The Rise and Fall of Led by Rev. Steven A. Protzman February 16, 2014 Part III of a UU History Series

First Reading: "Is UU Humanist Becoming an Oxymoron?" by Mel Lipman1 Second Reading: "A Joyful Humanism" by Rev. W. Edward Harris2

The Rise and Fall of Humanism By Steven A. Protzman © February, 2014

The rise of Humanism in the early twentieth century in America was a response to the perceived failure of the world's historic to solve humankind's problems. Is Humanism still relevant as a means of living with purpose and meaning? Was it a trend that Unitarian has outgrown? This service will explore the history of American Humanism and what it offers our UU movement today.

It has been said that the culture of changes as you traverse the country. On the East Coast, there are UU churches and Jesus is optional. In the Midwest, there are UU Societies and is optional. In California, clothes are optional. On the East Coast, our Unitarian and Universalist roots are in liberal Christianity and their congregational culture didn't stray far from these roots. I can't speak to the UU culture of California, although some future research may be in order. In the Midwest, the pioneer inspired the formation of the Western Unitarian Association and arose as a modernist world view.

While Humanism as an organized philosophy is little more than 100 years old, its roots are ancient. In the East, Confucius had a philosophy that may be considered Humanist and in the west, some Greeks, including Democritus, expressed skepticism about the existence of the . Humanism resurfaced during the Renaissance as scholars rediscovered the Greek and Roman classics, artists created great art and architecture, the educational system was restructured, and Humanist thinkers rejected the otherworldliness of medieval Christianity in favor of living this life more fully. Renaissance Humanists believed in using reason as well as , interpreting sacred texts using historical and textual criticism, and they sought to break the hundreds of years of religious control of knowledge. But Humanism could not develop into a fully viable world view because there was no alternative story to the Biblical creation of the world. This changed when Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of the Species in 1859, offering a completely different story for the presence of life on the earth.

Humanism was also helped by a number of 19th century men and women, including Frances Wright, "who challenged as a tool for keeping women in submission to men, publicly denounced clergy and advocated turning churches into halls of science and clergy into expounders of nature"; poet Walt Whitman, who celebrated the and excluded God; Ernestine Rose, who used the term atheist to describe her religious perspective; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who believed that the "will

1 teach the dignity of human nature, inspire its worshippers with self respect, and offer freedom from fear and superstition", and Robert G. Ingersoll, who was known as the Great Agnostic. Ingersoll recommended the religion of humanity as the only religion and called other religions superstition. Ingersoll said that the religion of man meant that human beings were to be treated with dignity and respect, and people were responsible for themselves and others. Humankind could not depend on a God for help: "There is no evidence that God ever interfered in the affairs of man. In vain the shipwrecked cry to the heavens but there comes no help, The imprisoned ask for liberty and light- the world moves on, and the heavens are deaf, dumb and blind."3

William Murry tells us that in spite of these well known people espousing the ideals of Humanism, it took liberal religion to develop and articulate the Humanist world view. The earliest Unitarians who identified themselves as Humanists were John Dietrich and Curtis Reese. Dietrich was originally a Reformed minister who became a Unitarian and began referring to his religion as humanism. In 1916 he became minister of the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis, where he continued to develop and promote his idea of humanism as the 'other religion', a religion that promotes a firm reliance on ourselves, rather than a childish dependence on God. Dietrich wrote that: "The kind of world we live in depends not upon some God outside of man, but upon man himself, or, as some of us would put it, upon the God that dwells in humanity. It matters not which way you put it, the responsibility clearly rests upon man.”4 Curtis Reese was originally a Southern Baptist minister but became a Unitarian minister in 1913. Reese affirmed his humanism as a "democratic religion", in which people are the rulers of their own affairs instead of the autocracy of theistic religion, in which God is a ruler who must be obeyed.5

