Revelation Made Livable: Meredith Sprunger's Challenge to the Movement
In a 1993 conference talk, Dr. Meredith Sprunger told the Urantia movement something it did not want to hear: a book can reveal, inspire, and orient, but only communities can make a revelation livable. Thirty years on, his challenge has only grown sharper.
Revelation Made Livable: Meredith Sprunger's Challenge to the Movement
Derek Samaras
Urantia Book Network, urantiabooknetwork.com
May 2026
The Urantia Book has been in the world since 1955. It has readers on every inhabited continent, study groups in dozens of countries, and an unbroken record of changing lives one quiet reader at a time. What it does not yet have, in any settled form, is a home. A place where a seeker is welcomed and accompanied across a whole life. A community that gathers to worship, and not only to study.
That gap is old. It is, in fact, as old as the movement itself. And the person who named it most clearly was Dr. Meredith J. Sprunger, in a conference talk recorded in 1993. The talk has circulated quietly for years. It deserves a wider hearing, because the question it raises has not gone away. It has only grown sharper.
The talk
Video courtesy of David Kantor's Urantia Book Films. A cleaned transcript of the full talk appears at the end of this article.
Who Meredith Sprunger was
Sprunger (1915 to 2012) was the first theologically trained spiritual leader to emerge among Urantia Book readers after the book's publication. That distinction matters. The early readership was overwhelmingly secular in temperament, and Sprunger came to it from inside the church.
He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1937, studied at Mission House Theological Seminary, and was ordained a minister in 1940. He took a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1941 and a PhD in clinical psychology from Purdue in 1947, later practicing as a licensed psychologist in Indiana. He served churches across the Midwest from 1941 to 1979 and taught at Indiana Institute of Technology, where he chaired the psychology department and served a term as interim president.
Sprunger discovered the Urantia Book in 1958 and became a close friend of Dr. William S. Sadler. The two spent many hours discussing how the revelation might be introduced to the Christian churches. Sprunger went on to lead a long effort to interest United Church of Christ ministers in the book, and from 1991 to 2006 he edited The Spiritual Fellowship Journal, written largely for that audience. He served as president of the Urantia Brotherhood from 1976 to 1979, through one of the most turbulent stretches of its early history. His own books include Spiritual Psychology: A Primer, The Abridged Urantia Papers, and Beside the Still Waters: 30 Psalms for Readers of The Urantia Book.
He was, by every account, a wise and discerning man, forward looking and deeply devoted. When he spoke about the movement's future in 1993, he spoke as someone who had already given it thirty-five years of his life.
What he argued
Sprunger's talk begins as history and ends as a plea.
He reminds his audience that the Urantia Brotherhood, organized in 1955, was not always shy about its religious character. Most founding members regarded it as a religious or quasi-religious organization. Dr. Sadler clearly expected its societies to develop into bona fide religious groups. Sadler even started a school to train and ordain teachers, and the early Brotherhood constitution, adapted from the Presbyterian model, kept a formal place for ordained teachers.
Then Sadler died, and the tide turned. As Sprunger tells it, the majority of early members carried a pronounced anti-church and anti-institutional bias. Prayer and group singing made them uneasy. The word "ordained teacher" was struck from the constitution. The Brotherhood redefined itself as "an educational, social organization with a religious purpose," and bristled at any suggestion that it might be a religion.
Sprunger does not mock that instinct. He understood its source. Readers had seen the parochialism and rigidity of contemporary religious institutions, and they wanted no part of it. But he believed the instinct had hardened into a strategic dead end. Study groups and societies, he said, are valuable, yet they remain intellectual and social bodies. They do not do what religion does. They cannot, on their own, provide the worship, the spiritual family, and the lifelong formation that human beings actually need.
"Study groups and societies which are primarily intellectual social groups do not fill all of the functions of traditional religious institutions, although they may serve as preliminary steps toward such religious institutions."
