FALSE AND MISLEADING ADVERTISING FROM Urantia FOUNDATION:
Urantia Foundation’s Effort to Market their Edited Version of the Urantia Papers
as Being “Identical” to the Original 1955 Text.by Larry Mullins
In Urantia Foundation’s recent Urantian News, Spring 2002 Vol. 21, Issue 1, an announcement is made with the following headline: "THE TWELFTH PRINTING OF THE CLASSIC, HARDCOVER EDITION IN THE SPRING OF 2002 IS IDENTICAL TO THE FIRST EDITION PUBLISHED BY Urantia FOUNDATION IN 1955..."
As an advertising professional for more than thirty years, I must characterize this headline as false and misleading advertising. As a Urantian for nearly as long, I must turn sadly away from an organization that now elects to take the course of attempting to destroy the last vestiges of the original 1955 printing plates … the very plates which were the “basis” of the formation of Urantia Foundation in the first place. (According to their own history). Moreover, their announcement is so full of sophistries as to be shocking. The “Twelfth Printing” they are advertising here is NOT identical to the original text published in 1955, it is not even close. It is NOT the same book that older readers carry. Urantia Foundation acknowledges this with this disclaimer, which is buried in the text:
“The twelfth printing of the classic, hardcover edition in the Spring of 2002 is identical to the first edition published by Urantia Foundation in 1955, except for the few spelling corrections and changes that were authorized by one or more Contact Commissioners.”
However, there were NO contact commissioners after 1955, the contacts ended after publication of the Book. During the entire period of contact, from early in 1900 until 1955, the contact commission was never authorized to make changes in the text (other than spelling, capitalization, and punctuation corrections.) Once again, Urantia Foundation embraces the fallacy that anonymous “revelators” authorized changes in the text from the 1967 second printing until 1982, when Christy died. There were no revelators or contact commissioners after 1955.
It continues to be true that Urantia Foundation has not printed the original text of the Urantia Papers since 1955. What Urantia Foundation has done is to simply use their existing digital data (which does not agree with the original text), print a book, and wrap it in a replica of a 1955 dust jacket. They call this expedient, slick-packaged facade “identical” to the original text. I presume all the Trustees, with the exception of Dr. Kwan Choi, signed off on this deception. If there be any doubt among readers, simply take their edition and compare it to an original 1955 edition. Check page three. If the word “other” has been removed from #5, it is not an original text. Check page 1317. If the words “in the manger” have been removed from paragraph two, it is not an original text. If you care to go deeper, get a copy of “A History of the Urantia Papers” and check all 133 changes that are listed in the Appendix under “Merritt Horn’s Findings”, pp. 347-391. If you buy the current production by Urantia Foundation, and believe you are buying a copy of the original 1955 text, you will find all you got that relates to the original printing is a rather expensive facsimile of the dust cover.
The facts are clear, and were carefully documented in “A History of the Urantia Papers.” This book was prepared by Dr. Meredith Sprunger and myself, with considerable help and input from my wife Joan and 13 other veteran Urantians. For that reason, I will not fully document this communication. However, it should be noted that the team that produced “A History” agreed at the beginning of the project to follow the truth wherever it led. We also agreed that we would use only Foundation material, and material by Foundation supporters to document what turned out to be the Foundation’s default in 1967. Our History cautioned readers that Urantia Foundation has not published the original text of the Urantia Papers since 1955. The purpose of this communication is twofold: to caution readers that the so called “twelfth printing” does not contain the original text either; and second, to define the tragic policy of Urantia Foundation to defend the alterations that have been made to the original text of the Urantia Papers contrary to their Declaration of Trust.
When the Trustees came to Boulder a few years ago, they revealed a general lack of knowledge about the changes that had been made to the text. They also showed only moderate interest in them. I suggested to Mo Siegel, Rich Keeler, and George Dupont in separate conversations that they should republish the original 1955 text in a nice edition for people who wanted it. They seemed somewhat interested when I pointed out that many, many readers would buy it. It is regrettable that Urantia Foundation has elected to publish something that is not the original text and simply call it the original text. The only way the original Urantia Book text (which was printed from the original plates) can be republished is to shoot the original 1955 pages, one by one, and make individual negatives to print them. I know this, because I prepared the Pathways printing in 1995. I had to cut an original 1955 printing apart and have it shot. I examined each negative, and we had to re-shoot quite a few. It is much cheaper and expedient, from what has been euphemistically called a “business” point of view, to use existing digital data to reprint something else and simply falsely identify the publication as the “original text.” But, for many of us, the authentic original text will not simply cease to exist because Urantia Foundation decrees it so. My understanding is that the negatives we produced from the original text in 1995 were confiscated when Urantia Foundation shut Pathways down. Like the original plates, they were probably also destroyed.
