Religious Humanism Lecture given by William R. Murry, President and Academic Dean of Meadville-Lombard Theological School, at the Humanist Conference in March 2000.

I was brought up a Southern Baptist, became an American Baptist minister out of seminary, five years later became a minister of the United Church of Christ, and finally at age 44 realized I was a religious humanist and became a UU. I should have become a UU much sooner, for that is where I belonged for many years before I became one officially. I am a religious humanist for several reasons. The first three reasons deal with my non-theism.

Let me be clear about what I mean by humanism, for there are a number of perspectives that claim the name of humanism. There is Christian humanism, Jewish humanism, secular humanism, theistic humanism, and others. In these lectures humanism refers to non-theistic religious humanism.

The first reason for my non-theism is what I call the moral reason. I cannot
believe in a God who is supposed to be both good and all-powerful yet who permits innocent little children to suffer and die before they have had much of a chance to live. I came to this position as a result of reading books like The Brothers Karamasov and Camus’ The Plague, by the Holocaust, by reading Nietzsche and the death of god theologians, and by the personal experience of being a minister who had families in my congregation lose a little child to cancer or to heart defects.

Camus’ Dr. Rieux is a good example of my problem. In the novel bubonic plague has struck Oran where Rieux lives, and he treats hundreds of patients but loses almost all of them. After he and the priest have worked side by side in vain to save a little boy, they engage in a brief conversation. The priest suggests that we have to learn to accept death and we must love what we cannot understand. Dr. Rieux replies: “No, father, I’ve a very different idea of love. And until my dying day, I shall refuse to love a scheme of things in which little children are put to torture.”

This is the age-old problem known as theodicy – the attempt to justify the ways of God to humankind – that we first find in the book of Job in the Hebrew Bible. It is the problem of how a being who is both good and all-powerful can permit so much evil and suffering. How such a God could have permitted the brutal and inhuman deaths of six million Jews led a number of Jewish theologians and lay people alike from theism to humanism.

I too find this to be a persuasive reason to doubt the existence of God. 2. I call my second reason the scientific-empirical reason. There are several aspects to this, one of which dates back to Charles Darwin. The theory of evolution, I believe has become unquestionable –some of the details may be debatable but that human life descended from other forms of life is to me as certain as anything I know.

Included in evolutionary theory is the fact that human consciousness and the human mind are products of evolution and are simply the highest functions of the one substance that exists which I call matter-energy. Philosophically I am a naturalist. In my view there is no supernatural realm, only the natural, inconceivably vast universe. There is nothing mystical or supernatural about the mind and consciousness. They are not part of something eternal called soul or spirit. We are not an eternal soul imprisoned in a body; we are 100 percent physical beings, and when we die we are not conscious beings any more. We cease to exist. Only what we have contributed to others – for good or ill-- lives on.

The other level of the scientific-empirical reason for my humanism is my thorough-going empiricism. I believe we discover what is true through the empirical method, not through revelation or extra-sensory perception. I believe we have no knowledge other than that which we get from sense experience. We have no way of knowing anything except that which we see or hear or feel or smell. Therefore I do not have any reason to believe in a supernatural being or a supernatural world; as far as we can know there is only one universe—the world of matter that we can experience.

My third reason is psychological. I think Freud was probably right when he suggested that religion is the result of the adult projecting onto the cosmic order the infant’s dependence on the parent. That is, we human beings feel the need for someone to depend on to help us get through the crises we face, the suffering, the grief and loss and finally death, our own death. Just as the infant has, to her, an almighty parent who provides for all her needs, so this desire for someone that we can depend on lingers throughout our lives, and that is the role God plays in the lives of most people.

I am also persuaded that religion arose out of early humankind’s fears of the unknown and the need to have a divine parent to protect them from wild beasts, earthquakes, famine, floods, hurricane and tornadoes, etc.

One of my favorite books is entitled If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him, by psychologist Sheldon Kopp. The point of the book is that we need to learn to live without depending on a God or expecting a Messiah, or any other outside source to rescue us, but rather that we need to be able to take care of our own problems and to look out for ourselves.

Now, I am aware of course of various modern efforts to conceive of God not as supernatural but as the driving force of the natural world, not as all powerful but as one whose power is the magnetic power of love, and therefore not of a God who imposes his will or intervenes in human history. I have tried to affirm such a God, the God of process theology, for example, but it does not work for me. For the word God in the western religious tradition has referred to a separate, supernatural, personal deity, and if god is none of these, then in my view that is not God. To put it another way, these modern attempts to make the concept of god more acceptable to the modern mind are intellectual or semantic games as far as I’m concerned. At the very least they change the meaning of the word God from its widely accepted meaning.

My fourth reason for being a humanist involves positive convictions, rather than simply a rejection of theism. Being an agnostic or atheist does not make one a humanist. I am a humanist because I believe in the worth and dignity of every person, as our first principle puts it, because I think life is most worth living when we strive to make the world a better place, which is to say when we strive to serve other human beings in whatever ways we can. And because I am also a very empathic person and when anyone suffers I hurt also, and hence I have compassion for a suffering humanity. And I am a humanist because I believe in the potential goodness and nobility of human beings. I am a humanist because I believe that the only possibility we have for a world where love, justice, peace and freedom prevail is by us human beings creating such a world.

I am a religious humanist also because I believe life is lived best in a covenanted community with others who share one another’s values, purposes and goals, although not necessarily all of one another’s beliefs. The root meaning of the word religion is to bind together, hence to bind us more closely together. Since I believe we are alone in the universe, in the sense that we have no supernatural presence among us, human community becomes all the more important, and while there are other forms of human community that are meaningful, religious community offers a greater depth than any other I have found. And I believe that to be fully human we must be in true community with others. To be an “I” we must be in relationship with others who are “Thous.” I am a religious humanist because I believe we need one another to help to diminish our sorrows and to increase our joys, and hence I find it meaningful to celebrate life’s passages with people who share my values. I am also a religious humanist because we live in a culture in which humanists are a cognitive minority, and it is helpful and reinforcing to know that there are others who share our convictions.

So much for my own theology for now at least. Let’s move on to a brief history of religious humanism.

Humanist history. In the West it was the ancient Greeks of course who first held views that can be called humanistic. Anaxagoras, Protagorus and Democritus expressed skepticism about the gods of the Greek Pantheon, and Protagoras suggested that “man is the measure of all things.” There was certainly the beginnings of humanism in ancient Greece, but the more famous Greek thinkers, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, belong to the theistic camp in one form or another.

We next hear of humanism in the Renaissance. Exemplified in Erasmus, for example, Renaissance humanism emphasized this world rather than the next and encouraged the critical study of ancient texts, and so had some characteristics of modern religious humanism. However, since it was for the most part theistic it was also quite different from humanism today.

But it was the 18th and 19th centuries that laid the foundation of 20th century religious humanism. Immanuel Kant helped by refuting the traditional arguments for the existence of God even though he found other grounds – “the starry sky above and the moral law within” -- to believe in God. The skeptical thought of David Hume and the empiricism of John Locke helped to create the modern skeptical and empirical Weltanschauung. That skepticism was fed by Ludwig Feuerbach, whose book, The Essence of Christianity, suggested that God was a human invention, a projection on the cosmos of the best and highest we can imagine. He suggested that if birds had a god, that god would be conceived as the biggest, smartest, fastest and highest flying bird. Nietzsche also contributed to the background of modern humanism with his proclamation of the death of god and his view that Judaism and Christianity were slave religions, religions that, like slavery, required uncritical submission to authority.

