In 1978, Frank attempted to form a non-profit church, The Church of Inter-Relations, but the IRS claimed that he did not qualify because his organization did not meet:
…the threshold requirement that the organization be in fact “religious,” that is, it must establish that its members have a sincere and meaningful belief in whatever doctrine is espoused, and that such belief occupies a place in the lives of those members parallel to that filled by God in the lives of traditionally religious people.
The ACLU then got involved and accompanied Frank, Linda, Debbie, Jim and Flo to Washington D.C. to argue that Frank’s “religion” did believe in God, but that it is a God within each of us. As a result, the IRS ruled that the church qualified for tax-exempt status as a religious organization.
The following is the summary of the church beliefs that the IRS agent wrote. What is amazing to us now is that the IRS had to read all of Frank’s writings in order to come up with this summary. And they did a really great job!
You stated that in 1971, your founder, Mr. Frank J. Moore, began to enter a trance-like state in which he received teachings, referred to as “revelations” or “spiritual lectures,” from a spiritual being called Reed who commanded Mr. Moore to record such teachings in a book and form an organization for the purpose of spreading these teachings throughout the world. Mr. Moore recorded such teachings in the Book of Reed, which forms your basic text and from which your beliefs are drawn.
The fundamental tenet of your beliefs is that the essence of each human being is his spirit or soul, which has an existence apart from the physical body and lives before the birth and after the death of the physical body. The human soul is inherently wise and gentle and will provide proper guidance for behavior in the physical world if the person is sufficiently self-aware to understand his soul’s instructions. You believe that at one time all human spirits were united as a single, whole spirit. This united spiritual entity constituted the “One-Self Aware,” the ultimate Supreme Being. Through time the One-Self Aware divided into its constituent elements and thus created the many human spirits that now exist. Because all human spirits were thus created from the same spiritual being, they are in essence the same.
It is taught that through the observance of your principles in everyday life, your followers can regain this awareness of their essential unity. Thus, your goal and that of your members is to reestablish the spiritual unity of humanity through your teachings and practices by assisting people in becoming more aware of the nature of their existence. You also believe that if humanity can become sufficiently aware of its spiritual inner nature, it will be possible to reunite or “melt” the many individual spirits, thereby resurrecting the ultimate Supreme Being, the One-Self Aware. The fundamental method by which your members strive to accomplish this goal is by “Human Melting,” a spiritual state in which one gains inner awareness of the nature of his human soul and then attempts to establish a communion with the souls of others.
To achieve this state of communion, Reed taught Mr. Moore the spiritual discipline of “Demanding.” Demanding is a state of mind or process in which the believer is always ready to satisfy the needs and requirements of anyone else and, conversely, expects others to do the same for him.
You state that this doctrine stems from the belief that because all humanity has in common the same essence, which is in reality part of an even greater existence, all human needs and wants are the same. Therefore, by assisting another to achieve his needs both spiritual and physical, one automatically assists himself in achieving his own needs. All human relationships affect all other human relationships, so that if two people become closer to each other and enter into spiritual communion, all of humanity is that much closer to the accomplishment of its ultimate goal — the recreation of the whole human spirit.
