Secular humanism

George Holyoake coined the term "secularism" and led the secular movement in Britain from the mid-19th century.

In 1851 George Holyoake coined the term "secularism"[11] to describe "a form of opinion which concerns itself only with questions, the issues of which can be tested by the experience of this life".[12]

The modern secular movement coalesced around Holyoake, Charles Bradlaugh and their intellectual circle. The first secular society, the Leicester Secular Society, dates from 1851. Similar regional societies came together to form the National Secular Society in 1866.

Holyoake's secularism was strongly influenced by Auguste Comte, the founder of positivism and of modern sociology. Comte believed human history would progress in a "law of three stages" from a theological phase, to the "metaphysical", toward a fully rational "positivist" society. In later life, Comte had attempted to introduce a "religion of humanity" in light of growing anti-religious sentiment and social malaise in revolutionary France. This religion would necessarily fulfil the functional, cohesive role that supernatural religion once served.

Although Comte's religious movement was unsuccessful in France, the positivist philosophy of science itself played a major role in the proliferation of secular organizations in the 19th century in England. Richard Congreve visited Paris shortly after the French Revolution of 1848 where he met Auguste Comte and was heavily influenced by his positivist system. He founded the London Positivist Society in 1867, which attracted Frederic Harrison, Edward Spencer Beesly, Vernon Lushington, and James Cotter Morison amongst others.

In 1878, the Society established the Church of Humanity under Congreve's direction. There they introduced sacraments of the Religion of Humanity and published a co-operative translation of Comte's Positive Polity. When Congreve repudiated their Paris co-religionists in 1878, Beesly, Harrison, Bridges, and others formed their own positivist society, with Beesly as president, and opened a rival centre, Newton Hall, in a courtyard off Fleet Street.

The New York City version of the church was established by English immigrant Henry Edger. The American version of the "Church of Humanity" was largely modeled on the English church. Like the English version it wasn't atheistic and had sermons and sacramental rites.[13] At times the services included readings from conventional religious works like the Book of Isaiah.[14] It was not as significant as the church in England, but did include several educated people.[15]

Felix Adler, founder of the ethical movement

Another important precursor was the ethical movement of the 19th century. The South Place Ethical Society was founded in 1793 as the South Place Chapel on Finsbury Square, on the edge of the City of London,[16] and in the early nineteenth century was known as "a radical gathering-place".[17] At that point it was a Unitarian chapel, and that movement, like Quakers, supported female equality.[18] Under the leadership of Reverend William Johnson Fox,[19] it lent its pulpit to activists such as Anna Wheeler, one of the first women to campaign for feminism at public meetings in England, who spoke in 1829 on "rights of women". In later decades, the chapel changed its name to the South Place Ethical Society, now the Conway Hall Ethical Society. Today Conway Hall explicitly identifies itself as a humanist organisation, albeit one primarily focused on concerts, events, and the maintenance of its humanist library and archives. It bills itself as "The landmark of London’s independent intellectual, political and cultural life."

In America, the ethical movement was propounded by Felix Adler, who established the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1877.[20] By 1886, similar societies had sprouted up in Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis.[21]

These societies all adopted the same statement of principles:

• The belief that morality is independent of theology;
• The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the world's religions;
• The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
• The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
• The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies;
• The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.

In effect, the movement responded to the religious crisis of the time by replacing theology with unadulterated morality. It aimed to "disentangle moral ideas from religious doctrines, metaphysical systems, and ethical theories, and to make them an independent force in personal life and social relations."[21] Adler was also particularly critical of the religious emphasis on creed, believing it to be the source of sectarian bigotry. He therefore attempted to provide a universal fellowship devoid of ritual and ceremony, for those who would otherwise be divided by creeds. Although the organisation was overwhelmingly made up of (and entirely led by) atheists, and were many of the same people as in the secular movement, Ethical organisations at that time publicly avoided debate about religious beliefs, publicly advocating neither atheism nor theism, agnosticism nor deism, instead stressing "deed without creed" and a "purely human basis" for morality.[21]

The first ethical society along these lines in Britain was founded in 1886. By 1896 the four London societies formed the Union of Ethical Societies, and between 1905 and 1910 there were over fifty societies in Great Britain, seventeen of which were affiliated with the Union. The Union of Ethical Societies would later incorporate as the Ethical Union, a registered charity, in 1928. Under the leadership of Harold Blackham, it renamed itself the British Humanist Association in 1967. It became Humanists UK in 2017.

