© 1992 William Wentworth
© 1992 ANZURA, Australia & New Zealand Urantia Association
William Wentworth, Towamba, N.S.W.
I find myself in complete agreement with Ken Glasziou (January/February 1992) over preserving the original text of The URANTIA Book. If it is not practicable to alter future editions, then it may be admissable to include an appendix listing all alterations from the original text. This would provide, at very little cost, the basic information required.
However, I cannot agree with the attitude of the Sunshine Coast Study Group (SCSG) towards the copyright. The copyright, as they point out, may not be strictly necessary, but it is extremely useful.
In their article, the SCSG ask five questions:
1. Can a person really own a divine revelation?
Well, no, of course not! But this divine revelation is presented in the form of a book, and the Urantia Foundation took responsibility for the task of protecting the text. It has performed that task very well, at least until recently. In our civilisation, the technique for protecting texts is copyright, and so naturally enough the text which the Foundation is protecting is said to be “owned” by the Foundation. But this is an entirely different matter from claiming to “own a divine revelation.” The revelation is for all mankind, and is not owned by anyone. The existence of copyright over the text does not alter this unless, for some reason, Urantia Foundation should try to restrict access to the text. Urantia Foundation would hardly be likely to attempt to do this as one of its main functions is to make the text available to anyone sincerely interested in it. Refusing to allow corruption of the text by the ownership of copyright is not to be confused with claiming ownership of the revelation itself.
2. Is it likely that our celestial supervisors would grant authority to the Foundation trustees to assert control over utilization of the Fifth Epochal Revelation?
Likely or not, apparently they did give the Foundation the responsibility of preserving the text of The URANTIA Book, and the Trustees, very properly in my view, sought the legal protection of copyright.
The conflict taking place at the moment has nothing to do with the copyright itself, but rather grows out of recent attempts by the Trustees to establish tighter control over efforts to spread the revelation. My understanding is that the Trustees decided to impede the activities of some of the more radical evangelists in the (former) Urantia Brotherhood, and used ownership of the copyright as a weapon in their campaign. The radicals refused to be muzzled; the Trustees persisted in their attempts to control them. Neither side was prepared to compromise and so now the copyright is under threat. It is profoundly to be hoped that the copyright survives intact. It is not the source of the problem, but simply a weapon in an ideological dispute.
3. What are the likely consequences of loss of copyright of The URANTIA Book?
The loss of the copyright would end the Foundation’s legal power to prevent corruption of the text. I have no real idea as to how likely it is that such corruption will actually occur, but a casual glance around some of the current “spiritual” enthusiasms and fashions certainly gives ground for genuine concern. There are some very unscrupulous movements and leaders in both America and Australia who may well feel that a selective adaptation of certain parts of The URANTIA Book could help them spread their message. Only the copyright prevents this style of misuse of the text.
Refusing to allow corruption of the text by the ownership of copyright is not to be confused with claiming ownership of the revelation itself.
It is, of course, true that the copyright does expire in a couple of decades, and this problem will have to be tolerated then, anyway. But the longer the expiration is delayed, the greater will be the number of sincere readers of the unadulterated text to argue for its authenticity, and the greater will be the number of such texts in libraries, bookstores and private hands to balance the influence of corrupt texts.
This, incidentally, is one of the chief reasons why it is useful to increase the sale of books, even to people who do not read them very often, as a bank of books will be on bookshelves in all sorts of likely and unlikely places where their sheer numbers may help to undermine the authority of rival corrupt texts.
The final two questions asked by the SCSG need no further comment. It is true that we readers of The URANTIA Book have not exactly covered ourselves in glory in this dispute over the copyright. Nevertheless, I am one reader who thinks the copyright is valuable enough to be worth a bit of a fight.
