“The Urantia Book? I’ve never heard of it.” How Goes the Outreach Effort? by
“The Urantia Book? I’ve never heard of it.”
How Goes the Outreach Effort?
By Philip G. Calabrese, Ph.D.
Published in 1955, after decades of divine communications from personages visiting our world from outer space (via the mind of a sleeping, human contact individual with a particularly adept indwelling spirit) 69 years later The Urantia Book is still a well-kept secret!
Even taken as a book of inventive fiction, the scope of this 2097-page epic boggles the mind. It literally covers everything from the eternal Infinite to the evolutionary Supreme and ends with a cosmic mission and destiny for each individual soul as a coordinated part of the perfecting supreme Soul. How can such a work be unknown to so many people living today? Why is such a creative, and arguably a statistically proven, epochal revelation to our world largely unrecognized and even ignored?
One reason, which cannot be discounted, is that espousing a book presenting itself as “the fifth epochal revelation” to our world “Urantia” could easily bring ridicule and damage to a scientist’s or religious scholar’s reputation and position. (Every new scientific or religious advance is resisted by those threatened with obsolescence.)
For example, three scholarly authors of papers discussing The Urantia Book in a recent book edited by Byron Belitsos chose to be anonymous. Now why do you suppose they did that? For similar reasons, there has long been a tendency among believers to “bootleg” The Urantia Book’s insightful remarks without attribution.
The Urantia Book was purposely dropped quietly into world culture without fanfare, and the early culture of Urantia Foundation as copyright holder prevented the book from being quoted extensively except with hard-to-get permission. After all, people needed time to read and digest the book’s contents and judge its excellence. Superficial adherents could do more harm than good, perhaps taking control of the “Urantia movement” with a populist approach.
That danger existed in the first generation of readers after publication. But now there are plenty of readers who know the book well enough to prevent such a takeover threat were one to surface. But in the meantime, due to conflicts in publication efforts, the Urantia movement outreach organization, once called the Urantia Brotherhood, split into two organizations, only one of which is organically associated with Urantia Foundation while the other, The Urantia Book Fellowship (UBF) publishes its own, essentially identical, English edition.
Total Devotion Needed
Today, the many early young and enthusiastic readers of the 1970’s and 80’s are old, and the UBF’s local Urantia societies in the USA are typically dwindling in membership and participation. In the past, many of these study groups and local societies had little interaction with the central organization of The Urantia Book Fellowship (the present 36-member General Council (GC)).
These GC members are very hard-working administrators, among our most dedicated believers. But they labor in a constitutional framework that badly needs updating, even now very slowly discussing a constitutional revision of that self-same ill-suited constitutional framework. God help them!
Absent a truly dynamic administrative leader, the Urantia movement has become somewhat institutionalized with structures that struggle to be relevant to USA readership and youth.
To some extent, our Urantia movement organizations reflect those of us who profess belief in The Urantia Book and loyalty to Jesus’ Gospel message, but who have hardly been totally devoted to sharing the message. Life has other responsibilities and attractions, which too often become almost unbreakable routines.
Apostles, Not Just Disciples
In my own case, I am totally dedicated to promoting the spiritual message of The Urantia Book when I am hosting my Urantia study group, and also during some other times during an average day, like at my United Church of Christ weekly lectionary meetings, and when writing a note like this or a derivative paper. But I’m still a long way from “total dedication”.
Professionally, I spent decades writing and publishing numerous mathematical research papers including a book covering my synthesis of 2-valued Boolean algebra with 3-valued conditional event algebra, none of which directly promotes the book except potentially to testify to my intellectual ability.
At the same time since 1970, I also authored numerous presentations and papers on Urantia Book cosmology including a paper that statistically proves that “the probability that the UB was authored by human beings is less than 1 in 50 million”. That probability was based on Urantia Book predictions and contemporary science reversals of thinking since 1955, such as the book’s predicted discovery (in the 1990’s) of hundreds of millions of outer space galaxies. But those papers were submitted and appeared in the Urantia community publications, not in secular publications. Perhaps it is time for that to happen.
What we need, I think, are more people who can become Urantian spiritual leaders—full-time spiritual workers like the apostles, not just mostly part-time disciples populating dwindling “societies” that struggle to attract enthusiastic members to our mission. For that, we need a truly talented leader to coordinate our many efforts to share the revelation with the world. Pato Banton comes to my mind.
To gather active youth to the challenge of effecting the spiritual transformation of the world we need to better articulate the mission. At least we can muster the courage to openly espouse The Urantia Book so that we won’t hear “I’ve never heard of it” so often. Let our Urantia Book enlightenment shine and not be hidden under a bushel. The world needs that now.
5TH EPOCHAL REVELATION STUDY GROUP AND OUTREACH MAP
