In a message dated 96-04-05 01:25:15 EST, you write:

>Can anyone tell me who originated the "Urantia" shtick? I have a record
>from 1973 or so which is based around the "space aliens" (sic) helping out
>poor little Urantia.

An Open-Text Search (http://www.opentext.com/omw/f-omw.html) for Urantia
returned 120 hits.  The following was located at:
 http://www.kosone.com/people/ocrt/urantia.htm

******
History

During the 1920's and 1930's, a Chicago psychiatrist, Dr. W.S. Sadler
(1875-1969) became very interested in an unusual case. Sadler had been asked
to examine a patient after the patient's wife noticed he was talking in his
sleep, and seemed to be speaking for various supermortal personalities,
called revelators. The name of this person has been kept secret and the exact
manner of communication is not clear. However, Dr. Sadler insisted that this
process did not involve spiritualism, channeling, or automatic writing. The
contact personality was entirely unconscious (asleep) during the
transmission, and had little or no interest in the process when awake. The
material that eventually became the Urantia Book was received during the
years 1934-35. Sadler
organized a group of interested persons, called the Forum, to review and
discuss this material. The Urantia Foundation, administered by a five member
board, was formed as a non-profit educational group in 1950. 

****

So, it appears that the group was founded before the advent of modern UFO
mythology, but consolidated into its current form at the beginning of the
contactee era. With a pre-existing history of channeling, incorporating
contactee-ism seems to have been a natural progression of this particularly
silly religion.

Well, that's my take, anyway.

Cheers,

Dean Kanipe                                   area51www@aol.com
Webmaster
Area 51 Research Center                 http://www.ufomind.com

  
