© 1993 Meredith Sprunger
© 1993 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Last year Henry Grunwald, former U. S. ambassador to Austria and former editor-in-chief of Time, wrote an article for Time entitled, “The Year 2000: Is it the End-or Just the Beginning?” Following the fall of communism and new international arrangements, Grunwald says, “We are witnessing the end, or at least the decline, of an age of unbelief and beginning what may be a new age of faith.” Management guru, Peter Drucker, says the 21st century has already arrived. It is “totally new and dynamic — and we are quite unprepared for it.”
The new age of faith which is struggling to be born is a recognition of the limitations of modernism that rejected ontological transcendence (supernaturalism) and accepted the scientific world view as definitive. Traditional Christian conceptions of reality are equally disappointing. Fundamentalism, as Bishop John Spong (Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism) eloquently demonstrates, is intellectually untenable. Liberalism is often little more than a camouflaged version of secular humanism lacking in a transcendent view of spiritual reality. Mainline Christianity, concentrating on social action and institution building in the place of spiritual nourishment and the saving message of the gospel, has been steadily losing members and influence.
The new age of faith which is struggling to be born is a recognition of the limitations of modernism that rejected ontological transcendence (supernaturalism) and accepted the scientific world view as definitive.
The best hope for the revitalization of the church and the flowering of a new spiritual renaissance, I believe, is found in the superlative teachings of The Urantia Book. Its expanded view of spiritual reality and inspiring presentation of the life and teachings of Jesus will establish a new age of faith. During the last thirty-five years only the most progressive and courageous clergy have seriously examined the book. There is a modest Clergy Network which has discovered its rich mine of spiritual resources for preaching and teaching. But the power structures of the Christian clergy have treated The Urantia Book with deliberate and benign indifference.
What does this mean for the future of the Christian Church? Change should, indeed, be cautious and slow. But indifference is the road to spiritual stagnation. Will the church, in ignoring the most dynamic spiritual message to our world since the gospel proclamations of Jesus, take the path of the synagogue in his day, and lose its opportunity to be the carrier of the “good news” to humankind in the future?
The best hope for the revitalization of the church and the flowering of a new spiritual renaissance, I believe, is found in the superlative teachings of The Urantia Book. Its expanded view of spiritual reality and inspiring presentation of the life and teachings of Jesus will establish a new age of faith.
Will the progressive evolution of religion be carried forward by new religious institutions as yet unborn? There are a growing number of people who are searching for identity and fellowship in an open church where new ideas are welcome. Over 200,000 Urantia Books are circulating in our culture, and I repeatedly hear these readers of the book say they are looking for a church where they feel comfortable. The relative indifference of the power structure of the Christian Church to the expanded spiritual vision of this seminal book may be creating a spiritual vacuum that will result in the advent of new religious institutions.