In the 1930s, "humanism" was generally used in a religious sense by the Ethical movement in the United States, and not much favoured among the non-religious in Britain. Yet "it was from the Ethical movement that the non-religious philosophical sense of Humanism gradually emerged in Britain, and it was from the convergence of the Ethical and Rationalist movements that this sense of Humanism eventually prevailed throughout the Freethought movement".[22]

As an organised movement in its own right, humanism emerged from vibrant non-religious movements of the 18th and 19th centuries such as the Owenites, Ethical Culture, the freethinkers, secularists, and positivists, as well as a few non-religious radical Unitarian congregations. The first Humanist Manifesto announced the humanist movement by that name to the public in 1933, following work at the University of Chicago across the 1920s.[23] The American Humanist Association was incorporated as an Illinois non-profit organization in 1943. The International Humanist and Ethical Union was founded in 1952, when a gathering of world Humanists met under the leadership of Sir Julian Huxley. The British Humanist Association took that name in 1967, but had developed from the Union of Ethical Societies which had been founded by Stanton Coit in 1896.[24]

In 2002, the IHEU General Assembly unanimously adopted the Amsterdam Declaration 2002 which represents the official defining statement of World Humanism.[25]

All member organisations of the International Humanist and Ethical Union are required by bylaw 5.1[26] to accept the Minimum Statement on Humanism:

Humanism is a democratic and ethical life stance, which affirms that human beings have the right and responsibility to give meaning and shape to their own lives. It stands for the building of a more humane society through an ethic based on human and other natural values in the spirit of reason and free inquiry through human capabilities. It is not theistic, and it does not accept supernatural views of reality.

To promote and unify "Humanist" identity, prominent members of the IHEU have endorsed the following statements on Humanist identity:

• All Humanists, nationally and internationally, should always use the one word Humanism as the name of Humanism: no added adjective, and the initial letter capital (by life stance orthography);
• All Humanists, nationally and internationally, should use a clear, recognizable and uniform symbol on their publications and elsewhere: our Humanist symbol the "Happy Human";
• All Humanists, nationally and internationally, should seek to establish recognition of the fact that Humanism is a life stance.

According to the Council for Secular Humanism, within the United States, the term "secular humanism" describes a world view with the following elements and principles:[8]

• Need to test beliefs – A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted by faith.
• Reason, evidence, scientific method – A commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence and scientific method of inquiry in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.
• Fulfillment, growth, creativity – A primary concern with fulfillment, growth and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.
• Search for truth – A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.
• This life – A concern for this life (as opposed to an afterlife) and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.
• Ethics – A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.
• Justice and fairness – an interest in securing justice and fairness in society and in eliminating discrimination and intolerance.[27]
• Building a better world – A conviction that with reason, an open exchange of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

A Secular Humanist Declaration was issued in 1980 by the Council for Secular Humanism's predecessor, CODESH. It lays out ten ideals: Free inquiry as opposed to censorship and imposition of belief; separation of church and state; the ideal of freedom from religious control and from jingoistic government control; ethics based on critical intelligence rather than that deduced from religious belief; moral education; religious skepticism; reason; a belief in science and technology as the best way of understanding the world; evolution; and education as the essential method of building humane, free, and democratic societies.[28]

A general outline of Humanism is also set out in the Humanist Manifesto prepared by the American Humanist Association.[29]

The Education for Economic Security Act of 1984 included a section, Section 20 U.S.C.A. 4059, which initially read: "Grants under this subchapter ['Magnet School Assistance'] may not be used for consultants, for transportation or for any activity which does not augment academic improvement." With no public notice, Senator Orrin Hatch tacked onto the proposed exclusionary subsection the words "or for any course of instruction the substance of which is Secular Humanism". Implementation of this provision ran into practical problems because neither the Senator's staff, nor the Senate's Committee on Labor and Human Resources, nor the Department of Justice could propose a definition of what would constitute a "course of instruction the substance of which is Secular Humanism". So, this determination was left up to local school boards. The provision provoked a storm of controversy which within a year led Senator Hatch to propose, and Congress to pass, an amendment to delete from the statute all reference to secular humanism. While this episode did not dissuade fundamentalists from continuing to object to what they regarded as the "teaching of Secular Humanism", it did point out the vagueness of the claim.

The phrase "secular humanism" became prominent after it was used in the United States Supreme Court case Torcaso v. Watkins. In the 1961 decision, Justice Hugo Black commented in a footnote, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others."

