Mike’s founding of the Church of All Worlds transforms a remark by Jubal into a working institution: a legally recognized church, a community of practice, and a gradual program of training in Martian. Its organizing claim is that its teachings offer truth to be learned rather than faith to be demanded. The founding also exposes a tension at the heart of the enterprise: Mike’s spiritual work is accompanied by calculated use of institutional credentials, while Jubal, who helped supply the original idea, recoils from the public titles and religious authority Mike assumes.

The Idea and Its Institutional Route

Mike eventually tells Jill that he wants to be ordained, linking his wish to enter ministry with the religious institution he will establish. Jubal later learns that Mike traced the idea of what a church could accomplish to something Jubal had said. The connection is significant partly because Jubal does not remember making the remark; he can only admit that it sounds like something he might have said. He also recognizes that Mike’s grasp of law could have led him to a similar conclusion independently.

Mike’s route to founding the church is deliberate rather than a sudden declaration. He spends months living at a small, impoverished sectarian college, earns a bachelor’s degree by examination, and receives a ministerial call and ordination from a recognized denomination. He writes a comparative-religion dissertation that Jubal regards as learned but carefully noncommittal, and brings it to him for literary criticism. A donation to the struggling college coincides with the award of Mike’s earned doctorate. He then secures an honorary doctorate from a distinguished university for contributions to interplanetary knowledge, making his appearance at a solar-system studies conference a condition of accepting the invitation. Mike had previously declined approaches from institutions ranging from CalTech to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute; Harvard accepts the arrangement and draws him to its conference.

After a few weeks as assistant chaplain at his alma mater, Mike breaks with the denomination in a schism and establishes his own church. Jubal regards the maneuver as legally sound and supported by precedent, even as he finds its presentation distasteful. The church’s founding is thus both spiritual and organizational: Mike acquires recognized credentials, satisfies institutional requirements, and then uses a formal break to create an independent body.

Doctrine and Method

Mike describes the church as a church in legal and moral terms, while distinguishing its purpose from familiar religious goals. It is not trying to bring people to God, save souls, or produce faith. In his account, souls cannot be lost, and the church offers truth that can be checked rather than beliefs that members must accept on authority. Its claimed value is practical: what its members learn could make war, hunger, violence, and hatred unnecessary.

That teaching cannot simply be conveyed in English. Mike says that newcomers must learn Martian, because the understanding he is describing cannot be stated in English any more than a symphony can be written down in another medium. Learning the language is therefore not a decorative qualification but the central difficulty of the church’s method: prospective members must be willing to study and practice before they can grasp what is offered. The emphasis falls on demonstrated understanding, not a profession of belief.

Mike’s description makes the church at once a teaching institution and a community. He calls the Nest a monastery, but presents it as a place where members are trained rather than a refuge for people who have already mastered the teaching. Even those inside are not fully trained. The church’s work depends on patience: Mike screens hundreds of people day after day, finds a few dozen, and sees only a very small number gradually enter the Nest for further instruction. He anticipates that sufficiently trained members may establish other nests, allowing the community to grow, but insists that there is no need to hurry.

Training, Ritual, and Membership

The institution’s path into the Nest combines language study, progressive instruction, and shared ritual. Its circles mark stages of preparation, though the process is not an inflexible ladder: Mike may judge someone ready to share water before reaching the Seventh Circle. He selects Sam and Ruth for that step when they have only just entered the Third Circle; they later become a priest and priestess. Dawn and Patty can occasionally recognize candidates for special advancement and training, but Mike is the one who can make such an early judgment with confidence.

The movement toward full membership continues through the Eighth Circle and, eventually, the Ninth Circle and the Nest itself. The formal Sharing-Water service is distinct from the everyday sharing of water: the whole Nest attends as new brothers, usually a couple, become part of the community. Mike and Jill’s water-sharing with Patricia illustrates that the bond is presented as serious and enduring. Jill explains that it joins trust, mutual disclosure, and partnership, and that it cannot be broken without fatal consequences. She also makes clear that Patricia is free to refuse if the rite conflicts with her religion or conscience. Patricia chooses to participate, and Mike offers her the water of life.

Sam and Ruth’s account shows how study and ritual prepare members for that commitment. They reach the Third Circle through Sam’s rapid language learning and Ruth’s determined study. When they begin to think in Martian, Mike recognizes the change and gives them water. Ruth describes the resulting conflict in her earlier attitudes and the continuing effort required to discipline herself. As they move through the inner circles, Mike is trying to bring them into the safety and peace of the Nest; Ruth nevertheless approaches the final service afraid that she may not be able to join herself to the group. In the Innermost Temple, the gathered members call them to share the water of life. Ruth remembers entering the pool and describes the welcome as a lasting homecoming. Her account makes membership not an instant conversion but the culmination of instruction, uncertainty, ritual, and collective acceptance.

Authority, Criticism, and Significance

Mike’s authority within the church appears in its teaching, its selection of candidates, and its structure of advancement. He screens prospective members, decides when an unusually early water-sharing is appropriate, and trains those who enter the Nest. Yet the institution does not rest on a claim that members should accept his word as faith: Mike describes its offering as checkable truth and says that members must do the demanding work of learning the language through which it can be understood. The narrative therefore places personal authority alongside a stated method of verification and discipline.

Jubal’s response is sharply divided. He objects to Mike becoming a religious leader and is especially repelled by his string of academic and clerical titles. But his criticism does not erase his recognition that Mike has built the organization through a carefully arranged sequence of legitimate degrees, ordination, and separation from the original denomination. He even helped polish the comparative-religion dissertation, adding cautious wording by habit. The irony is that the skeptic’s earlier idea and editorial assistance become part of the machinery of a church he finds nauseating.

The Church of All Worlds is consequently presented neither as a simple rejection of religion nor as an ordinary denomination. It adopts the legal form and public credentials of established institutions, while defining its purpose as practical knowledge, language learning, and trained communal life. Its slow recruitment and staged initiation contrast with easy conversion: the institution grows by screening, study, and gradual incorporation. The founding’s decisive change is that Mike turns his unusual understanding into a repeatable social form, one that can in principle be carried beyond its first Nest by members who have learned enough to teach others.