© 2001 Richard Bain
© 2001 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Have you ever gone past a construction site and peeked through the fence to see what was going on? If you saw the construction when it had just started, you may have seen a large hole with some men laboring at the bottom of it. If it had rained recently, they were probably caked with mud. These men were constructing a foundation for the building that would one day occupy the site. And once the building is finished, the foundation will never be seen again until the building is one day demolished.
The building that arises on the site may be graceful and elegant; people may say, “Look at that beautiful building!” But, excepting civil engineers, how many will say, “It must have a wonderful foundation.” Yet the foundation may be one of the most important elements in the building; if it cracks or shifts, that beautiful building could be destroyed. Remember that Jesus’ only parable about his profession, carpentry, told us of the danger of building a house on shifting sand; he knew the importance of good foundations. Unfortunately, the only time a foundation gets publicity is when it fails. It is my contention that we are only at the beginning of a great construction project; we are laboring in the hole to build a suitable foundation for some vast structure. Though we’ve only just started the project, some folks expect to come past the construction site and see a finished building.
There are those in the Urantia community who bemoan the fact that The Urantia Book isn’t on the best seller list and that there aren’t a million study groups around the world. Others think that there should be a worldwide Urantia religion by now. There are even those who say that the revelation has failed because it is almost unknown by the world at large. They blame either the Urantia community in general, Urantia Foundation in particular for its policies, or infighting between factions within the community. Is the revelation a failure? How much progress should we see at this point in the evolution of our community?
What were the expectations of the pioneers of our movement? One expectation was that they would be building some sort of Urantia Book based church. According to a recent book [1], Urantia Brotherhood was structured after an early model of the Presbyterian Church. To prepare for this proposed spiritual organization, the Brotherhood started a school to train and ordain teachers and leaders. But the Brotherhood evolved into a social organization, and the school eventually closed. Attempts through the years to establish a Urantia church have thus far failed to produce a church organization that spread beyond the area of its inception. Perhaps like Jesus’ disciples, the founders of our Urantia community expected the kingdom to come soon with power and glory. It didn’t. What came to the disciples and apostles was the death of their cherished leader, rejection of Jesus’ teachings by much of the Jewish community, and later on, persecution by the Roman government. Where was the power? Where was the glory? But we all know the rest of the story. Christianity eventually conquered the Roman Empire. Today, with 1.9 billion adherents, Christianity is the largest religion in the world. But it took Christianity several centuries before it got organized and became a significant force in the world. I have no doubt that some sort of Urantia church or spiritual organization is needed and will emerge in the fullness of time, when conditions are ripe.
In papers that date from the 1930’s, the authors of The Urantia Book tell us that our planet is quivering on the brink of a great spiritual renaissance. (p. UB 195:9.4) For us mere mortals, six decades is a long time to quiver. Unfortunately, statements like this one by the authors might have some folks in a state of great expectation and anticipating some great spiritual event to happen soon or at least in our lifetimes. But we need to remember that the authors have a quite different sense of time than we do. Even the Midwayers have experienced thousands of years of Urantia history; a human lifetime is but a brief episode in the saga of human history to our unseen friends. One antidote for our impatience is for us to develop the far-sightedness of our celestial brethren. Though we may not live to see our efforts come to fruition, we must not lose heart. Someone once said that when you buy a home and plant a tree, you are probably planting it so the next owner will have shade. If no one ever planted a tree because they wouldn’t get to enjoy the shade of it, then few of us would have trees or shade.
When people look back a hundred years from now, will they see the Fifth Epochal Revelation and our community as failures? I don’t think so. I do think that they may decide that we lacked a clearly defined vision for the future of our community. We seem to be building a foundation for some sort of structure. Will the structure be a worldwide Urantia church? What is our vision?
Dr. Meredith Sprunger and Sherilyn Henry have initiated a project to plan for an organization they call “The Spiritual Fellowship.” This project has alarmed a number of Urantians around the world. They apparently feel this either isn’t the time for such a spiritual organization or else they fear and distrust organizations. They are no doubt thinking of how the Christian church has abused its power in the past.
The Christian church has indeed at times suffered from the ills of institutionalism and the folly of mixing religion and politics. The schismatic nature of the church has led to a multiplicity of parallel church organizations, resulting in a great deal of rivalry and duplication of effort. It would be sad to see this splintering take place within a Urantia spiritual organization. A second problem with institutions is that their main mission sometimes evolves into self-perpetuation. And finally, institutionalizing a movement can wall its members off from other religionists. Perhaps it is just as well that a strong Urantia church or religion did not emerge earlier in the history of our movement. A line from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”, tells us, “Before I built a wall, I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out and to whom I was likely to give offense.” Once the wall goes up, the process of separating ourselves from other religious groups begins. But in some respects, a degree of separation is not necessarily undesirable. Some amount may be needed to nurture and retain the character of our community. How much separation is needed; how much is healthy? To whom do we open our doors? How large is our umbrella? Can we be all things to all people? Should we try to be? These are questions we will have to address as we build any spiritual organization. But do we even need a spiritual organization?
When people look back a hundred years from now, will they see the Fifth Epochal Revelation and our community as failures? I don’t think so. I do think that they may decide that we lacked a clearly defined vision for the future of our community. We seem to be building a foundation for some sort of structure. Will the structure be a worldwide Urantia church?
There is power in organization. While admitting the potential problems of organizations, we also need to acknowledge their positive potentials. The authors of The Urantia Book remind us of the synergy of people cooperating together on some task. How could there be team sports without teams? How could a great skyscraper be built without someone to coordinate and direct the construction crew? A team has the structure and leadership needed to help set goals and keep the team focused on these goals. Dr. Meredith Sprunger has pointed out that we need Urantia spiritual organizations to do tasks that are too large for individuals or even small groups to handle. But is it time to start such a spiritual organization?