Finally, it should be stated once more: the Declaration of Trust for Urantia Foundation does not authorize any changes whatsoever to the text. Moreover, the permission granted the contact commission to make only spelling, capitalization and punctuation corrections was NOT extended to Urantia Foundation Trustees. When Christy elected to destroy 40 of the original plates in 1967 in order to make her first batch of “corrections”, she was not a contact commissioner. Carolyn Kendall, who wrote the Foundation History in 2000, quoted Bill Sadler (one of the original contact commissioners) in a 1990 publication as writing this statement in a 1958 memo: “ … the Foundation … is an autocratic group. It is non-elective. It derives its authority from the defunct contact commissioners (which was) an autocratic body.” (de·funct adjective Having ceased to exist or live: a defunct political organization.)
The original intention was to print one million copies of the book from the authentic plates. Only 10,000 copies were ever printed from the original plates. When Christy made the grievous error of altering the original plates in 1967 for the second printing she was a Trustee. Apparently the only other Trustee who knew what she was up to was Tom Kendall. The Declaration of Trust clearly forbids the destruction of the plates without the unanimous vote of all the Trustees. At the time of Christy’s unilateral action Dr. Sadler was the only remaining former contact commissioner, and he was 91 and ailing. Dr. Sadler was never a Trustee. Christy resigned as a Trustee in 1971, and became a Trustee Emeritus. A Trustee Emeritus, according to the Declaration of Trust, has no power, under par. 7.4: “A Trustee Emeritus shall have no rights, duties, or powers hereunder, but the name will be given such a person only as an expression of appreciation of his past services as trustee.” Yet Christy continued to rule the roost, control the text and make changes in it until her death in 1982. In the cult-like atmosphere that prevailed at 533, no one dared challenge her.
Rich Keeler told me when he was in Boulder that Urantia Foundation preserves the original text of the Urantia Papers by keeping three copies of the 1955 printing safe somewhere. He seemed to believe this, and supporters of Urantia Foundation seem to accept this.
In closing, it must be pointed out that Urantia Foundation was formed “on the basis of the plates” according to its own History. According to the Trust document, there was only one element of the “Substantive Estate” at the time of formation which Urantia Foundation was to protect: the printing plates. (There were no books yet). The plates are gone now. The only vestige of the original plates are the Books that were printed from them in 1955. Here is what “A History” had to say about the situation, pp 216 - 217:
“The second point is self-evident, or should be: There cannot be two or more versions of the text, each of which is said to be an inviolate reproduction of the original. Urantia Foundation President Richard Keeler told me in 1998 that the Foundation retains the Declaration of Trust’s mandated part of the “Substantive Estate” of “not less than three (3) printed copies” of the “original text of THE Urantia BOOK” that were printed from the original plates. Mr. Keeler believes this fulfills the Trustees oath to preserve the original text inviolate. Unfortunately, as previously stated, the various “inviolate” versions of the text of The Urantia Book that Urantia Foundation has been printing and selling for decades are different from the three (3) printed copies of original text of The Urantia Book the Trustees presumably are keeping so carefully preserved.
“Some Urantians believe Urantia Foundation’s policies put the original text itself at risk. Dr. Sadler died on April 29, 1969, at the age of 93. Just after the third printing, on May 6, 1971, Urantia Foundation ordered R. R. Donnelley & Sons in Crawfordsville to complete destruction of the approximately “two thousand two hundred (2,200) nickel-plated stereotype plates of patent thickness for the printing and reproduction of such book.” It is almost certain that the Donnelley Company also destroyed the original paper tapes from which the type was set and the negatives from which the plates were made. These tapes and negatives were routinely kept in order to recast plates that had become worn from printing. The destruction of the original plates leads to the third point.
“The third point is the Declaration of Trust expressly forbids any alteration of the text. This is also self-evident, or should be. Aside from the principle of printing as well as preserving inviolate the original text, there is the pragmatic legal argument that the Declaration of Trust was designed and intended to protect the text of the Revelation from human folly. Carolyn tells us the clear parameters of the Trust were supplanted by this human aspiration: “The Foundation wanted the book to be perfect.” This well-intended desire by humans in 1967 resulted in a violation of both the direct instructions of the Revelators and the restrictions of the Declaration of Trust.”
Buyer beware. Jim Mills, who took over for Christy as a Trustee in 1971, was confronted in 1991 with evidence that changes had been made to the original text. He believed only one change had ever been made, the relative weight of the electron, and he believed it had been changed back. It was not, and at least 133 changes went beyond spelling, capitalization, and punctuation. He wrote, in reply to this evidence: "It looks like we need to carefully proofread the present printing against the first printing. In my opinion, there can only be one edition of the U.B., the first." (His emphasis).