The Universal Church resulted from a near-perfect union of Scientific Discipline and liberal faith-based organizations. The merger began as a protest movement calling for the reasoned use of technology through a lens of pacifiism, driven by faith in God and faith in Intelligent Life as God's instrumentation in the Universe. Taylor's Rebellion might have led to a new Dark Age, but the Universal Church was vocal and active, attracting entire population segments with its balanced rhetoric. It was clear that technology could be used for a number of evils, but it had brought Earth so far, and could not be abandoned.

Early forms of the Church were electronic from the outset. It was created out of whole cloth in Internet chatrooms and cyberspace VR nodes. With the discovery of the Standard, its power grew exponentially as society witnessed the very Hand of God in the stars. Within a few decades, the UC had chapters on hundreds of worlds, its own fleet of colony ships and a powerful position in the Union Government; Intervention.