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Cults

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From Urantia Wiki, the encyclopedia of The Urantia Book

A race or nation can only assimilate from any advanced religion that which is reasonably consistent and compatible with its current evolutionary status, plus its genius for adaptation. 92:2.4

atheistic cults claim that such salvation as was attainable could come only by man’s own unaided efforts. 94:2.5

In the Urantia Book

Destiny of cults depends on leadership (99:5.1)

  • the cults are formed, not to discover truth, but rather to promulgate their creeds. 92:3.1

Primitive cult

  • Fetishism ran through all the primitive cults from the earliest belief in sacred stones, through idolatry, cannibalism, and nature worship, to totemism. 88:3.1
  • The ceremonies of the cult were primitive man’s attempt to control the material world in which he found himself. 90:3.1-2
  • The early Christian cult was the most effective, appealing, and enduring of any ritual ever conceived or devised, but much of its value has been destroyed in a scientific age by the destruction of so many of its original underlying tenets. 87:7.4

Strengths

  • cults provide symbolism to preserve religious loyalties 87:7.1
  • religion rarely survives without institutions, as private practice of isolated individuals 97:10.7 98:6.1

Dangers

  • The cult preserved sentiment and satisfied emotion, but it has always been the greatest obstacle to social reconstruction and spiritual progress. 87:7.2-3
  • Sectarianism is a disease of institutional religion, and dogmatism is an enslavement of the spiritual nature. 99:6.1 170:5.20 195:10.7-15
  • In the spiritual fellowship of the believer-son with the divine Father there can never be doctrinal finality and sectarian superiority of group consciousness. 182:1.8 195:10.14
  • The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it. 92:3.4

Jesus

  • Jesus avoided in every possible manner the formal establishment of an organized cult, a crystallized religion, or a segregated ethical grouping of mortal beings 120:3.6

Cult of new revelation

  • it must be the outgrowth of applied love 87:7.7
  • cult must be predicated on Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man 87:7.6
  • But a religious cult cannot be manufactured; it must grow. 87:7.3
  • No cult can survive if it retards moral growth and fails to foster spiritual progress. 87:7.10
  • it must symbolize spiritual experience, significance of home; embody mystery; be elastic; not be overly complex 87:7.5-10
  • The new cult must foster sentiment, satisfy emotion, and promote loyalty; but it must do more: It must facilitate spiritual progress, enhance cosmic meanings, augment moral values, encourage social development, and stimulate a high type of personal religious living. (87:7.1-2,7)
  • The world is filled with lost souls, not lost in the theologic sense but lost in the directional meaning, wandering about in confusion among the isms and cults of a frustrated philosophic era. 100:5.1

Rituals (90:5.1-3)

  • The great danger in all this is that the ritual tends to become a substitute for religion. 90:5.6
  • it is better to reform than destroy group function 97:10.7
  • endless rituals have hampered society and cursed civilization, have been an intolerable burden to every act of life, every racial undertaking. 90:5.1
  • The essence of the ritual is the perfection of its performance; among savages it must be practiced with exact precision. 90:5.1-2
  • The more this ritual has been an unconscious growth, the stronger it has gripped its devotees. 87:7.2

Bible parallels

Passages that the paragraphs cited above parallel, quote or reinterpret, from Duane Faw’s Paramony cross-references. Hover a reference to read it.

See also

CeremoniesSectsTraditions
Categories: Concepts and teachings