Within , Humanism continued to develop as the Western Unitarian Conference built on the ideas of Dietrich's and Reese's modernist worldview. The Conference, which had long resented 's power and influence as the 'Vatican' of Unitarianism, pressed the Unitarian Association to remove its theistic set of principles and allow the growing number of nontheists freedom of conscience. This became known as the theist-humanist controversy. Incidentally, if someone asks you about the Unitarian Controversy, you'll come off as quite knowledgeable if you respond with: "Which controversy did you have in mind and what century?" The theist-humanist controversy came to a head in 1921 when John Dietrich expressed his conviction that religion must be brought into harmony with modern thought, in the supernatural must be given up, and humanity must assume responsibility for solving the world's problems. Dietrich said that the power of Christianity was not in the story of Jesus but in its faith that the world can be changed. Theist Unitarians fought back by submitting a resolution at the Unitarian National Conference that Unitarianism was based on faith in God and Jesus' teachings. They feared that if some Unitarian ministers were preaching while others were preaching Christianity, the denomination would tear apart. The theists failed to pass a resolution limiting Unitarianism to its liberal Christian beliefs, Unitarianism remained non-creedal and Religious Humanism became a vital part of our living tradition.

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In 1933 some of the members of the Humanist Fellowship, a recently organized group of University of and Meadville students felt a written statement of religious humanism was needed. The result was the First , written by philosopher Roy Wood Sellars and Unitarian ministers Ray Bragg and Edwin H. Wilson. The manifesto was signed by fifteen Unitarians, one Universalist minister and . The Manifesto was written because its writers felt that civilization was in serious trouble. With the First World War, the Great Depression, and other urgent social issues, writers of the Manifesto believed traditional religion could no longer solve human problems. The introduction to the First Manifesto says: "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. There is great danger of a final, and we believe fatal, identification of the word religion with doctrines and methods which have lost their significance and which are powerless to solve the problem of human living in the Twentieth Century."

The Manifesto goes on to state the urgent need for a religion that can respond to the needs of the present: "While this age does owe a vast debt to the traditional religions, it is none the less obvious that any religion that can hope to be a synthesizing and dynamic force for today must be shaped for the needs of this age. To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present. It is a responsibility which rests upon this generation." The Manifesto has fifteen statements that seek to define Religious Humanism. The seventh says that: "Religion consists of those actions, purposes, and experiences which are humanly significant. Nothing human is alien to the religious. It includes labor, art, science, philosophy, love, friendship, recreation--all that is in its degree expressive of intelligently satisfying human living."6

Such was the noble goal of Religious Humanism but like any other religion or philosophy, a creation of human beings, it had its flaws. It did not address some of the fundamental concerns we have as human beings. William Murray writes: "Humanism was highly individualistic. The independent, autonomous individual was the ideal. It lacked an emphasis on community and said nothing about the church. The First Manifesto also showed no awareness of the extent and depth of evil in the world."7 It was simply too optimistic. In 1973 the Second Manifesto was written to correct some of these flaws. While it reaffirmed the rejection of supernaturalism and offered humanism as a hopeful vision for the future, the Second Manifesto also warned of the potential for science to be used for evil as well as good, and insisted that reason must be tempered with compassion. In 2003, leaders of the American Humanist Association, recognizing the need to restate and update humanist principles, wrote the Third Manifesto. In this short document of six theses plus a prologue and epilogue, Humanism is identified as a progressive philosophy of life. It emphasizes the importance of service to humane ideals, promotes working to benefit society as the means to happiness, and encourages a commitment to protect nature.

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With these grand goals and a vision for human happiness, why isn't Humanism the defining philosophy of Unitarian Universalism? Why instead, as Mel Lipman claims in the first reading, is Humanism on the defensive and only 30% of UUs call themselves Humanists? The fall of Humanism is due in part to the stereotype of Humanists as cranky old white men with more PhDs than God and no tolerance for anything that even slightly smacks of or emotion. There is also a perception of Humanism as dry, intellectual exercises in logic and abstraction that do not offer help in solving life's problems. Ironically, Humanism is most frequently criticized as not taking the realities of being human into consideration. William Murry writes of Humanism that "it exemplified no sense of the tragic, of the place of pain and suffering, loss and grief, death and dying. It seemed to take an attitude of indifference toward the harsh realities of human life."8 John Dietrich's lack of pastoral ministry exemplifies the shadow side of Humanism. He did not visit church members in the hospital. When asked why, he responded that they needed to learn to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