Meredith Sprunger, 1993
His central conviction follows from that. A book can reveal, inspire, and orient. But communities, practices, and institutions are needed if a revelation is to take root in living experience. Revelation must move from text to persons, from persons to fellowship, and from fellowship to sustainable forms of worship and service.
Sprunger was careful about how such institutions should come into being. They are not designed, he said, they evolve. Here he leaned on the Urantia Book itself:
"Man cannot cause growth, but he can supply favorable conditions."
The favorable condition he asked for was research. He wanted teams of mature students to study, well in advance of any pressure, what a healthy socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation might look like: its symbolism, its polity, its forms of worship. His fear was specific. When institutions finally do emerge, and he was confident they would, they may be improvised in haste, without the seasoned reflection that would let them genuinely reflect the revelation they claim to carry.
He also saw two distinct futures, and insisted on both. Some readers will want congregations and churches with a formally trained clergy, in the pattern of Western synagogues and churches. Others will want a more informal, lay-led expression, not centered on professional clergy or fixed liturgy, closer in structure to the Baha'i model. Neither is the right one. Both answer a genuine human need.
The Urantia Book had already told him to expect this. Every epochal revelation, the text says, stimulates new religious life:
"Regardless of the drawbacks and handicaps, every new revelation of truth has given rise to a new cult, and even the restatement of the religion of Jesus must develop a new and appropriate symbolism."
Sprunger's warning about what happens when that symbolism is absent is worth hearing in full. Where strong spiritual aspirations inspire people but no adequate social and intellectual structure guides them, he said, "all kinds of irrational beliefs and actions are likely to appear." He named visions, channeling, speaking in tongues, attempted miracles, doomsday dates. He was not looking down on anyone. He said plainly that these are people genuinely hungering for something, and good friends of his. His point was structural: if the movement does not build healthy channels for spiritual expression, hungry souls will improvise unhealthy ones.
The 2055 question
Near the end of the talk Sprunger offers a prediction, and it is the part most worth weighing today.
He had spent thirty-five years following the example of Jesus, who first carried his message to the dominant religious institution of his society. Sprunger did the same. He worked to introduce the most progressive segment of mainline Christianity to the Urantia Book, organized a modest clergy network, and published The Spiritual Fellowship Journal. He reports the result honestly. Even the most progressive religious leaders, he found, were afraid to risk their reputation and livelihood by seriously examining a book that claimed to be a new revelation.
Still, he allowed himself a hope. The Urantia movement, readers were told, would be under "the supervision of the angels of the churches" for one hundred years. Sprunger did the arithmetic. One century after 1955 brings you to 2055. By then, he said, he was "reasonably optimistic" that a major portion of progressive Christianity would have discovered the Urantia Book.
We are now most of the way to that date. An honest reader has to say that the prediction, on its own terms, looks unlikely to land. Mainline Protestantism, the very wing Sprunger was courting, has been in steep numerical decline across the entire intervening period. Seminaries have not taken up the book. The denominational gatekeepers he hoped to reach hold less cultural ground every year. The door he knocked on for thirty-five years has been closing on its own.
But something happened that Sprunger, in 1993, could not have seen, and it changes the picture in his favor rather than against it. The gatekeeping dissolved. The internet removed the institutions from the path between a seeker and a strange, beautiful book. The fastest-growing religious category in the Western world is now the person who is, in the common phrase, spiritual but not religious: a seeker who would never walk into a church, but who will absolutely read a text discovered online and quietly find it true.
Sprunger placed his hope in the first of his two futures, the trained clergy and the formal congregation. The years since have run overwhelmingly toward his second future, the informal, lay-led, personal expression. He was right that both were needed. He appears to have been wrong only about which one history would reach for first.
What a reader can do now
Sprunger ended his talk by calling study groups and societies "self-contained and limited communities which have the potential of being forerunners" of something larger. That word, forerunners, is the hopeful one. He was not dismissing what readers had built. He was asking them to see it as a beginning.
Thirty years on, the practical question for a reader who takes his challenge seriously is not "how do we found a church." It is gentler and more immediate than that.
