Religion Papers - Read & Discuss

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Instructor:

Michael Hill

Start Date:

Saturday, September 13, 2025

End Date:

Saturday, October 11, 2025

Times:

9 am - 11 am Pacific Time USA / 10 pm MT / 11 am CT / 12 pm ET
For all other time zones, go to https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/

Course Description

Mortal life is brief. The ascendant career enables us to grow in spiritual reception and is lived out in eternal service. We read, “Religion is the experiencing of divinity in the consciousness of a moral being of evolutionary origin; it represents true experience with eternal realities in time, the realization of spiritual satisfactions while yet in the flesh.” This class provides an opportunity to better understand and gain insight into the reality of religion.

This two-part, four session Read and Discuss (R&D) class covers Papers 100 through 103 and provides an opportunity to grow in our understanding of true religion, gaining insight and adding meaning and value to our own personal religious lives.

Students will be assigned the relevant paper on Sundays, make use of the questions for each section of the paper on the optional worksheet during the week, and participate in the Zoom discussions on the following Saturdays.

Weekly Outline

Each week begins on a Sunday with an email of the reading for the week and the optional worksheet with questions for each section of the Paper. We will end the week on the following Saturday with a 9:00am PDT Zoom discussion on questions from the paper, section by section.

PART 1:

Paper 100: begins Sunday, September 7; 2 hour Zoom on Saturday, September 13

Paper 101: begins Sunday, September 14; 2 hour Zoom on Saturday, September 20

Week of September 21 there will be no meeting

PART 2:

Paper 102: begins Sunday, September 28; 2 hour Zoom on Saturday, October 4

Paper 103: begins Sunday, October 5; 2 hour Zoom on Saturday, October 11

Learning Outcomes

Melchizedek taught we have the “capacity to receive and assimilate,” and these papers exemplify their efforts to tell us about what true religion really is. The goal of this course is to realize that capacity and go forth with a better, more meaningful understanding of our own religious and faith experiences.

Michael Hill has been an avid student of The Urantia Book since 1965. Its truths and concepts have formed the core of his life. His commitment to spreading the ‘good news’ is evident in the workshops he has presented at various Urantia Book conferences over the years as well as facilitating online courses for Urantia Book International School and Urantia University Institute.

In the 1970s he co-founded The School of Meanings and Values with Polly Friedman, another long-time reader whose mother was in the Forum. He created and coordinates the Fellowship’s Inmate Correspondence Program (ICP), and with Derek Samaras initiated the Jesus Project with the goal of creating AI versions of the sermons and discourses of Jesus. And to that end they have created a YouTube channel - Sermons of Jesus from the Urantia Book - and a companion Facebook page by the same name.

He holds a Masters degree in clinical psychology and is a retired Marriage, Family and Child Counselor, high school teacher, and consultant on land use for school districts. He is a regular contributor for the Interfaith column in his local newspapers, the Fellowship’s Mighty Messenger, and The Fellowship Herald.