The historical, critical and textual study of the Bible – so-called biblical criticism – also played a role in the birth of religious humanism. Scholars discovered that the gospels were written long after Jesus’ death, and that the events and stories and especially miracles reported in them were to a large extent the product of the imaginative pre-scientific minds of his early followers rather than being reliable first-hand factual information. In studying the culture of the time they also found that the myth of the dying and rising god was widespread in other religious cults of the first century. In this and other ways, the historical critical study of the Bible cast doubt on the veracity of the Christian message.

But it was modern science and the scientific empirical method that was most important for the birth of modern humanism. It started with Copernicus, whose discovery that the sun, not the earth, was the center of the solar system led to doubt about the truth of the Bible with its view of the earth and humankind as the center of the universe. Darwin’s evolutionary theories threw more doubt on the Bible, especially its creation story, and in particular questioned the understanding of human beings as the special creation of God and saw us simply as part of the natural world. If Darwinian evolution is true – and as you know it is almost universally accepted by scientists today – it cast grave doubt on the Greek idea adopted by many Christians that human beings consist of a physical and transient body inhabited by a non-corporeal, spiritual and eternal soul. And that in turn cast doubt on the whole Christian theological edifice of immortality, divine creation and the idea that human beings were made in the image of God.

The importance of the Free Religious Association. So, by the last half of the 19th century the seeds had been sowed for the rise of religious humanism. In 1865 Henry Whitney Bellows, prominent minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York City, concerned with the fragmentation of the young Unitarian movement, organized the National Conference of Unitarian Churches. The National Conference adopted a statement affirming allegiance to “Our Lord Jesus Christ,” to which the liberal wing of the Unitarian movement objected. When the National Conference refused to drop that statement, the liberals formed the Free Religious Association, which repudiated the idea of a creedal statement of any kind. The Free Religious Association was made up of ministers and others who had been influenced by Emerson and who believed that religious truth was to be found in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam as well as Judaism and Christianity. In fact Emerson was the first to sign the document establishing the Free Religious Association. In 1894 the objectionable statement was finally dropped.

The members of the Free Religious Association were not Christian Unitarians, but neither were they religious humanists. They were theists of one kind or another, but their importance for Unitarian religious humanism is that they insisted that Unitarianism not be shackled by a creed. So, when humanism arose in Unitarianism the humanists could not be forced out on the grounds that they did not subscribe to a creedal formulation.

Modernism. In the early 20th century Christian theology responded to Darwin, modern science and biblical criticism with what came to be known as modernism. The best known modernist was Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, the popular pulpit and radio preacher and writer for whom John D. Rockefeller built The Riverside Church in New York City. Modernism accepted evolution but held that the hand of God guided the evolutionary process. It accepted biblical criticism as well but still revered the bible as a source of inspiration and insight. The importance of modernism is that it helped to pave the way for religious humanism.

Permit me another personal note. As a Southern Baptist teenager in Jefferson City, MO, I discovered the writings of Harry Emerson Fosdick in the public library. I was very unhappy with my Southern Baptist faith, and I discovered in Fosdick’s very liberal Christianity the kind of religion that spoke to me. I was probably a Unitarian in those days, but I didn’t now it and there was no Unitarian church or fellowship in my home town. Incidentally I served as campus minister on the staff of Riverside Church in the early 60’s and although Fosdick had long since retired, I met him once and was able to thank him personally for saving me from fundamentalism.

Early Unitarian Humanism. The earliest Unitarians who identified themselves as humanists were John Dietrich, often called the father of religious humanism, and Curtis Reese. Dietrich had been raised in the Reformed tradition and was a minister in that tradition for several years. However, even in seminary he had begun to question some of the orthodox Christian doctrines, and at the age of 33 he resigned his Reformed Church pastorate rather than subject his congregation and himself to the embarrassment of a heresy trial. A Unitarian colleague suggested he become a Unitarian which he did and in September, 1911, he became minister of the church in Spokane, Washington. He soon began referring to his religion as humanistic and in 1916 he was invited to the pulpit of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis which remains to this day one of the great humanist pulpits in our Association. (The current senior minister is the Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons, who is with us here today.)

Curtis Reese had been brought up a Southern Baptist in North Carolina, but like Dietrich he too began to have questions about his faith while in seminary. After seminary he served as a Baptist pastor for a while but realized that he was too liberal to continue and became a Unitarian in 1913 at age 26. He served the Unitarian church in Alton, IL, for two years, then Des Moines, Iowa, and in 1919 became the secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference with headquarters in Chicago. Wherever he served, Reese was active in social concerns, and in 1930 he became Dean of the Abraham Lincoln Center in Chicago, a center for social activism and adult education. He stayed in that position until 1957 when his health forced him to retire.

While in Des Moines Reese called his humanism a “religion of democracy.” In a 1916 sermon he contrasted his democratic religion with autocratic religion. He wrote: “The theocratic view of the world order is autocratic. The humanistic view is democratic. In the theocratic order God is the autocrat; and under him are various minor autocrats, called divinities, angels, spirits, fairies, demons, and the like. In the democratic order the people are the rulers of their own affairs, and above them are no autocrats, supreme or minor, whose favor they must curry.”

In a significant and controversial address to Harvard Divinity School in the summer of 1920, Reese elaborated on his humanist faith. He began by saying that “Historically the basic content of religious liberalism is spiritual freedom.” As David Robinson points out, Reese is saying that freedom is not an attitude or a stance but the very substance of liberal religion. It has no accepted beliefs or truths in the sense of a creed. Reese went on to affirm a naturalistic religion. He then defined liberal religion in words that serve as a good statement of his brand of humanism: “Conscious committal and loyalty to worthful causes and goals in order that free and positive personality may be developed, intelligently associated and cosmically related.” Two things are noteworthy here: first, religion’s purpose is the development of the personality, and second, this is done through devotion to worthy causes. Today we would put it more like this: spiritual growth comes through social justice work.

Shortly thereafter Dietrich published an article in the Christian Register, the Unitarian magazine, in which he too referred to two kinds of religion. One, he suggested, thrives on human weakness and failure and is built on threats of punishment. It teaches that human beings must rely on a supernatural power who is the source of all our blessings and who promises us a better life in the hereafter. The second kind of religion has faith in people and “looks for no help or consolation from without.” It does not teach humans to rely on God, “whence no help comes, (but) to a firm and confident reliance upon themselves, in whom lie the possibilities of all things.” Dietrich also said that people cannot expect to go to a better world beyond this life but should instead create a better world in the here and now. Dietrich maintained that if the churches taught and preached this second type of religion instead of the first, the world would be radically different and much better.

