© 1991 Meredith J. Sprunger
© 1991 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
Mainline churches have lost almost five million members since 1965. There is a widespread concern about this loss and a worried recognition that mainline churches no longer speak as the “central voice” of our culture. Many individuals and groups within the churches have recommended strategies for spiritual renewal. In the December, 1990 Reader’s Digest (“Look What They’ve Done with My Songs”) John S. Tompkins, a Presbyterian layperson, suggests that professional minister-bureaucrats have emphasized a theology which downplays the spiritual and have substituted social, economic, and political action for the real function of religion-spiritual enlightenment and nurturance.
The Presbyterian Lay Committee, which publishes The Presbyterian Layman, agrees with this indictment. Its editor, J. Robert Campbell, says that the church should stay out of politics and stick to its unique mission: “the proclamation of the Gospel and making of disciples.” A survey taken of the church-at-large by a special committee of the denomination found that sixty percent of those responding considered these criticisms “a valuable voice of dissent in the church.”
Those of us among the clergy in mainline Christianity tend to be sensitive about such criticism and believe it is not a balanced evaluation of our leadership. Nevertheless, we do recognize that the church has traditionally been involved with secular society. Many of us have promoted this relationship.
This secular involvement of the church was inherent in its development in Western Civilization. Christianity furnished the dynamic for the new culture. Theology was the mother of all of our intellectual and scientific disciplines. Ministers in past generations were often the most educated people in local communities. It was a common practice to select ministers as administrators of hospitals and other social agencies. Clergy served as college presidents, professors, and teachers. They were elected to the board of directors of the most prestigious local and national organizations. The Church became deeply involved in our secular culture and evolved social, economic, and political working alliances. As our increasingly secular society lost its spiritual foundations, the church shared this spiritual deterioration.
The church will not regain its ability to minister creatively and bring spiritual renewal to humankind until it understands the unique function of religion in society. Religious institutions, i.e.religionists in groups, must concern themselves exclusively with religion — spiritual enlightenment, nurturance, and prophetic insight. The church’s central ministry must be the spiritual transformation and growth of individuals.
These spiritually transformed individuals will, in turn, transform society and its institutions. Religionists mustengage in social, economic, and political activities as individuals, not as institutions or parties. As the church devotes itself single-mindedly to religion, it will enable its members to find spiritual empowerment and guidance to become leaders and supporters in social, economic, and political reformation and growth. The church, as an institution, should be free from secular alliances.
The church must evolve creative, comforting, and loveexpanding fellowships which promote progressive spiritual insight and foster the appreciation of and dedication to supreme values. Let the church be the church, not a hybrid religious-secular organization. Only as the church brings spiritual ministry to individuals will it be able to renew itself and its members, who will, in turn, transform society. Religion achieves its most effective social ministry when it is not functionally connected with the secular institutions of society.
But since the church as an institution is so deeply involved in secular activities, how can it find spiritual renewal and function as a truly religious institution which can give direction and spiritually undergird our entire society? I have been contemplating this question for over thirty years, and am convinced that The Urantia Book has the greatest potential of any contemporary resource for facilitating this transition. It has the revelatory depth and breadth to restructure our conception of Reality, to give the church a clear picture of its mission, and to bring spiritual inspiration to empower us for transforming ministry.