The Urantia Book itself frames the work modestly. On the dangers of institutionalized religion it does not mince words:
"It is far better to have a religion without a church than a church without religion."
So the task is not to rush a structure into being. It is to supply the favorable conditions, in Sprunger's phrase, and let healthy forms grow.
A reader can do that in ordinary ways. Help an isolated seeker find others, because Sprunger's deepest worry was the hungry soul left alone to improvise. Treat a study group as a place of fellowship and worship, not only of analysis. Take part in the long, unglamorous research he asked for, the patient compiling of resources by mature students, so that when communities do form they have something seasoned to draw on. Keep the on-ramp low and the welcome warm, because mystery and good writing reach the deinstitutionalized seeker where an institution never could.
This is, in part, what a site like this one is for. Not a church, and not a substitute for one. A toolbox. A commons. A place where the resources accumulate and the seekers can find each other. Sprunger asked the movement to supply favorable conditions for living religion to grow. Publishing this talk, and taking its question seriously, is one small way of doing exactly that.
His closing words still stand as a fair statement of the work ahead:
"I believe the birth of such religious institutions is a necessary step in the fulfillment of the mission of the Urantia movement."
Meredith Sprunger, 1993
The full talk: a corrected transcript
The following is an editorially cleaned transcript of Dr. Sprunger's 1993 presentation, prepared from the automatic captions on the source video. The automatic captions garbled many proper names and key terms. This transcript corrects obvious transcription errors and lightly repairs sentence boundaries for readability. The substance and order of Sprunger's remarks are preserved. Quotations of the Urantia Book within the talk are given as they read in the pages Sprunger cites.
In October of 1955, the Urantia Book was published with great enthusiasm. The newly organized Urantia Brotherhood envisioned organizing thousands of study groups and gradually chartering well-rounded societies. The specific nature of these societies was a bit ambiguous. Most of the founding members regarded the Urantia Brotherhood as a religious or quasi-religious organization. Dr. Sadler clearly saw societies developing into bona fide religious groups. The leaders of the Forum who developed the Brotherhood constitution did not take the time to structure it directly from the teachings of the Urantia Book, but adapted the ready-made constitution of the Presbyterian church for this purpose.
Under Sadler's leadership the Brotherhood constitution provided a key place for ordained teachers. Following the publication of the book, Dr. Sadler started a school to train and ordain teachers. And I remember these people who had graduated and been ordained were very proud of the fact that they were ordained teachers in the Urantia Brotherhood. On numerous occasions, Dr. Sadler and I discussed the nature of this new religious organization and its future development.
But soon after Dr. Sadler went to the mansion worlds, a quite different view surfaced. The majority of the early members of the Urantia Brotherhood had a pronounced anti-church and anti-institutional bias. There was a marked uneasiness regarding the use of prayer and group singing, or anything that was suggestive of organized religion, at Brotherhood meetings. To guard against moving in the direction of a religious institution, we removed the term "ordained teacher" from the Brotherhood constitution. It was made clear that we were not interested in developing a new religion. If anyone identified us as a cult, we were irritated and defensive. We defined ourselves as an educational, social organization with a religious purpose. We were enthusiastic about introducing religious, educational, and political leaders to the Urantia Book. Illusions of grandeur about initiating a spiritual renaissance spurred us, invigorated us, and enthused us at Urantia conferences.
But gradually evolutionary reality began to change the picture. Religious and political leaders were not impressed. The book was succinctly dismissed as a contemporary gnostic document, or politely ignored. Internal disillusionments have compounded the evolutionary picture: the licensing agreement controversy, the Clayton incident, the Foundation and Brotherhood schism, the proliferation of lawsuits, and the widespread interest in channeling have sobered our naive idealism. Most of us now realize that the fifth epochal revelation has been launched on the troubled and turbulent seas of evolutionary struggle.