During this same time period – the late teens and early 20’s, Roy Wood Sellars, a Unitarian layman and professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, was also proclaiming religious humanism. In his book, The Next Step in Religion (1918), Sellars argued that people must give up believing in the supernatural, in God and immortality, and every claim to having absolute truth, and instead embrace a this-worldly, humanistic faith. He did not want to abolish the church, however, which he saw as a center for adult education and social action.
An interview with Sellars by his minister was published in the Christian Register and led to responses both pro and con. A number of those responding approved, saying words to the effect that what Sellars said is what I have thought for a long time and others were shocked, suggesting that no Unitarian publication should waste paper on such terrible ideas.

The theist-humanist controversy. In 1921 the controversy between the new humanist views and the older theism took on larger proportions. Curtis Reese invited John Dietrich to speak at a large liberal church in Chicago. In his sermon, Dietrich said that religion must be brought into harmony with modern thought, and that meant that it must give up belief in a supernatural deity and emphasize human powers for happiness and social change.

Professor George Dodson, professor of philosphy at Washington University and a Unitarian layman, strongly expressed his objection, saying that such ideas should not be permitted in a Unitarian pulpit. He went on to write an article for the Christian Register attacking religious humanism and insisting that Unitarianism should stand not only for freedom but also for what he called a common faith in God. His idea was that this was not a creedal statement but simply a description of what Unitarians believe. Moreover the thought that some Unitarian ministers would be preaching atheism while others would be preaching faith in God would be unbearable and would tear the movement apart.

Later the same year the Unitarian National Conference was meeting in Detroit, and Dietrich had been invited to be one of the main speakers. Pressure was put on the general secretary to replace him but instead another speaker was replaced by the militant theist, William Sullivan, minister of All Souls Church in New York City and a former Roman Catholic priest. Sullivan had come to Dodson’s defense with an article in the Christian Register affirming theism and strongly repudiating humanism. Reese had answered that article, affirming the need for religion to enter the modern age and with a ringing call to resist any kind of creedal requirements, noting that that would lead to heresy trials. Reese concluded his letter by saying that “theism is philosophically possible, but not religiously necessary.”

Dodson answered this with a letter to the Register arguing that we should be able to affirm religious freedom and at the same time go on record that the majority of us accept the teaching of Jesus that we are the children of God and that our religion is that of the Twenty-third Psalm, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Sermon on the Mount.”

Dodson and Sullivan went to the Detroit meeting with the intention of getting a similar statement approved by the convention, thus making humanism a peripheral minority with the AUA. Dietrich’s speech was quite powerful, and Sullivan made the mistake in his address of making derogatory comments about Dietrich and humanism. As a result Dodson and Sullivan lost some support, and they decided not to present their statement to the convention.

In his speech Dietrich said that the power of Christianity was not “the pathetic tale of the life of Jesus, nor the tragic story of his death; no, nor the innocent myth of his triumphant resurrection.” It was, rather, the faith of the early Christians in the coming of the kingdom of God that gave their religion its power. In the same way, it is our faith that the world can be changed that empowers Unitarians. Mason Olds writes of Dietrich’s speech, “He sounded like an ancient biblical prophet when he proclaimed that the world ‘does not need an ecclesiastical religion, it does not need more priests and prayers and holy books, it does not need literary essays on academic subjects; but it does need the voice of the prophet going up and down the land, crying “prepare ye the way of mankind and make its way straight.”’” (p. 42)

Dietrich had brilliantly transformed the idea of the common faith that Dodson said was faith in God into the common faith in what he called the Commonwealth of Man. He changed the common faith from a matter of belief in a supernatural power to belief in the ability of human beings to create a better world by our own efforts. And thus he made the transformation of society, not supernaturalism, prayer and ritual, the cornerstone of Unitarian religion.

The humanism-theism controversy was not over, but the opportunity for the theists to pass a resolution committing Unitarianism to belief in God had passed, and Unitarianism was able to remain a non-creedal religion, thus keeping the door open to religious humanists. It was a situation similar to what had happened in 1865 but this time the liberals, the humanists in this case, were able to remain in the mainstream.

Meanwhile the number of religious humanists among the Unitarians was growing. Professor Frank Doan of Meadville Theological School – located in Meadville, PA, until 1926 – had proclaimed what he called “cosmic humanism” which although it was somewhat theistic, insisted on beginning with humankind in his search for the divine. Doan influenced three Meadville graduates who were later to become leading humanist spokespersons: J.A.C. Fagginer Auer, Charles Lyttle and E. Burdette Backus. When the school moved to Chicago and became affiliated with the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, its students were exposed to the liberal teaching of that School as well. For Chicago was the home of several leading Christian modernists and the humanist professor of comparative religion and Unitarian A. Eustace Haydon. Some of the leading Unitarian humanist ministers came out of Meadville in the late 1920’s and early 30’s: Edwin Wilson, Raymond Bragg, and Alfred Hobart, to name only three.

An excellent sense of the religious humanism of the time can be found in the 1927 volume entitled Humanist Sermons edited by Curtis Reese. In his preface Reese lists three defining beliefs of the new religion. First, humanism affirmed “that human life is of supreme worth” and that human beings are ends in themselves , not a means to any other goal. Second, humanism was committed to “human inquiry” as a means of “understanding human experience.” This was meant to be a rejection of divine revelation and an affirmation of reason and scientific method. And third, humanism represented the most complete “effort to enrich human experience.” (David Robinson, p. 147)

The Humanist Manifesto. In 1933 Leon Birkhead, then minister of the Unitarian Church of Kansas City, Missouri, suggested to Raymond Bragg, the Secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference that there ought to be a summary statement of religious humanism. Bragg agreed and asked Roy Sellars if he would draft such a statement. Sellers was intrigued by the idea and produced the first draft of what he called “a humanist manifesto.” Bragg then asked Curtis Reese, Eustace Haydon, and Edwin Wilson, minister of Third Unitarian Church in Chicago to join him in editing the document for publication. The Manifesto was sent to a number of Unitarian ministers, well-known scholars and several celebrities like Clarence Darrow for signatures.

Thirty-four people, all men, signed the Manifesto. A number were philosophers including famous names like John Dewey, John Herman Randall, Jr., Roy Wood Sellars, and Edwin A. Burtt. Eustace Haydon of the University of Chicago Divinity School, and J.A.C. Fagginer Auer of Harvard Divinity School signed it. Fifteen Unitarian ministers signed it including Dietrich and Reese, Lester Mondale, Raymond Bragg, E. Burdette Backus, Charles Francis Potter, David Rhys Williams and Edwin H. Wilson. Clinton Lee Scott was the only Universalist minister to sign it, and one Jewish rabbi signed it.

The Manifesto actually came at a time when religious humanism had begun to decline after the heady days of the 1920's. The great depression turned people’s attention to more practical concerns. As Bill Schulz writes: “The skeptical metaphysical speculations in which the humanists engaged were not ones that provided the kind of cosmic assurance an economically insecure people thought they required in a religion. Neither Christian liberalism nor an amorphous adolescent humanism appeared to be able to meet those needs.” (Religious Humanism, spring, 1983, p. 89)

The Manifesto was the quintessential statement of the religious humanism of that period. It was bold and forthright, and it was clearly intended to proclaim a viable new religious alternative for the 20th century.

