Lots of families do. People in Alaska who own sled dogs belong to the CLF, and families who eat dinner under palm trees in the tropics. If you go to the Rocky Mountains, you can find CLF members, and if you travel to just about any country in the world you could find a CLF member to visit.

CLF does have a minister, and other staff people too—the way most churches do, but they work in a rented office in Boston, Massachusetts. And this office in Boston is the CLF home. Lots of things live there that are important to CLF members—the computers that let CLFers from all over the world e-mail each other; the telephone with the free 800 number so people can call the minister; the mailbox that brings CLFers letters; the library that mails books and videos to church members' homes; and the people who work on Quest, the CLF newsletter, and uu&me!, the CLF kids' magazine you're reading right now.

But, how did CLF get started? Who ever had the idea to have a church without walls?

Well, back in the 1800's, people in both the Unitarian churches and the Universalist churches realized that lots of their members and friends were moving out West—where there were very few churches at all. The people in the Eastern United States wanted to help. In the beginning, they published little books or pamphlets called "tracts" that taught people about the Unitarian and the Universalist religions and kept them in touch. They also paid some ministers to travel to the West to preach wherever they could.

Many Unitarian and Universalist families would gather books and newspapers with sermons and other religious writing and they would pay to ship whole barrels of them to people who were settling the West. People who lived out there were hungry for things to read—especially things that would help them think about important questions about God or right and wrong ways to behave.

Some time in the 1840's, Unitarian women founded a group to write thousands of letters about liberal religion and they sent the letters not only to people in the West but they also sent them to soldiers fighting the Civil War. They called their group the "Post Office Mission" and it was the beginning of a great idea. That idea was using the mail to help people who weren't near a church to still think about and practice their religion.

In 1944, the American Unitarian Association decided to start an official church by mail; they called it the Church of the Larger Fellowship. It began with 37 names. The Universalists had a similar idea around the same time. Then, in 1961 when the Unitarians and Universalists became one denomination, the two churches-by-mail joined each other too, and the CLF has been a real Unitarian Universalist church ever since.

Now, almost 60 years later, using the mail is only one way that the Church of the Larger Fellowship reaches people around the world. The telephone, the CLF website, and e-mail groups connect thousands of people who cannot get to a regular church, or who want to belong to a local church as well as a church that connects UUs all over the world.

Though CLF members are different from other church-goers, they're still part of a church. Every Sunday morning, starting at dawn, CLFers from all over the world start to e-mail their joys and concerns to one another and they do it all day because of the time differences. They share their problems and their questions and their stories with one another just as if they were freinds and neighbors. And because of CLF, they are—no matter where they are in the world.