In recent years, spiritual seeking has emerged on an unprecedented scale in our society, accompanied by a disenchantment with contemporary religious institutions. There has been an increasing longing in the Urantia movement for a religious community which goes beyond the usual study group, one that furnishes a sense of spiritual family and communion along with worship and a community identity. There is a growing sense of need for spiritual nourishment from birth to death. Study groups and societies, which are primarily intellectual social groups, do not fill all of the functions of traditional religious institutions, although they may serve as preliminary steps toward such religious institutions.
I believe the single most important activity of the Urantia movement at this time is to focus on the development of resources which may help actualize new religious institutions. Hopefully such institutions will serve as vehicles through which the fifth epochal revelation can be carried out into the world, and will inculturate our society. We need dedicated students of the Urantia Book researching appropriate symbolism and socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation. I am confident that sooner or later such new religious institutions will evolve in the Urantia movement. There have been several aborted attempts to do this already.
When this does happen, there is a danger that these religious institutions may be extemporized without adequate time and consideration to formulate organizations that best reflect the truth insights of the fifth epochal revelation. A wiser approach, in my judgment, is for competent teams of interested people to evolve a body of research before the pressure of necessity fashions religious organizations that did not have this background of resources to draw on for their own evaluation and discrimination.
There is a great need in our day for religious institutions to serve on the growing edge of the spiritual development of our world, religious institutions which will appeal to the highest spiritual aspirations of humankind. This was a concern of Rabbi Abraham Heschel, who in a conversation with Robert Greenleaf shortly before his death asked why so many of the great religions, which have their origin in the mystery of spiritual power, come ultimately to be a social service agency, or in their religious life to be preoccupied with form and concerned more with the container than the content. To which Greenleaf replied, "In the face of these conditions, one simply builds anew." And this is essentially what the authors of the Urantia Book say. We are called to listen to the prophetic voices who have the rebuilding message for these times, so that we can support and encourage them. This was taken from Greenleaf's book, Servant Leadership, page 555.
We must evolve religious institutions which will bring spiritual nourishment to hungry souls, within which we can achieve personal spiritual significance and a level of service and worship heretofore not possible by individuals working singly, or in study groups, or in outmoded religious institutions. With the Father's guidance, they will become social religious vehicles carrying the fifth epochal revelation throughout the world. This, I believe, is the most important challenge of our times. And looking at our society and all of its problems, we are in desperate need of these kinds of institutions leavening our entire society and world.
Now I would like to say something about the principles inherent in developing religious institutions. There are a number of principles we should keep in mind.
Number one. The idealist in all of us who have been inspired by the Urantia Book has a vision of the fifth epochal revelation upstepping all the religions of the world and uniting mankind in a common spiritual fellowship. We are turned off by the parochialism and rigidity of contemporary religious institutions, and feel that the last thing we need is another religious institution. But the lessons of history and the teachings of the Urantia Book tell us that the most effective agents of social change are new religious institutions embodying larger spiritual truths. The Supreme works from the grassroots up, not from the top down. This approach is not as romantic as our idealistic vision, but it is the only realistic process that builds the foundation for social and spiritual growth in any society or culture, and this can be verified by history repeatedly.
Number two. New religious institutions are not designed, they evolve. The authors of the Urantia Book remind us, "Man cannot cause growth, but he can supply favorable conditions" (page 1097). We should establish this conditional type of research. There will be many types of religious organizations stemming from the fifth epochal revelation. Research teams need to prepare materials for possible use by such new religious organizations. Over the last ten years numerous people have asked me for help in developing a ministry which they have in mind and feel motivated to pursue. They may or may not find this kind of research resource helpful to them. The assumption is that resources compiled over a period of time by mature students of the Urantia Book will provide helpful insights and wisdom which might not otherwise be available.