The Manifesto begins by proclaiming the birth of a new and viable religion for the new age. It starts this way: “The time has come for widespread recognition of the radical changes in religious beliefs throughout the modern world. The time is past for mere revision of traditional attitudes. Science and economic change have disrupted the old beliefs. Religions the world over are under the necessity of coming to terms with new conditions created by a vastly increased knowledge and experience. In every field of human activity, the vital movement is now in the direction of a candid and explicit humanism…” Therefore the purpose of the Manifesto, the writers say, is to understand religious humanism better. It had an educational and public relations purpose. But it was also a political statement.

The Manifesto points to the danger of religion being identified with the outmoded beliefs of another era, and points out the importance of having religious beliefs that are compatible with both the method and the discoveries of modern science. But it also argues that the value of religion has been and must continue to be the means for realizing the highest goals and values of life. These reasons make religious humanism imperative for today’s world, and the Manifesto then sets forth fifteen beliefs or convictions of religious humanism.

The Manifesto affirmed that the universe is “self-existing and not created,” that humans evolved as part of nature in a continuous process, and it rejected mind-body dualism. It says that humanism recognizes that man’s religious culture and civilization are the product of a gradual development, and that the nature of the universe depicted by modern science “makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees” of human values, and it maintains “religion must formulate its hopes and plans in the light of the scientific spirit and method.”

Religion, it says, consists of those actions, purposes and experiences which are humanly significant. “Nothing human is alien to the religious .. labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation.” In one of the best statements, in my view, except for the fact that it needs de-genderizing, it says that “Religious humanism considers the complete realization of human personality to be the end of man’s life and seeks its development and fulfillment in the here and now. This is the explanation of the humanist’s social passion.”

“In the place of the old attitudes involved in worship and prayer, (the Manifesto suggests) the humanist finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.”

The eleventh of the fifteen theses states that “Man will learn to face the crises of life in terms of his knowledge of their naturalness and probability.” (In 1933 the feminist movement had not yet appeared to make us aware of the need for gender-inclusive language, so I have not tried to de-genderize.)

The famous 14th thesis criticizes the capitalist system which it calls “profit-motivated society” and calls instead for a socialist and cooperative economy. The goal was a more equitable distribution of wealth, but the notion of socialism resulted in criticism later. However, during the depression it did seem quite evident that capitalism was not working very well. This is part of what I mean when I say that the Manifesto was both a religious and a political document.

The last thesis is one of its finer statements: “We assert that humanism will (a) affirm life rather than deny it; (b) seek to elicit the possibilities of life, not flee from it; and (c) endeavor to establish the conditions of a satisfactory life for all, not merely for the few.”

The Manifesto then concludes with these words: “Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.”

Lester Mondale, the only living signer, was quoted in an article in The World in 1997, saying, The Manifesto ‘“was the answer to the revolutions going on in the rest of the world – the Fascist and Communist revolutions… We wanted to assert the humanitarian values of the free way of life.’ By offering a vision of a ‘free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good, .. the Manifesto had a religious as well as a political dimension. It asserted, ‘Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement.’”

Although the Manifesto did not receive the publicity its authors had wanted it did receive some responses. The Christian Century, a fairly liberal nondenominational journal, attacked the Manifesto’s godless religion. While it agreed with some of the social statements, it expressed doubt that the social goals could be realized without a theistic grounding.

Nevertheless, with the Manifesto religious humanism went public as a viable religious option for those who find that the beliefs, myths, and symbols of Judaism and Christianity are no longer believable and have lost their power. It was the sign of the emergence of a new religion in America, a religion that would find its ecclesiastical home in Unitarianism and Universalism.

Weaknesses. The religious humanism of this early period had several weaknesses. For one thing it was highly individualistic. The independent, autonomous individual was the ideal and indeed the image of humanness it fostered. Thus it lacked an emphasis on community and had no doctrine of the church, the covenanted community, and no doctrine of ministry.

Second, it exemplified no sense of the tragic, of the place of pain and suffering, loss and grief, death and dying. It was too optimistic, and it seemed to take an attitude of indifference toward the harsh realities of human life. John Dietrich’s ministry illustrates this point. Dietrich had almost no pastoral ministry and did not normally call on members who were hospitalized. When asked why he did not call on sick members, Dietrich replied with a sort of Stoical comment that they have to learn to cope with their problems themselves.

A third weakness of this humanism is that it placed too much emphasis on reason and ignored the emotional or feeling aspect of the self. It emphasized the mind and virtually ignored the heart, so to speak

Fourth, it lacked a sense of openness to mystery and the unknown. It was optimistic in thinking that the unknown was simply that which science had not yet been able to understand.

Fifth, it was too optimistic in its view of human possibilities and its view of progress, and it showed no sense of the extent and depth of evil in the world, a point noted by the writers of the second Manifesto in 1973 who mention the brutality of Nazism and the fact that science can bring both great good and great harm.

And finally, it was too dogmatic and often seemed to be somewhat intolerant of other perspectives, especially theism.

Unitarianism after the Manifesto. The Manifesto can be seen as the crowning point in the sweeping reformation of Unitarian religion from Channing’s Unitarian Christianity to religious humanism all in a little over a hundred years. The next step was to be the report of the Commission of Appraisal in 1936 which had been called together to address the problem of the decline in membership in the Association. The Commission noted that the religion of the American Unitarian Association had moved to the theological left and that it appeared to be continuing to move in that direction. Frederick May Eliot chaired the Commission and shortly after giving the report was asked to run for President of the AUA. Eliot was a liberal theist, but he was viewed as being sympathetic to humanism, so a number of theistic ministers nominated Charles Joy to run against him. In order to avoid a potentially divisive election, Joy later withdrew and Eliot won the Presidency unopposed. Many saw his election as giving the stamp of approval to religious humanism and fostering its growth.

Eliot admired the humanists for their moral passion and the fact that they cared deeply about human values. Yet he held to a liberal theism despite his view of the problematic nature of the word God. He felt that “religion was a process of constructing symbols and acting under them,” and God was the most important symbol of all. (David Robinson, The Unitarian and the Universalists, p. 150)

Meanwhile for some of the same reasons that had led to religious humanism in the Unitarian fold, by the mid-1930’s a number of Universalists also were becoming humanists. I mentioned that Universalist minister Clinton Lee Scott signed the Manifesto. The Universalist Washington declaration in 1935 opened the door widely for humanism. Kenneth Patton was clearly a humanist and perhaps the best known with his long ministry and his many writings. Robert Cummins who was President of the Universalist Church was very close to humanism in his theology as were a number of ministers, especially some of those who called themselves the Humiliati. At least one of the Humiliati, David Cole, refused to be ordained as a Christian minister and was ordained as a Universalist minister.

I have not been able to find much about humanism in books and articles on Universalist history, but I think it is fair to say that a number, perhaps a majority, of Universalist ministers and congregations were more or less humanistic by the time of merger.

One example of Universalist humanism comes from a pamphlet published by the Universalist Church of Ohio, and entitled “Alternative to Orthodoxy.” There is no date on it but it comes from some time before 1961 since it includes the name and address of the Universalist Church of America. It defines Universalism as “a practical religion based on reason and common sense, and it lists five basic principles which sound almost like a humanist statement of faith. They are: “confidence in man … primacy of reasons … dependability of the universe .. oneness of humanity … necessity of worship.” The word God does not appear.

