© 1992 Meredith Sprunger
© 1992 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
What is happening to the field of religion today? We are all aware that we are living in transitional times. In spite of the heroic attempts to bring spiritual relevance and power to traditional religious institutions, there is a sense of frustration and futility in the life of the church. Mainline churches are no longer mainline in our culture. We seem to have lost some indefinable aspect of centrality in our society.
The key to understanding what is happening in the church is found, I think, in the dynamics of cultural change. The major transition periods of history are characterized by a breakdown in the traditional social and religious customs and usages. The old orthodoxies lose their relevancy and a spiritual vacuum is created. There follows an increased hunger and search for spiritual meaning and reality. Cults and new religious movements flourish until a fresh vision of spiritual reality inspires the dedication and loyalty of the main body of the culture.
Such a condition of spiritual hunger characterized the civilization into which Jesus was born. There was a deep longing for spiritual identity and nurture.The mystery religions of the time attracted large numbers of people. Theologians have called this period “the fullness of time.” It was an era prepared for a new revelatory breakthrough.
It appears that we are living in a similar period today. There is a general recognition among thoughtful people that the time-honored structures of our religious institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the actual conditions and needs of our world. Large numbers of people are unsatisfied with the ministrations of traditional religious institutions and search earnestly for spiritual reality elsewhere.
There is a general recognition among thoughtful people that the time-honored structures of our religious institutions are becoming increasingly irrelevant to the actual conditions and needs of our world.
In this spiritual wasteland we have experienced an explosion of the occult. New and refurbished cults abound. Gurus and mystics are fashionable. Everything from channeling to mind-altering drugs has become epidemic. Everywhere people are searching for a soul-satisfying experience of spiritual reality.
Scholars have labeled our times variously as the postChristian, post-modern, or post-industrial age. All of the expressions of profound dissatisfaction with traditional modes of religious observance are rooted in a world-wide cultural revolution which is forcing contemporary humanity to search for new and more adequate spiritual foundations. We appear to be experiencing a new “fullness of time.” I believe our world is being prepared for a new revelatory encounter, and in the next five hundred years a great portion of our world will recognize The Urantia Book as a new epochal revelation. As this enlarged vision of spiritual reality leavens human creativity, our planet will experience “one of its most amazing and enthralling epochs of social readjustment, moral quickening, and spiritual enlightenment” UB 195:9.2.
Hopefully, the Christian Church will not follow the path of Judaism in rejecting or ignoring revelatory renewal. Our Clergy Network is committed to the task of leavening the church with the insights of the Fifth Epochal Revelation so that she once again will have a central ministry in our culture.