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One of the criteria of authoritarian religion is the fundamentalism that grants god-derived infallibility, sacredness, and/or power to its creeds, sacred literature, objects of worship, rituals, rules, laws and lore.
Authoritarian religion apparently benefits two broad classes of adherent, one being those who wield power and authority, the other being those individuals for whom it is provides a ready refuge to which "the distracted and distraught soul of man may flee when harassed by fear and tormented by uncertainty."
"Such a religion requires of its devotees, as the price to be paid for its satisfactions and assurances, only a passive and purely intellectual assent." (1729)
Any form of fundamentalism that claims divine authority, and/or the infallibility of its belief system, cannot be anything other than authoritarian religion--no matter how well disguised.
Automatically, it must be in opposition to the free religion of the spirit as announced by Jesus.
The revelators of the Urantia Papers express their hope that modern followers of the Jesus' pathway will enable the restoration of what the early Christians knew--the reality of a personal, continuous, and spiritual relationship of the individual with the God-spirit within who is the one and only source of religious authority.
The exclusive authority of the "god-spirit within" cannot be displaced by any book, being, or symbolism. Each individual is responsible for themselves.
The revelators also express the additional hope that their revelation will initiate a new mode of spiritual progress that will carry with it, not only the church that bears Jesus' name, but all other religions.
Who will come to "Phoenicia" with Jesus?
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