We also know that while the Unitarians were debating theism versus humanism, the Universalists were seeking to re-shape their faith from liberal Christianity to liberal religion. They wanted the word Universalism to mean, not universal salvation in the sense that no one will be damned eternally, but rather universal religion in the sense of being a religion for every one in every culture. Kenneth Patton in particular but others as well tried to use the symbols and celebrate the holidays of the other major world religions as a way of universalizing Universalism. Their success was very limited.

Coming back to the Unitarians, after the second world war, religious humanism fueled the Unitarian fellowship movement and the founding of new congregations in the burgeoning suburbs. My former congregation in suburban Washington, D.C., was typical in that it was founded in 1959 largely by humanists.

So by the time of merger in 1961, religious humanism had replaced liberal theism as the core of the new Unitarian Universalist Association. The theists and particularly the UU Christians were now the ones who questioned whether they belonged to this denomination. But as almost always happens, a new orthodoxy began to develop, what humanist Fred Muir calls “a creeping humanist orthodoxy.” Richard Erhardt writes: “From our inception (in 1961) to the present any right thinking Unitarian Universalist leaned toward humanistic understandings of the world. When I was growing up I learned that it was all right to say just about anything that was on my mind in my UU congregation. But that right ended if I mentioned the word God. That right ended if I pondered an afterlife. That right ended if I ventured out of Newtonian physics toward the quantum models and its implications which strongly point away from a modernistic humanism toward a post-modern understanding of life. I had experienced an understanding of humanism as orthodoxy.” (from First Days Record, quoted by Muir, p. 120)

Religious humanism, which had once championed freedom of belief had now become entrenched, parochial and illiberal. In place of challenging the attempts of others to petrify Unitarian Universalism into a Christian or theistic orthodoxy, humanism had itself become the petrified orthodoxy.

In the next lecture we will pick up the story there and discuss some of the current challenges to religious humanism. I will conclude that lecture with some suggestions of what I believe the new humanism should look like.

II. RELIGIOUS HUMANISM -- TODAY AND TOMORROW

Before we consider the current challenges to and influences on religious humanism I want to take a brief look at the second Humanist Manifesto. It does not address the problem of humanist orthodoxy in Unitarian Universalism, and in fact does not argue for humanism as a religion as did the first Manifesto. It does, however, illustrate some of the changes in humanist thinking that had occurred over the 40 years since the first Manifesto.

Humanist Manifesto II. In 1973 a new generation of humanists, including some of the signers of the first Manifesto who were still living, signed Humanist Manifesto II. Drafted by philosopher Paul Kurtz and UU minister Edwin Wilson, it attempted to correct some of the flaws of the first. It begins by admitting that the first Manifesto had been too optimistic, citing the horrible atrocities of Nazism and the suppression of human rights by other totalitarian regimes. It goes on to note that science has been the source of horrible evil as well as great good. However, it reaffirms the earlier manifesto’s rejection of supernaturalism, and it offers humanism as a hopeful vision of the future. It tempers the optimism of the first Manifesto by recognizing that the future is “filled with dangers. (For) in learning to apply the scientific method to nature and human life, we have opened the door to ecological damage, overpopulation, de-humanizing institutions, totalitarian repression and nuclear and biochemical disaster.”

It does not flee from reason and the scientific method, however, but instead insists that if humanity is to survive, “We need to extend the uses of scientific method, not renounce them, to fuse reason with compassion [note that phrase] in order to build constructive social and moral values… The ultimate goal should be the fulfillment of the potential for growth in each human personality – not for the favored few but for all of humankind.” [note also the use of degenderized language]

With regard to religion it suggests that at its best, “religion may inspire dedication to the highest ethical ideals,” but it goes on to repudiate traditional dogmatic and authoritarian religions. On the subject of ethics it asserts that moral values have their source in human experience, and they need no theological sanction. It also maintains that “reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments” we possess, but they should not be understood as independent of or in opposition to emotion.

The next section proclaims that “the preciousness and dignity of the individual person is a central humanist value” and it condemns exploitative sexual behavior and supports the development of a responsible attitude toward sexuality. The rest of the document affirms “the full range of civil liberties,” an “open and democratic society,” separation of church and state, social justice, and “elimination of all discrimination based on race, religion, sex, age or national origin.” It urges non-violent means of settling international disputes and urges international cooperation in reducing the threat to the environment.

It was signed by a number of well-known scientists, philosophers and several UU ministers. The youngest signer was former UUA President Bill Schulz, then a student at Meadville/Lombard. From today’s perspective it seems to be an improvement in many ways over the first Manifesto since it deals with issues we are still concerned about. It failed to address other issues which have since become challenges to humanism.

As I have said, the second Manifesto corrects some of the problems of the first and it addresses some of the issues such as environmental concerns and feminism that emerged after the first Manifesto was written. It describes, if you will, a kinder and gentler humanism.

Postwar UU Humanism. The humanist orthodoxy I noted at the end of the first lecture did the cause of UU humanism a good deal of harm. Many of the old guard humanists were rigid thinkers who defined humanism too narrowly and did not welcome those who did not fully agree with them. Their philosophy was shaped by positivism and rational empiricism. It was seen as a bloodless, passionless religious philosophy, and while it articulated humanism effectively for several decades, times change and the old humanism did not change with the times.

I had an experience with the old humanism in 1955. I was a first year seminary student, was very unhappy as a Southern Baptist and thought that I might belong in Unitarianism, so I went one Sunday to the local Unitarian church (this was before merger). No one spoke to me as I went in. I sat alone in a beautiful old gothic sanctuary with a seating capacity of about 400, but with maybe 75 people scattered all around. I heard an excellent sermon; we may have sung a hymn or two, but I’m not even sure of that. No one spoke to me as I left. No one invited me to a coffee hour; I don’t even know if there was one. In a word it was the coldest, most uninviting church I had ever attended, and as a result I was lost to Unitarianism for 20 years.

That kind of humanism has diminished the vitality of Unitarian Universalist religious humanism. It was effective 40 years ago but it is no longer effective today. A new humanism has been emerging for at least the last 20 years, and I believe it has already begun to re-vitalize religious humanism in our Association. Some of my closest ministerial friends belong to and practice this new humanism: Kendyl Gibbons, Fred Muir, Kenn Hurto, Nancy Haley, and Carol Hepokoski. I will describe it in a moment.

First, however, one more observation. A number of UU humanists in recent years have complained about feeling under siege. In 1995 the UU ministers convocation in Hot Springs, Arkansas, refused to adopt a statement that would have affirmed “trust in the power of reason.” At the 1997 General Assembly the Fellowship of Religious Humanists hosted a workshop dealing with the question of whether humanists could really stay in Unitarian Universalism or whether we should leave. Later that year the World carried an article about UU humanism entitled “The Marginalized Majority.” The sense is that theism in on the ascendency and that humanism is no longer the core of Unitarian Universalism. Yet, the surveys we take continue to show that humanists are in the majority in our Association and in most of our congregations. That is why the World article was entitled the Marginalized Majority. I believe there are at least two reasons for this feeling of being marginalized. One is that it seems more ministers these days are theistic, and ministers are usually the voices we hear from our pulpits or when theology is the subject. I will come back to that point in a moment. Another reason is that the old guard of humanists, as I said, are still in charge of some of our congregations, and their brand of humanism does not appeal to many people under 55 today. We live in the postmodern age and the old guard are still in the modern age and the modern way of thinking. I will also come back to that in a moment.

