) Is there an official registry of some sort which controls or authorises the name a church can adopt? AFAIK there is no such central registry or authorisation process, although I'm pretty sure that if you started calling yourself a name that is already used by another organisation they would be able to go to court and stop you doing so.

(2) Charitable status. Many churches are registered as charities but this seems to be a separate issue. Churches don't have to be a charity.

(3) There is a procedure for registering a a 'place of public religious worship', and it looks like being registered is a requirement for exemption from Council Tax, for example. This article says more about this. Courts have had to decide what a "religion" is when deciding whether a building can be registered in this way, so presumably there is a body of case law which you should be able to find online somewhere. The leading cases are cited on this link.

https://www.charitytaxgroup.org.uk/tax/business-rates/places-of-public-religious-worship/

[Got timed out before I could Edit]

As far as I can see there are no controls or laws about starting a church or a religion or what you can call it (as long as you don't try to call it the name another organisation is already using). The law only gets involved if either

(a) you claim to have charitable purposes and want to register as a Charity, in which case you have to comply with charities law, and/or

(b) You want to obtain financial benefits, such as Business Rates exemption, when you have to meet the criteria the Courts have developed for "what is a religion?".

If you don't want to do either of those things you can open your church tomorrow! CAG could rename itself "The Church of the Consumer" right now if it wanted to

Your church doesn't have to be n incorporated body, a Companies Act company, but if you did set it up that way then various legal requirements for company formation have to be met and there is a system of registration of business names although I don't know much about how that works.

"If you don't want to do either of those things you can open your church tomorrow! CAG could rename itself "The Church of the Consumer" right now if it wanted to"

That's fantastic news. Especially since I have been beavering away at the website.

If in the future, it becomes necessary to turn it into a non-profit etc.

I guess I could look at these issues then. I don't forsee ever wanting to do this though as I think it best to keep it free.

Thanks Ethel

Thanks for your reply!

Mine reply just went missing so to re-cap:

 

Don't know if I would want to register it as a Charity?

 

"recognised as a religion" is an interesting one. If anyone has any legal links to this I would be grateful. There is widespread refulsal to continue with Church of Status Quo and I see this spilling out into Jedi and what I think is satire Church of The Flying Spaghettin Monster etc.

 

I expect that everyone registering their home as a church as a Council Tax Sca* is not a good idea.

 

Should Churches be exempt from Council Tax? The ethical dilemma would be that tax is often used to fuel war and for practices which often are not in alignment with altruism, fairness, truth etc. Although they do a lot of good things too.

The Church of FSM is most definitely not satire. Perhaps if you read the good book you’d see just how sincere it is in its teachings.

I’ll thank you to not cast judgement, particularly as you are claiming to base your church on ethics....

Ramen.

"what I think is satire " It says its satire here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

The prostitues with STD's and stale beer is a nice touch for hell.

After looking a little way into the jedi religion - I think that has a great foundation to it !

Ramen, Ramen.

N

I take the adage of the last census were loads of people put Jedi as a religion, it needed more than 10,000 people to put this to be recognised

I'm pretty sure they government said at the time that it was irrelevant how many people said their religion was 'Jedi' it still wasn't a religion and anyone putting down 'Jedi' would be recorded in the official census statistics as 'no religion'.

Subsequently Jedis tried to register as a Charity on the grounds that they had religious objectives that were charitable but their request was rejected

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/19/temple-of-the-jedi-order-application-religion-rejected-charity-commission-uk

how about the church of the fonz (family guy) i bet someone has taken that one

"what I think is satire " It says its satire here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster

 

The prostitues with STD's and stale beer is a nice touch for hell.

 

After looking a little way into the jedi religion - I think that has a great foundation to it !

 

Ramen, Ramen.

You’re citing Wikipedia.....

FML.

I'm pretty sure they government said at the time that it was irrelevant how many people said their religion was 'Jedi' it still wasn't a religion and anyone putting down 'Jedi' would be recorded in the official census statistics as 'no religion'.

 

Subsequently Jedis tried to register as a Charity on the grounds that they had religious objectives that were charitable but their request was rejected

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/19/temple-of-the-jedi-order-application-religion-rejected-charity-commission-uk

I was just looking at what constitutes a religion. Clearly the followers don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster deity, so wondered about that.

This article http://www.dailybreeze.com/2015/04/21/ask-the-lawyer-legally-what-constitutes-a-religion/

cites three important points in order to make the call:

Three objective guidelines about what constitutes a religion came into focus:

 

(1) It must address fundamental and ultimate questions having to do with deep and imponderable matters,

 

(2) It is comprehensive in nature, consisting of a belief-system as opposed to an isolated teaching, and

 

(3) It often can be recognized by the presence of certain formal and external signs.

 

In both matters (the sun-worshipping atheist and the vegan), a religion was not found.

Although there were a set of principles on which the plaintiff in each case relied to guide his life, “it reflects a moral and secular, rather than religious, philosophy.”

The USA rejects the church of the flying spaghetti monster as a religion, other countries such as New Zealand accept it and they held their first official wedding in April 2016.

so that's 1) imponderables 2)Belief-system 3)Hat and logo.

The Jedi Article is interesting Ethel, thanks.

The ruling that the group does not promote moral or ethical improvement is a little puzzling though.

When I read articles like this, it starts getting very complicated! https://beyondallreligion.net/2012/01/21/how-christianity-was-invented/

I imagine John Locke would have been a pastafarian

p.s. I don't think the Government have any right at all to change the answers of any citizen filling out their census forms.

Especially not their religion! Even if it is their perceived religion:

Isn't that fraud to change an answer from "Jedi" to "No Religion"?

 

Isn't that fraud to change an answer from "Jedi" to "No Religion"?

No!

Would it be fraud if the Government changed its citizens answers from Jedi to Catholic?

okokok

Forgive me, I thought this thread was about starting your own church?

HB

Would it be fraud if the Government changed its citizens answers from Jedi to Catholic?

It wouldn't be fraud even if the government changed every answer to every question. That's not what the offence of fraud is.

We seem to be drifting a long way from your original question, as honeybee says....

okokok

 

Forgive me, I thought this thread was about starting your own church?

 

HB

Its obviously your call to make, but this thread is about starting my Ethical Church. Therefore it does help to clarify terminology such as what a religion is, what ethics are etc. and look to links other members have provided of minor religions.

Its not simply about registering a building somewhere.

It wouldn't be fraud even if the government changed every answer to every question. That's not what the offence of fraud is.

 

We seem to be drifting a long way from your original question, as honeybee says....

That statement about fraud seems absurd, to me. Falsifying peoples records is surely fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud

Do you mean that because it is the government they can do what they like?

I gather the point is that if having a lot of people in a religion gives that religion some weight, then how will we know how many jedis are in the country if the government refuses to count the census answers?

I expect I will be accused of fraud for starting a church or saying that I have an online church which some will reduce down merely to a website. Or when I fill out my forms with my religion in. It certainly doesn't feel that way though.

That statement about fraud seems absurd, to me. Falsifying peoples records is surely fraud https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Fraud

The argument is pointless as it has nothing to do with your question about starting your own church. Neither does your link, which is about US law, have any relevance. Fraud in the UK requires, among other things, dishonest intent and personal gain of some sort by the person committing the fraud. Neither could conceivably be relevant to the government recording 'Jedi' as 'No religion' in the census.

It is possible that someone starting up a new church could be intending to commit a fraud on people who join the church. I am not, of course, suggesting that is your intention.