© 2019 Geoff Taylor
© 2019 The Urantia Book Fellowship
The Interfaith Committee’s purpose is to foster fraternal relations, understanding, and good will with organizations devoted to the practice or study of religion, to the end that the teachings of The Urantia Book are advanced. At first, one would think that the Interfaith Committee is another form of outreach and quite frankly that is what I thought when I was elected to Chair the committee, but that is not the case. It is much more about working closely with, and trying to understand, other faiths and perhaps be able to sow seeds of Urantia teachings in these fertile grounds.
There was an exception to this in our attendance at the Parliament of the World’s Religions in 2018. In this case we attended more as adjuncts to the outreach committee. Despite the promotion and distribution of Urantia Books, it was a wonderful opportunity to discover so many different faiths all brought together in one place to share their beliefs. This was also a great opportunity to work closely with the other Urantia Book organizations to manage the event.
A true opportunity to serve in the capacity of fostering fraternal relations and learning to understand other faiths happened when we attended the Wild Goose Festival. The Wild Goose (which is their name for the Holy Spirit) allowed us to mix and mingle with hundreds of people who were busy deconstructing their various Bible-based religions and were trying to reconstruct the fundamental tenets into logical and more tolerant paradigms.
I used to feel that the challenge of the Interfaith Committee was to search for and amplify any common ground. I truly felt that if we could get all religions to agree that there was one creator that we would be on the road to world peace: One loving creator, one loving family or as I like to put it: One Creator, One Cosmos, One Clan. I once wrote a letter to Pope Francis to that effect. Although this may still be true, I am now thinking that diversity of religious thinking is necessary, so long as we all give the overarching sovereignty to one creator. No religion has all the right answers, but we should ask: What do all religions have in common? True religionists probably feel the need to serve and this service will hopefully unite us all in love, and God is love. Service is a form of worship and if other religionists see our desire to serve our common God of love and see that we are serving his creation, perhaps they may feel drawn to the teachings of The Urantia Book.
One language, the language of love; one religion, service; one goal, being more loving (more like the loving God we have faith in).
No religion has all the right answers, but we should ask: What do all religions have in common?