UU minister and humanist Fred Muir has suggested that within Unitarian Universalism in the last 20 years the old humanist-theist controversy has been replaced by a a controversy between the two types of humanists. That is really unfortunate, for I believe that if the new humanism is to be an effective force in Unitarian Universalism, and if we are to grow rather than shrink, we must adapt to the changing times. Before I discuss the shape of this new humanism, I want to say some things about the growth of theism among us.
Growth in Theism. As I say, we seem to be seeing within Unitarian Universalism a significant growth in theism. I have not seen any statistics to support that. I only know that many of the UU ministers I know are theists, especially the younger ministers. In fact it sometimes seems to me that it is almost a generational thing – most of the ministers I know who are over 50 tend to be humanists and those under 50 tend to be theists. There are exceptions of course, and my experience is limited, but that is my impression. It was also true among the laity of my former congregation. Almost all the older generation were humanists whereas many of the younger generation were theists or at least were trying to be.

One reason for the growth in theism may well be that it is a reaction to the stifling humanist orthodoxy I have mentioned. Another reason is probably the mood and tenor of our times which I will discuss in a moment under the rubric of postmodernism.

The fact that about 70 percent of our ministers are being educated at non-UU seminaries, the Christian seminaries of other denominations, is, I fear, anther reason for the prevalence of theism among ministers. There are exceptions of course, some of them in this room. But there is no doubt that all of us are influenced by our environment, including our academic environment. One of my goals as President of Meadville/Lombard is to increase the number of students who prepare for the ministry at Meadville. Not that I think there should be more people studying for UU ministry but that I think more of those who are studying for our ministry ought to be studying at M/L. Incidentally during my two and half years at Meadville/Lombard we have replaced four of the six faculty members due to retirements, etc. Three of these are humanists and including myself that means that four of our seven faculty and faculty/administrators are humanists.

The kind of theism that many of our ministers profess to is either the God of process theology or a kind of vague, New Age theism. In both of these theologies God is part of the natural universe rather than a supernatural being, and is imminent rather than transcendent. Whether this God is a personal being or an impersonal force is a matter of interpretation and often it is not clear which kind of God is meant. The traditional meaning of theism is belief in a God who is personal, supernatural and separate from the world. Technically these UU’s are not theists but pantheists or panentheists. I would argue that there is a very thin line between this naturalistic theism and humanism. In fact I make that argument in the first chapter of my book, A FAITH FOR ALL SEASONS, which is subtitled “Liberal Religion and the Crises of Life.” A more accurate subtitle would have been “A Humanist Response to the Crises of Life.” At any rate, in my view ministers who talk about God as the life force or the power of creativity or power of life and love within us are very close to those of us who embrace the new humanism.

Again let me give you a personal example. Several months ago I did a dialogue sermon with Scott Alexander, my successor as minister of River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, MD. Scott is a theist, and he was very much aware that his theism was not being entirely welcomed by the many humanists in that wonderful congregation. In his part of the sermon he summarized brilliantly the central beliefs of humanism. First, he said, humanism rejects the idea of a supernatural being or supernatural forces operating in the world. Scott said that he too did not believe that there is a supernatural force operating in the world. Second, he said that humanism relies on reason and intelligence for knowing what it true, real and right whereas traditional theism relies on what are thought to be revelations from God. Third, he pointed to the strong ethical emphasis in humanism, the goal of personal growth and social transformation. He said he agreed wholeheartedly with all of these, and “I proudly and passionately call myself a humanist.” He also calls himself a “naturalistic, mystical theist” because he also believes that something which he calls the spirit of God is animating the world and all living beings. He experiences this spirit of God as a “powerful spiritual presence .. of love decency, joyfulness, and hope.” But he does not regard God as a supernatural, authoritarian deity.

I would suggest to you that a lot of what is being called theism in our movement today is very similar to Scott’s theism and is very close to the new humanism that is growing among us. And, I firmly believe that rather than feeling marginalized, those of us who call ourselves humanists should rejoice because this naturalistic theism is much closer to what we believe than the traditional theism which most of us rejected. I believe that the heart of humanism should be not so much what we reject but what we affirm. And we affirm the dignity and worth of each person, the importance of reason and evidence in making judgments, dedication to the well-being of all people, and an affirmation of the authority of human experience. Those who affirm these are our allies, and if they want to affirm some concept of God as well, that to me is quite secondary.

That having been said, let me address the criticism theists often level at humanists, namely, that we have divinized human beings, that is, we have made human beings ultimate.

The theologian who best answers this criticism is our own Bill Jones, who teaches at Florida State in Tallahassee. Bill writes: “The critical significance of religious humanism .. in religious thought consists in its illumination of radical freedom autonomy as the essence of human reality and its program to construct a systematic theology/philosophy on the exclusively anthropological foundation of the functional ultimacy of humankind.”
He is saying two very important things. First, he is saying that in humanism as well as in theism human freedom is finite freedom; it is not infinite or unlimited freedom. It has real limits whereas the freedom of God – if there were such a being – is unlimited. Jones also says that it is freedom rather than reason that is at the heart of humanism.

Second, Jones is saying that human beings function as ultimate – we have what he calls functional ultimacy. In other words, we create our own values, we are ultimately responsible for ourselves and our world, but we are not ontologically ultimate. As he puts it, “human choice must decide not only what is true but what criteria shall be used to determine the truth and what standards shall be used in choosing between competing criteria.”

Functional ultimacy as opposed to ontological ultimacy means that we did not create ourselves and we are not necessarily the controlling agent in history or nature. Jones also shows that in liberal theism humankind is functionally ultimate in the sense that human beings have to decide what is right, what is true or what is the will of God and what is not. So again, there is not as much difference between humanism and liberal theism as we might think

Functional ultimacy answers the critics of humanism who say that humanism makes humankind ontologically ultimate, and Jones’ understanding of our freedom as finite freedom answers the critics who say that humanism gives humankind absolute freedom

Now (finally) I want to spend the rest of this lecture discussing the new humanism that has already emerged and is continuing to develop among us. Let us begin that discussion by noting three major influences in today’s world that humanism must take seriously: feminism, environmental awareness and postmodernism.

Feminism. First, the new religious humanism takes seriously the critique of feminism. The women’s movement has contributed a great deal to our understanding of what it means to be human, and humanism needs to incorporate feminist insights into our worldview. Rebecca Parker suggests three contributions of the women’s movement to humanism.

First, feminism reminds us that we are not only minds; we are also bodies. In facts, we are minds in bodies, and we need to take bodily existence seriously. That means that we need to incorporate feelings such as pain and anger and joy into our perspective, and it means that we recognize that the self is not a disembodied mind or intellect.

Secondly, she suggests that the women’s movement teaches that we are not atom-like independent individuals but interdependent and interconnected with all other human beings and all life. Our lives touch other lives and other lives touch us. To be fully human is to be in relationship.
Third, human beings are capable of being profoundly hurt. We are vulnerable and woundable. Religious humanists need to pay more attention to the pain many people experience and to ways in which we can minister to people in pain. Stoicism like that John Dietrich exemplified is not helpful to those who are hurting.