Number three. We should be aware of the larger spiritual context in which religious institutions function. The brotherhood and sisterhood of all people, the kinship of all humanity, takes place in the realm of the Supreme. A genuine spiritual fellowship, which is the basis of a religious institution, has its inception in soul consciousness. The soul bears the imprint of its divine and human creation and originates a secondary or ancillary mind consciousness. As we grow in the Supreme, our personal identity is increasingly transferred from the material mind to soul consciousness. More and more we operate out of our soul mind. This fellowship of souls is the foundation of a bona fide religious institution. But human beings are much more than disembodied souls. We have unique material bodies and material-based minds. We integrate our lives with dissimilar personalities and function in diverse social groups. A sound and serviceable religious institution therefore must have the spiritual depth and the theological and social flexibility to serve a wide variety of human beings. Its polity needs to embody the highest experiential wisdom.
Number four. Personally, I do not think the Fellowship should be organically or officially connected to this research, or to any religious institution which might stem from it. Many students of the Urantia Book are still uncomfortable with institutional religious activities. The Fellowship has a place in coordinating all types and levels of activity associated with the Urantia Book. It might encourage or even facilitate these religious activities without becoming, or being, organically involved with them. Hopefully the Fellowship can establish cooperative relationships with many diverse organizations while remaining organizationally independent of them.
Number five. Ideally there should be a number of teams doing different types of research. Even if they should engage in similar studies, the diverse materials they come up with will enrich the resource pool which is available to all.
Now a word about my conviction concerning the future of the fifth epochal revelation. Even though I have always assumed that the most important channel for carrying the fifth epochal revelation to the world was new religious institutions, in my own personal ministry I have sought to follow the example of Jesus, who first went to the dominant religious institution of his society. I have sought to introduce the most progressive segment of mainline Christianity to the Urantia Book. We have organized a modest clergy network and published The Spiritual Fellowship Journal, and some of these pastors have been a part of these conferences for a number of years. But it is clear that the majority of even the most progressive religious leaders of our time are afraid to risk their reputation and livelihood by seriously examining and evaluating the teachings of the Urantia Book. While we are not abandoning or giving up on mainline Christian clergy, thirty-five years of experience has taught me that anything purporting to be a new revelation is not within the boundaries of current theological institutional respectability.
And maybe I should interject here. I think it is remarkable that they have not tried to excommunicate me or anything. As a matter of fact, all of my peers, we are just as good friends as we ever were, except we do not talk about the Urantia Book. And the head of the United Church of Christ in the whole geographical section where I live accepts those of us who use the book as a legitimate kind of resource. I think that is a remarkable open-minded position, and I am proud of the United Church of Christ in that sense, even though I regret that they do not have more courage than they do to seriously examine something of the caliber of the Urantia Book.
Mainline Christian clergy will require a longer time frame to discover the fifth epochal revelation. It is my hope, and I am somewhat optimistic here, that by 2055, which is one hundred years after the publication of the Urantia Book, a major portion of the most progressive religionists of Christianity will have discovered the Urantia Book. We were told that the Urantia movement would be under the supervision of the angels of the churches for one hundred years, which would be roughly 2055. At least at this point I am hopeful. A great many things can happen by 2055.
Since the power structures of the Christian church clergy have treated the Urantia Book with deliberate and benign indifference, it is now time, in my judgment, to initiate the next step in creating the social and institutional foundations for the outreach of the fifth epochal revelation. It is time to promote research in discovering appropriate symbolism and socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation.
In addition to eventually leavening the most progressive elements in current world religions, I believe the future of the fifth epochal revelation lies in two basic directions. First, new religious institutions need to be initiated that will establish congregations and churches with a formally trained clergy, similar to the churches and synagogues of Western civilization. Second, new religious organizations need to be intentionally evolved whose teachings and structure are not centered around a professionally trained clergy and formal liturgical services. These groups might have a structure similar to that of the Baha'i religion. Such organizations are needed because many people identify with a more informal or personal religious expression, not dominated or influenced by clergy or formal worship service. There are these two kinds of people, and both have a genuine need. You cannot say one is proper and the other is not. Both are needed in our society.