Is this the appropriate time? I don’t know, but I do know that we would be wise to plan for the advent of such an organization. A beautiful garden does not happen by accident, and an effective organization requires some wise forethought. And as we plan, we should observe the problems of existing religious organizations and build safeguards into the structures we construct so we can avoid these pitfalls. While we debate the strengths and weaknesses of institutions and the need for them, we should also consider the needs of individuals within our community.
There are many Urantians who would like to worship with kindred spirits. They may now be attending some Christian church where they worship on Sunday morning. While they derive spiritual benefit from this, they no doubt regret that they cannot share much with their church friends about The Urantia Book. And unfortunately, worship in some Christian churches lacks creativity; it all too often consists of reciting ancient theological phrases and singing songs whose words some of us may not accept. Those of us who have studied The Urantia Book sense that there is a depth of worship possible that could thrill the soul and give us a feeling of genuine communion with God. We would like to reach toward this, but feel stifled by the lack of spontaneity and creativity of some Christian ritual. We feel more like observers than participants. Some Christian thinkers have lamented this lack in the church. The existentialist philosopher, Kirkegaard, was just such a thinker. He lamented that in churches now, God is the prompter, the minister is the actor, and the congregation is the audience. The way it should be is that the minister is the prompter, the members of the congregation are the actors, and God is the audience. Furthermore, some theology of the Christian church is not in harmony with the high concepts of The Urantia Book. A glaring example of this is the Doctrine of the Atonement. About this doctrine, the authors of The Urantia Book tell us, “It is an affront to God to believe, hold or teach that innocent blood must be shed in order to win his favor or to divert the fictitious divine wrath.” (UB 4:5.4) Perhaps then a Urantian spiritual organization is both needed and desirable. Can this organization serve the needs of everyone?
What sort of organization will emerge from the Urantia community? As I look at the community, one striking feature I note is how it is rapidly becoming a worldwide phenomenon. Thanks in part to the translations of The Urantia Book now available, people from many diverse cultures are being drawn into our community. If the emerging foundation is worldwide, the logical conclusion is that the structure built on it will be as well. Obviously, as is true with Christianity in many cultures, any church or spiritual organization that emerges within a culture will bear the imprint of that culture. And no doubt there will be elements of existing religions in that culture that appear in a Urantia religious organization within that culture. How can we achieve unity amid the diversity of the various organizations that appear in our international community? I feel that a worldwide organization will evolve that will consist of a federation of all these local religious organizations. The umbrella organization will give the Urantia community a world image and a sense of global identity. But we should bear in mind that we aren’t the only game in town.
Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to slip into the “chosen people” mentality. For instance, we may be tempted to look down our noses at Christians and say to them, “You’re still struggling with the Fourth Epochal revelation, and here we are with the Fifth one in hand. Come to us; we’ll enlighten you!” But if we have a bit of humility, we’ll realize that all religionists who are working to help people establish a closer relationship to God are fellow spiritual workers. Our knowledge of the Urantia Papers does not necessarily make us either more virtuous or more effective in bringing people to God and God to people. A more realistic view is that we are just one of the forces on our planet working toward this goal. We all have worthy contributions to the evolution of the Supreme. I believe that instead of plotting to convert the world to Urantianism, we should seek to establish working relationships with all the world’s religious groups. But to do this we will need a religious organization that can represent our community to the world. With such an organization in place, we will be able to collectively dialogue with other religions as equals. Yes, there will no doubt be significant opposition from elements within the various world religions. Perhaps there will even be some persecution. That will be the downside of being noticed. But whatever the struggles we may encounter, we should take comfort that we have some powerful allies, that there are forces beyond mere mortals involved in this Great Enterprise. We can expect some help.
I mentioned before that we’ve never seen the plans for the structure that will sit on the foundation we’re building. So where are the plans? Where are the architects? Is all this just happening by blind and random chance? I don’t think so. I believe that our unseen friends have been planning for the emergence of this worldwide structure for centuries, even millennia. We haven’t seen much of their influence-except perhaps in the case of The Urantia Book-because they operate with methods too subtle for our detection. Consider the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Was the domino fall of communist regimes just an accidental juxtaposition of circumstances? Perhaps, but as that great philosopher Winnie the Pooh once observed to his small friend, “Consider the possibilities Piglet.” “So what if there is a plan,” you ask, “What can I do about it if I don’t know what it is?”
There are things we can do. First, we can support efforts such as the ongoing translations, international conferences, international newsletters and journals, and using the Internet to bring our international community closer together. Second, we can pledge our support to our unseen spiritual friends. Does this seem strange? The Midwayers and angels are not normally allowed to make us aware of their presence. Nonetheless, we know they must be working hard to spread The Urantia Book and its ideals to all the cultures of the world. Their goals are our goals, and vice versa. Not only should we pledge our support, but also we should acknowledge and honor them for the decades and perhaps centuries of planning and work that our unseen friends have devoted to generating the Urantia Papers and fostering our community. They surely are among the unsung heroes of our world. They deserve both our accolades and our cooperation. They are our partners in this Great Enterprise.
I believe that instead of plotting to convert the world to Urantianism, we should seek to establish working relationships with all the world’s religious groups. But to do this we will need a religious organization that can represent our community to the world.
Yes, we find ourselves in the hole working on the foundation, and we may not get credit for our work. Nevertheless, as potential agondonters, let us move out on faith. Let the importance of the work be our motivation. As we labor together with our unseen friends, another piece of the cosmic puzzle falls in place; God the Supreme emerges. “The act is ours, the consequences God’s.” (UB 48:7.13)
A History of the Urantia Papers, Larry Mullins and Meredith Justin Sprunger, Penumbra Press, Colorado, 2000. ↩︎