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Meredith Sprunger is by far our best qualified observer in this area, and states: "More than forty years experience in interfacing with the most progressive segment of mainline Christianity has taught me that anything purporting to be a new revelation is not within the boundaries of current theological-institutional respectability." (Christian Fellowship Journal 8 (1) 23, 1998)
To even think that the revelators were unaware that such would be the case is to cast aspersions indicating naivety on their part. Yet the Papers leave no doubt that their content is meant to upgrade all religion! We are expected to find a way.
"The religious challenge of this age is to those farseeing and forward-looking men and women of spiritual insight who will dare to construct a new and appealing philosophy of living out of the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and divine goodness." (43)
In this section, we are told to take the message of the Papers and present it an acceptable way to all manner of men.
A disquieting fact is that many Urantia Book readers convey an antagonistic attitude to Christianity and the churches, along with a "don't care" attitude that Christians are not accepting The Urantia Book.
But Paper 196 says: "What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions." Obviously the revelators do care.
When a commercial firm goes bankrupt it either disappears or else someone else comes along, dismisses the old management, and starts anew. And if they fail, the cycle might restart until someone gets it right, and the firm prospers. Otherwise death is assured.
So what new tack can we try with our precious Urantia Book?
Can we get away from a fundamentalist-style of thinking and simply market this book as an interesting and meaningful work on religion and theology?
To succeed, we would need to forget about celestial authorship and simply admit that the true origins of the text are unknown (which is the truth). As pointed out by Meredith Sprunger, the origin and authorship of a book is not a philosophical criterion of truth. Regardless of whether supermortals or human beings wrote the Urantia Book, it must still be evaluated by its truth content and not by authorship. (CFJ, 8 (1) 6)
Probably the names of authors would best be omitted from a table of contents, and perhaps could be added at the end of each Paper as, "attributed to a...." But if the strange names of authors might be a hindrance to acceptance, then they should be omitted.
We must remember how Jesus told his opponents that it was not important that they believe in him but it was important that they believe in the Father-God about whom he taught.
We would then have to stand back, see what happens, and modify approaches accordingly. The aim of a new approach would be to get the book read because of the merit of its outstanding concepts and ideas, then leave it to new readers and the Spirit of Truth to figure what it means to themselves and for themselves.
Maybe the book needs a different name, perhaps "The Urantian Papers" or perhaps a neutral name like "A Philosophy of Religion."
Thought also needs to be given to making Part 4 available as a "Life of Jesus" without the revelatory overtones. It could start at Section 1 of Paper 121 but be modified to substitute "Jesus: for "Michael" where appropriate.
If we could get Christians to be comfortable with having the Papers on their bookshelves, and particularly for clergy and academics to do so, a new start might be just around the corner.
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