Now, a socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation. The authors of the Urantia Book recognized that every epochal revelation stimulates the creation of new religious institutions, and they declare that the restatement of the religion of Jesus must develop a new and appropriate symbolism. In various places, such as on pages 966 and 1092, they suggest the basic qualities essential to these new religious congregations. Underlying these key spiritual qualities is the primary purpose of all religions: to provide a personal and social context in which their members may apprehend the presence of God and express their faith and devotion to the divine reality in their lives. That is the fundamental basic need of all humanity.
To accomplish this basic objective, a religious organization must enunciate certain faith affirmations and structure ways of expressing these faith convictions. The history of religion demonstrates that where strong spiritual ideals and aspirations inspire people, and where there are not sufficient intellectual and social structural foundations to guide them in the expression of these spiritual aspirations, all kinds of irrational beliefs and actions are likely to appear. You can look throughout history, and this always happens: such things as visions of angels, channeling, speaking in tongues, attempting miracles, pronouncing doomsday dates, and all kinds of things. I am not trying to look down my nose at these kinds of people. These are people who are genuinely hungering for something. Human nature is such that if we do not provide it, they will find ways in which to get it. They are wonderful people and good friends of mine. But we desperately need social channels, personal channels, in which to express our convictions and our religious aspirations, channels through which we can minister, channels through which we can serve. This is desperately important.
Such emotional and psychic phenomena always occur in an unstructured social and spiritual atmosphere. The most effective way to establish rational order, stability, and spiritual identity, along with creative service and outreach, is to evolve an appropriately structured socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation. The central objective of people interested in initiating such new religious organizations should be to create a polity with maximum flexibility, one that would function with small groups or large congregations, utilize lay leadership and ordained clergy, and have cross-cultural adaptability and broad theological inclusiveness.
Robert Greenleaf, in his book Servant Leadership, has a vision of such an institution. He describes it as "a gathering of persons who have accepted a common purpose and a common discipline to guide the pursuit of that purpose, to the end that each involved person reaches higher fulfillment as a person through serving and being served by this common venture than would be achieved alone or in a less committed relationship." This was taken from page 237 of his book.
A final section, on research purpose. There are many appropriate areas of research for those interested in building resources to use in initiating new religious organizations. These materials should not be seen as definitive, but should serve as a stimulus for creative thinking, whereby these groups may be helped to make their own carefully considered decisions. The organization of dedicated research teams to search for appropriate symbolism and socio-religious expression of the fifth epochal revelation will hopefully prepare the soil for the advent of grassroots religious institutions, which will become the channels of spiritual power bringing the fifth epochal revelation to our troubled and spiritually hungry world, Christ Michael's gift and saving guidance to our confused planet.
Study groups and Urantia societies are simply not adequate to meet the religious needs of most individuals. They are self-contained and limited communities which have the potential of being forerunners to the religious institutions which are necessary to inculturate human society. The future of the fifth epochal revelation rests upon the spiritual and evangelical dynamics of new religious institutions which will carry it to the four corners of the world. I believe the birth of such religious institutions is a necessary step in the fulfillment of the mission of the Urantia movement. Thank you.
A note on sources and citations
The video of Dr. Sprunger's 1993 presentation is published on David Kantor's Urantia Book Films YouTube channel, and is embedded here with that credit. The transcript above is the Urantia Book Network's own editorial cleanup of the video's automatic captions; it is offered as a reading aid, and listeners are encouraged to consult the original recording.
Three passages from the Urantia Book are quoted in this article. Each was verified verbatim against the canonical text at 87:7.6 (page 966), 99:6.1 (page 1092), and 100:3.7 (page 1097). The block quotes attributed to Meredith Sprunger are drawn from the cleaned transcript of his spoken talk. Where Sprunger cites the Urantia Book within the talk, the quotation is rendered as it appears in the page he names; readers will note that on page 1097 the canonical text reads "Man cannot cause growth," which is the wording used here.
Byline: Derek Samaras | Urantia Book Network | May 2026