But that's not how Humanism has to be and it's not the Humanism I've experienced again and again. I served as the intern at the First Unitarian Society in Minneapolis, the mother ship of Humanism itself. I expected cold, intellectual, crisp Humanism but learned a warm, fuzzy, even mystic Humanism that Kendyl Gibbons preached and taught under the watchful stern glare of John Dietrich, whose portrait hangs in the Society's lounge. Our own Secular Humanists, many of them longtime members of this congregation, are not cranky old folks who refuse to make space for different philosophies and world views but people of different ages and stages in life who believe in the ideals of Humanism and are making the world a better place through serving others. I met with our Secular Humanists for a very lively grilling, err, question and answer session in November. I used our opening words from this morning to start the conversation. Let's turn to #466 in the gray hymnal. When I read these words to the Humanists that evening, instead of the word religion I used the word Humanism. "Let Humanism be to us life and joy, hope and purpose, uniting us with all that is admirable in human beings everywhere; holding before us a prospect of the better life for humankind, which each may help to make actual." Everyone pretty much agreed with what I said. I confessed that I'd pulled a trick on them but it made my point that religious language can be used to express universal human longings and ideals.

Vincent Silliman's words also capture what I believe Humanism should be. It should be very human and help us sort out what really matters in this life. W. Edward Harris says it perfectly in the second reading: "Let abstractions be damned! I want a humanism that is about men and women, about the struggle to live decently in this world. I want a humanism that loves differences, that is joyful, that celebrates this life and this world. I want a humanism that is funny, full of jokes, stories, and tales. I want a humanism that sees the human, not at the pinnacle of an evolutionary chain of being, but as part of this natural world. I want a humanism that loves this Earth, our home. I want a humanism full of rhyme and poetry, unafraid to play. I want a humanism that gives us a road map for the future, that points us towards a planetary perspective; that fosters, not correct thinking, but joy in living; that encourages the creative power of every human being; that affirms life in all its expressions; that elicits possibilities for a humane future; that has no argument with the world."9

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I want that Humanism too because it's the heart of Unitarian Universalism. It's a way of being that invites us to live as fully, as authentically as possible. It brings us together into community to share our struggles and our losses, our hopes and dreams, our frustrations with the world and its problems, our achievements and moments of dazzling joy, the very real stuff of living. It challenges us to discover who we are and how you and I can transform the world through the unique gifts and wisdom we have. It's the joy and the in discovering the amazing, transformative things we can do together, whether it's a fun Valentine's Day dance to raise money for the 1105 Project or our journey together toward facilities that will meet this congregation's mission for the next 100 years. I don't know if Humanism will ever take center stage in Unitarian Universalism again, but its values and ideals will always be a part of our living and lively tradition. It will always hold before us a vision of an earth made whole once again, a world where people live in peace, freedom and abundance, and remind us that this vision is ours to dream and to do.

May Humanism and Unitarian Universalism be to us life and joy, hope and purpose, uniting us with all that is admirable in human beings everywhere; holding before us a prospect of the better life for humankind, which each of us may help to make actual.

References

1 Lipman, Mel, "Is UU Humanist Becoming an Oxymoron?", article, UU Humanist Symposium, July 3, 2012, http://uuhumanistsymposium.com/2012/07/03/is-uu-humanist- becoming-an-oxymoron/ 2 Harris, Rev. W. Edward, "A Joyful Humanism", article, Religious Humanism, Vol. 26, #3, July 1993, http://www.humanistsofutah.org/1993/art2july93.html 3 Murry, William R., Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century, Boston: , 2007, pp. 29-31. 4 Olds, Mason, American Religious Humanism, Hamden, CT: HUUmanists Association NFP, 2006, Pg. 43. 5 Murry, Ibid. pg. 37. 6 Humanist Manifesto I, http://americanhumanist.org/Humanism/Humanist_Manifesto_I 7 Murry, Ibid., pg. 48. 8 Murry, Ibid., pg. 48. 9 Harris, Ibid.

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