The footnote in Torcaso v. Watkins referenced Fellowship of Humanity v. County of Alameda,[64] a 1957 case in which an organization of humanists[65] sought a tax exemption on the ground that they used their property "solely and exclusively for religious worship." Despite the group's non-theistic beliefs, the court determined that the activities of the Fellowship of Humanity, which included weekly Sunday meetings, were analogous to the activities of theistic churches and thus entitled to an exemption. The Fellowship of Humanity case itself referred to Humanism but did not mention the term secular humanism. Nonetheless, this case was cited by Justice Black to justify the inclusion of secular humanism in the list of religions in his note. Presumably Justice Black added the word secular to emphasize the non-theistic nature of the Fellowship of Humanity and distinguish their brand of humanism from that associated with, for example, Christian humanism.

Another case alluded to in the Torcaso v. Watkins footnote, and said by some to have established secular humanism as a religion under the law, is the 1957 tax case of Washington Ethical Society v. District of Columbia, 249 F.2d 127 (D.C. Cir. 1957). The Washington Ethical Society functions much like a church, but regards itself as a non-theistic religious institution, honoring the importance of ethical living without mandating a belief in a supernatural origin for ethics. The case involved denial of the Society's application for tax exemption as a religious organization. The U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the Tax Court's ruling, defined the Society as a religious organization, and granted its tax exemption. The Society terms its practice Ethical Culture. Though Ethical Culture is based on a humanist philosophy, it is regarded by some as a type of religious humanism. Hence, it would seem most accurate to say that this case affirmed that a religion need not be theistic to qualify as a religion under the law, rather than asserting that it established generic secular humanism as a religion.

In the cases of both the Fellowship of Humanity and the Washington Ethical Society, the court decisions turned not so much on the particular beliefs of practitioners as on the function and form of the practice being similar to the function and form of the practices in other religious institutions.

The implication in Justice Black's footnote that secular humanism is a religion has been seized upon by religious opponents of the teaching of evolution, who have made the argument that teaching evolution amounts to teaching a religious idea. The claim that secular humanism could be considered a religion for legal purposes was examined by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Peloza v. Capistrano School District, 37 F.3d 517 (9th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 515 U.S. 1173 (1995). In this case, a science teacher argued that, by requiring him to teach evolution, his school district was forcing him to teach the "religion" of secular humanism. The Court responded, "We reject this claim because neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or Secular Humanism are 'religions' for Establishment Clause purposes." The Supreme Court refused to review the case.

The decision in a subsequent case, Kalka v. Hawk et al., offered this commentary:[65]

The Court's statement in Torcaso does not stand for the proposition that humanism, no matter in what form and no matter how practiced, amounts to a religion under the First Amendment. The Court offered no test for determining what system of beliefs qualified as a "religion" under the First Amendment. The most one may read into the Torcaso footnote is the idea that a particular non-theistic group calling itself the "Fellowship of Humanity" qualified as a religious organization under California law.

Decisions about tax status have been based on whether an organization functions like a church. On the other hand, Establishment Clause cases turn on whether the ideas or symbols involved are inherently religious. An organization can function like a church while advocating beliefs that are not necessarily inherently religious. Author Marci Hamilton has pointed out: "Moreover, the debate is not between secularists and the religious. The debate is believers and non-believers on the one side debating believers and non-believers on the other side. You've got citizens who are [...] of faith who believe in the separation of church and state and you have a set of believers who do not believe in the separation of church and state."[66]

In the 1987 case of Smith v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County a group of plaintiffs brought a case alleging that the school system was teaching the tenets of an anti-religious religion called "secular humanism" in violation of the Establishment Clause. The complainants asked that 44 different elementary through high school level textbooks (including books on home economics, social science and literature) be removed from the curriculum. Federal judge William Brevard Hand ruled for the plaintiffs agreeing that the books promoted secular humanism, which he ruled to be a religion. The Eleventh Circuit Court unanimously reversed him, with Judge Frank stating that Hand held a "misconception of the relationship between church and state mandated by the establishment clause," commenting also that the textbooks did not show "an attitude antagonistic to theistic belief. The message conveyed by these textbooks is one of neutrality: the textbooks neither endorse theistic religion as a system of belief, nor discredit it".[67]

• Thinking And Moral Problems
• Religions And Their Source
• Purpose
• Developing A Universal Religion, four parts of a Wikibook

• Adler, Felix. An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918).
• Ericson, Edward L. The Humanist Way: An introduction to ethical humanist religion (1988).
• Frankel, Charles. The Case for Modern Man (1956).
• Hook, Sidney. Out of Step: An Unquiet Life in the 20th century (1987).
• Huxley, Julian. Essay of a Humanist (1964).
• Russell, Bertrand. Why I Am Not a Christian (1957).