© 1999 Meredith Sprunger
© 1999 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Ellen T. Charry, Associate Editor of Theology Today, observes in the April, 1999 issue that bookstores are brimming with works on spirituality. A new and broader view of spirituality is being established in our culture. “The Christian life,” she says, “can no longer be interpreted in exclusively denominational or confessional terms.” (p. 2)
In the May, 1999 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, Francis Fukuyama’s article, “The Great Disruption,” describes the deterioration of traditional social values in our postindustrial society. The information age is promoting moral individualism, tolerance, and cultural diversity. Fukuyama believes we are on our way to a new social order. The Most High planetary administrators, in my judgment, are progressively preparing our world for a new and expanded view of spiritual reality.
Marci McDonald, in the May 1, 1999 issue of U.S. News and World Report, says that corporate America appears to be in the midst of a spiritual “Damascus conversion” with more than 300 titles on workplace spirituality in bookstores. The American Management Association has conducted a forum on corporate spirituality, and 2000 economists gathered for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland with an agenda to discuss “spiritual anchors for a new millennium” and “the future of meditation in a networked economy.” Spirituality seems to be entering the main stream of our secular culture. The ground is being prepared for a new spiritual paradigm.
Robert Wuthnow, in After Heaven: Spirituality in America Since the 1950’s (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1998), points out that during the last half of the twentieth century in America there has been a detectable shift from a church or synagogue spirituality to one that is detached from denominational allegiance. People are developing a spirituality suited to their own needs. The traditional institutional view of God and spirituality is no longer adequate to minister to the needs of the 21 st century. The growing edge of people in our world are seekers. Some day they will discover the Fifth Epochal Revelation!