These are areas the older humanism did not really deal with, but the new humanism must incorporate these understandings if it is to speak to the human condition today.

The Environment. The second influence on religious humanism today comes from the environmental movement’s concern about our natural environment and the adverse effects of industrial pollution on it. The old humanism has been accused of being too anthropocentric, placing human concerns and values at the center of its ethic, making human beings dominant over nature, and thus treating nature simply as something to be used for the benefit of humankind. The old humanism was even accused of being one of the value systems responsible for the damage to the environment that has been occurring for the last 200 years. The new humanism must include environmental concerns in its philosophy.

Postmodernism. The third and perhaps most significant influence on humanism today is what is called Postmodernism. On the one hand Postmodernism refers to the philosophy and social criticism of Foucault, Derrida, Rorty, Lyotard and Heidegger in Europe and Richard Rorty and others in America. They criticize the modern age and the modern approach to reality that arose in the Enlightenment era, whose worldview and epistemology is also the basis for what I have been calling the older humanism but it also has a good deal of affinity with the kind of humanism that many of us affirm.

“Modernism, as a child of the Enlightenment, regarded the world as having knowable, universal, objective, and in many cases absolute truths when reason was applied. Progress was an historical, rational and scientific project. A better social order could be developed as we uncovered our common human nature and applied science to human problems.” (Michael Werner, Humanism and Postmodernism, p. 21) The task these postmodern philosophers engaged in was to deconstruct or tear down this modern worldview.

I point to these intellectuals not to engage them directly in debate, but because much of what they are saying reflects what is going on in western culture. As Hegel said, “the owl of Minerva comes out only after the shades of night have fallen.” That is, philosophy does not shape the culture, it reflects it. Speaking of Postmodernism Michael Werner says: “(I)t is incumbent on us to understand it better because it is the water we swim in. These are the assumptions, unchallenged premises of our culture that permeate everything in our lives. These premises mold all our thinking as individuals, dictate the nature of our society, and indeed mold our religious thinking as religious liberals.” (Ibid., p. 19)

In other words, Postmodernism is not only a philosophy; it is also a description of some of what has been happening to the consciousness of people in the western world. “The Postmodern mind emphasizes the intuitive and mystical aspects rather than the evidential or cognitive aspects. It stresses communitarian, supportive behavior rather than individualistic, confrontational methods.” (Ibid., p. 23) The New Age phenomenon exemplifies the postmodern spirit with its emphasis on feeling rather than thinking or reasoning. So do neo-paganism and eco-feminism. Many people make value judgments about what is right or wrong on the basis of whether or not something feels okay, not on the basis of a reasoned approach to whether it will be of benefit to people. Postmodernism says that everything is relative and a matter of one’s own perspective. It has no other grounds for determining what is right or wrong, good or bad.

Postmodernism also maintains that all our ideas of truth and our basic sense of reality are social constructions. What we call reality is something human beings have constructed over the thousands of years of our history. Postmodernism says there is no basis in reality for our values and beliefs. “What you believe is just a collage of ideas given by your culture and your own rationalizations for power and control.” (Ibid, pp. 19-20)

It may be helpful to contrast the two temperaments or perspectives. Modernism emphasizes truth, objectivity and progress. Postmodernism denies the possibility of truth or progress and it celebrates subjectivity. The modernist believes in individualism and in ethics; the postmodernist emphasizes community and says everything is a matter of taste or preference.

The challenge of postmodernism lies in the fact that the humanism most of us affirm is based on critical thinking, on reason and on modern scientific and empirical understanding, and postmodernism rejects these as criteria for making judgments about what is true or real. Certainly the humanism of those in the first generations of religious humanists was grounded in the principles and world view of the Enlightenment, principles such as the centrality of reason as a means of understanding and a way to knowledge, an epistemology based on scientific-empirical method, the importance of the individual self and a sense of a common humanity. These are the principles and values of modernity, and they are the very principles and values that postmodernism rejects.

And so, the reason or rational thinking that humanism has traditionally regarded as basic to life and to the religious quest is simply a social construct and it differs from one culture to another and indeed from one era to another in the same culture. Postmodernists criticize science and the scientific-empirical method on the same grounds

Postmodernism is of course a reaction against the beliefs and values of modernism. It arises out of the view that the western world has carried both individualism and rational, scientific, empirical thinking too far with the resultant loss or at least neglect of our emotional aspect and of life in community. It is the pendulum swinging to the other extreme. If modernism over-emphasized reason and scientific method as the way to truth and neglected the emotions, postmodernism over-emphasizes intuition and feeling and neglects reason and says there is no truth except what each person feels is true. If modernism over-emphasized the rights and self-sufficiency of the individual, postmodernism runs the danger of diminishing the value of the individual.
Traditionally humanism has been tied to the modern way of thinking, but I do not believe that it has to be. I welcome the criticisms of postmodernism, and I believe humanism can benefit by adopting some of the postmodern temperament and worldview. But I regard both modernism and postmodernism as extreme positions. The humanism of today can incorporate the best of each worldview. Postmodernism can help us understand the prejudices that shape our thinking and give us a greater humility about our beliefs. It can teach us to listen to what our intuitions and emotional experience tell us. The older humanism was too dogmatic and overly rational and failed to give enough value to the community.

What I am saying is very different from what champions of the older humanism like Paul Kurtz maintain. Kurtz rejects the postmodernist perspective, and he also rejects any identification of humanism with religion. So once again, let me be clear that what I am talking about is religious humanism – the Unitarian Universalist variety.

Feminism, the ecology and postmodernism represent critiques and perspectives that the humanism or today and tomorrow must take into account.

So, let me suggest ten characteristics of a religious humanism for today and tomorrow. We might also call these ten ways in which contemporary religious humanism differs from the older humanism. I believe that what I am describing is not a prediction for a future humanism; I believe it is the kind of humanism that many of us are already practicing at least to some degree, and so it is a description of religious humanism today.

First, and the foundation of the other nine, religious humanism affirms the inestimable worth and dignity of every human being. We must be clear that ours is a universal humanism, that all people – women and minorities and persons of all sexual orientations as well as straight white males, people of every nation and culture – all people are of inestimable worth. That is obviously the foundation of human-ism. We must affirm equality, that all persons are of equal worth. We must also affirm that humanism, properly understood and practiced, is utterly and completely opposed to the notion of Western superiority and all forms of cultural imperialism.

Second, contemporary religious humanism emphasizes the importance of the covenanted religious community. We are not atom-like, independent, isolated individuals. We become individuals in community, starting with the community of the family. And we become truly human only in authentic community with others. Thus, we affirm both individuality and community, and that the one is created through the other. I define authentic community as people who covenant to walk together for common purposes. A humanistic religious community will be a caring and responsible community in which each person cares about and to some extent for others within the community and outside the community as well. One of the major differences between secular humanism and religious humanism is that religious humanism emphasizes the importance of the covenanted religious community.

