© 1996 Meredith Sprunger
© 1996 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
by Howard A. Snyder
Abingdon Press, 1995, pp. 334
“EarthCurrents is an exercise in cultural analysis, viewed globally. It focuses particularly on the years 1990-2030. The thesis is that eight global trends are shaping what and how the world’s peoples believe, and thus are touching all our lives.” (p. 11)
Howard Snyder presents a provocative analysis of eight global trends: Online — The New Shape of Global Culture; Global Web — The Emerging World Economy; Gender Power — The Feminist Revolution; Fragile Greenhouse — The Environment at Risk; Vital Strings — DNA and Superstrings; Electric Minds — Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality; Western Decline — America’s Final Hour?; and New World Order — Global Culture or Clash of Civilizations.
The second section of the book describes six global worldviews: Global Economics — APragmatic Worldview; Quantum Mystery－ANew Scientific Worldview?; Life on a Living Planet — The Gaia Worldview; Divine Design — God in the Shadows?; The Force of Fate — Determinism Revisited; and Postmodernism — The Death of Worldviews?.
The third section of EarthCurrents discusses the strength and weaknesses of contemporary worldviews and presents an argument for an updated Christian worldview. A viable worldview, Snyder observes, must be coherent — it must account for the connectedness of all things and beings. Order (purpose), surprise (indeterminism), and beauty are indelible marks of the universe and human society. They are basic to a coherent view or reality.
“What, then, makes a worldview credible, believable? Three things, at least: How it squares with our experience; the influence of other people who believe it…; and its ability to answer questions and provide meaning.” (p. 260) Furthermore, such a worldview must have story — a narrative with meaning — as well as history, and truth. This world story must be comprehensive, ecological, have personal meaning, and be transforming and purposeful. Such a world story cannot be invented, but be “something really there.” All these qualities are found in the Christian story.
The center and meaning of this story is Jesus Christ. Christian theologies have often remade and tailored the religion of Jesus to fit their own fads and philosophies. There is hope that the church will again discover the authentic Jesus. This could result in a greatly expanded universe view that Snyder calls “the Seventh Dimension.” Snyder’s analysis of world culture in insightful and his appeal for the rediscovery of the authentic Jesus is a central emphasis in the message of The Urantia Book.
But paganized and socialized Christianity stands in need of new contact with the uncompromised teachings of Jesus; it languishes for lack of a new vision of the Master’s life on earth. A new and fuller revelation of the religion of Jesus is destined to conquer an empire of materialistic secularism and to overthrow a world sway of mechanistic naturalism. Urantia is now quivering on the very brink of one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment. (UB 195:9.2)