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1978 REPORT OF THE FRATERNAL RELATIONS COMMITTEE
TO THE GENERAL COUNCIL OF
Urantia BROTHERHOOD

Carolyn Kendall


The Fraternal Relations Committee has begun compiling the policies and principles that have guided Urantia Brotherhood during the past 23 years concerning our relationship to organized religions. Here are some of the areas of concern:

1. We will attempt to clarify why it is that we are so adamant about not wanting to become a separate institutionalized religion. We have identified many earmarks common to organized religion which are absent in our movement.

2. We are determining ways that the Brotherhood as an organization can minimize the possibility of offending our spiritual brothers by refraining from making judgments and offering opinions about religious groups, through the agencies of:

a) published newsletters, brochures, and study aids. b) letters to private individuals. c) conferences and regional meetings.

3. We are reviewing reasons why Urantia Brotherhood has not engaged in public activities which would place it or The Urantia Book in co-operative association with established religions.

4. We will seek the experiences of individuals who have joined or visited religious groups for the purpose of learning more about the group, and of being part of their fellowship. How have they established dialogue? How do they expand upon mutually-held common truths.?

5. We are proposing ways in which the ideas, as contrasted with The Urantia Book as a whole, can be filtered into the mainstream of religious thought without in any way undermining established religion.

6. By studying our revelatory predecessors and their human successors, we can hopefully avoid their more serious mistakes. Example: One of the most common pitfalls, and perhaps the easiest to repeat, would be to have The Urantia Book and Brotherhood become closely identified with Westernized religious usage that its acceptance by peoples of various religious backgrounds would be jeopardized.

7. We hope to convey an awareness of the need to reassure organized religions that we pose no threat to the truths they hold in reverence, and that we will not infiltrate their churches, impose our beliefs upon them, downgrade their traditions, or lure away their members. Instead, we desire to support all religious institutions because of their own unique role in ministering to makind's spiritual needs.

Carolyn Kendall, Chairman (signed)