Third, today’s humanism retains its emphasis on reason, intelligence and critical thinking though not in a dogmatic way, and at the same time recognizes the importance of the intuitive and non-rational factors in human experience. We are thinking beings, but we are not only thinking beings; we are also intuitive and feeling beings, and our feelings, our emotions, play an important role in our values and how we got those values. I am a humanist social activist because I feel outrage at injustice and oppression and the pain and suffering they bring upon people. I am a humanist in part because of my strong feelings about the suffering of innocent people. I think of my humanism as being based on my experience but my experience is that of thinking/feeling person. Reason and emotions, the mind and the heart, so to speak, work together in that each feeds and nurtures and supports the other. Our thinking informs how we feel and our feelings inform what we think.

The humanism of today and tomorrow acknowledges the role of the intuitive and the affective as well as the role of critical thinking. They are all essential parts of what it means to be human.

On the other hand, we should reject the current view in our culture that feeling something means it has objective reality. I am thinking, for example, of people who say they feel the presence of a loved one who is dead, and therefore they say that that person has some kind of objective existence. Or the current fad of believing in angels because you feel that an angel is helping or guiding you. Feelings of that kind have to be tested with reason and critical thinking. There is a book on this subject that I strongly recommend; Wendy Kaminer is the author and the title is Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials.

Fourth, religious humanism today takes seriously the tragic dimension of life. Human beings suffer and die, sometimes prematurely and almost always before we are ready. The tragic dimension includes the fact that life and the universe are not necessarily benevolent to human beings but are really indifferent to us and sometimes even hostile. It includes the fact that life is not necessarily meaningful and purposeful.

I wrote my book, A FAITH FOR ALL SEASONS, to offer some insights from a humanist perspective on the question of meaning and purpose in life, the problem of pain and suffering, the agony of loss and grief and the experience of death and dying. For I believe that religious humanism does have answers to those basic questions of life, answers that are helpful and satisfying. And I believe very strongly that we can and should be addressing these questions in our congregations.

Fifth, if the old humanism seemed closed to a sense of wonder and mystery and even to some form of transcendence, the new humanism is an open humanism—open to wonder and mystery and transcendence in a naturalistic framework. We can admit that there are limits to what human beings can know and understand, and that even things we think we understand can still call forth awe and wonder in us.

If the old humanism tended to be somewhat arrogant, self-assured and even dogmatic, the new humanism is more modest. Instead of proclaiming “this is the way things are,” we can say “This is how it looks to me.” We can speak for ourselves without trying to seem to legislate for others.

And that leads to the sixth point. The new humanism is tolerant of other perspectives and willing to engage with an open mind in conversation with people who hold other perspectives. In particular I would hate to see us regard Unitarian Universalist theists as somehow our enemies or even as competitors. We are both dedicated to human betterment, and we agree on far more than we disagree on. We need to work together with those who have somewhat different views. Agreed to differ, but resolved to love.

Seventh, the new humanism understands and appreciates the importance of the aesthetic dimension in religion and in life. The old humanism gave the impression of being rather lacking in aesthetic interests or values. Services in explicitly humanistic congregations often were simply lectures and discussion sometimes embellished by special music.

Today’s religious humanism can appreciate the value of music including congregational singing, art, poetry, symbols, myth and ritual. I think of such rituals as the lighting of the chalice at the beginning of each service, a visual symbol of the goal of enlightenment and of religious freedom through its history. I think also of the flower communion and in particular of the ritual of the sharing of joys and concerns including the lighting of a candle by the person sharing a joy or concern. I believe the sharing of joys and concerns is important to a community of religious humanists because it is a way of building a caring community, a community that cares about humans and that after all is what humanism stands for.

Beauty, music, ceremony, ritual, and symbols feed our souls – and by soul I don’t mean a separate spiritual substance, but a quality of our lives.

The aesthetic dimension speaks to the whole person, not just the mind, and that is why it is so important if religious humanism is to affirm that we are whole persons and if our humanism is to impact our affections. Moreover, I believe that if humanism is to appeal to people other than intellectuals it must speak to the whole person through the arts, through ritual and symbol.

Eight, religious humanism today includes a commitment to the environment, what our UUA seventh principle calls the interdependent web of all existence. Religious humanism is ecologically conscious, environmentally concerned and committed. It is naturalistic in two senses: First, it is deeply concerned with nature, the natural world, and second, it is not supernaturalist.

Humanism does not have to become a nature religion and regard nature as sacred in order to be committed to a cleaner and more responsible use of the environment. For we know that if human life is to survive for many more generations, we must honor the natural world far more than humankind has ever done before. In a word, it is possible to build an environmental ethic on humanist foundations. We can honor nature without deifying it.
Nine, a religious humanism for today and tomorrow must be committed to liberating oppressed people and to economic justice. We ought to have a bias in favor of the poor and disadvantaged and oppressed. We are emphatically committed to women’s rights and equality, to gay rights and equality, to anti-racism and to economic justice. Humanism is by definition truly committed to human well being, and that means we must be socially responsible and active in the work of justice.

Tenth and last, today’s religious humanism is open to spirituality and spiritual growth. The words spiritual and spirituality are used a great deal these days and it is difficult if not impossible to find a definition with which everyone would agree. However, I would argue that spirituality need not refer to supernatural beliefs or experience. The longest sermon series I ever gave was a series of sixteen sermons in which I articulated a humanist spirituality. To me the word spiritual refers to the depth dimension of life which theologian Paul Tillich sometimes referred to as the locus of religion. When we touch the depths of our being, when we ponder the ultimate concerns of life or the truly important questions of life, then we are living more spiritually. Spirituality is the opposite of superficiality and the opposite of materialism, meaning a life preoccupied with material things. One of my students once defined spirituality as loving the universe. I also think of spirituality as having to do with love: love of one’s fellow human beings, love of nature, love of life, love of self, and the action that should follow such love which is justice seeking. Thus, spiritual growth would be growth in love. My point is simply that there is such a thing as humanist spirituality. We need not shy away from the word or the concept.

Khoren Arisian says that “spiritual life develops and flourishes primarily through our relatedness to one another and with the life of the world.” I agree.

Sharon Welch, in a short article entitled “Spirituality without God,” writes: “there are spiritual practices that are intellectually credible, emotionally comforting, and ethically challenging, habits of individual and collective attention, meditation, reflection and physical ecstasy that can sustain us as we work for justice, that can promote joy and resilience in the face of life’s challenges.” She also maintains that spiritual practices and experiences should make us more loving and lead us to become more fully engaged with the world around us, including becoming more fully involved with the work of justice.

A religious humanism that emphasizes these ten points incorporates many of the best aspects of postmodernism, the women’s movement, and the environmental movement. In other words, it is a humanism that speaks to where many people are today. But at the same time it also honors its own inner principle, its own fundamental dedication to human betterment.

In an age when the symbols and myths of traditional religion have lost their power for most people despite the fact that many of those same people still give lip service to such religion, I truly believe that religious humanism of the kind I have described offers the best alternative to a secular materialism that ruins the fabric of society and destroys the individual soul.

In the final analysis religious humanism is about what it means to be truly and fully human. It is the radical claim of religious humanism that we can live rich and full lives without believing in the supernatural or in life beyond this one. It is the even more radical claim that such lives are more satisfying because they come closer to truthfulness and do not rely on illusions and because they are lived meaningfully through the joyous and challenging task of working to transform the world. (paraphrase of words by Howard Radest)