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The Canon · No. 124

Secular Humanism

Ethical Culture; organised humanism

1876 / 1933 CE – present · Non-Theistic / Philosophical · Living · US, UK, Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, India

VIII. POSTWAR & CONTEMPORARY — 1945 – PRESENT

How many

Organised membership is modest — Humanists UK has around 100,000 supporters, and the Norwegian Humanist Association about 130,000, one of the highest per-capita anywhere. The worldview is held far more widely than the membership suggests.

Who began it

Felix Adler founded the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1876, coining deed before creed. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933, signed by thirty-four people including John Dewey, gave the movement its programme.

What it is for

To provide a fully worked-out ethical and communal life without recourse to the supernatural — not merely the absence of religion but a positive alternative to it.

What it worships

None. Humanism is explicitly non-theistic.

What it holds

This life is the only one we have, which makes it more valuable rather than less. Ethics derive from human welfare, reason, empathy and experience, and require no divine command; the movement points out that the Euthyphro problem — is an act good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good — has been unanswered since Plato. Science is the reliable method for knowing the world. Human dignity is grounded in the capacity to suffer and to flourish. Free inquiry, democracy, separation of church and state, and the responsibility to act because no one else will.

What it does

Not a practice-heavy tradition, which is one of its acknowledged difficulties. Where it does organise: humanist celebrants conducting namings, weddings and funerals — in Scotland humanist weddings now outnumber Christian ones, and in Norway the humanist konfirmasjon is taken by a large minority of teenagers. Sunday Assembly and similar congregational experiments. Chaplaincies in universities, hospitals, prisons and the military. Campaigning on assisted dying, abortion, secular education and the rights of the non-religious.

After death

None. Death is the permanent end of the person. Humanist funerals are built around this and around the claim that a life's meaning is complete in itself and does not require continuation to have mattered. What persists is effect: on other people, on work, on the world. This is stated plainly rather than softened, and it is the aspect of humanism its critics find coldest and its adherents find most honest.

Its texts

No scripture. Humanist Manifestos I (1933), II (1973) and III (2003); the Amsterdam Declaration (1952, 2002, 2022); the writings of Dewey, Russell, Corliss Lamont and Paul Kurtz.

Its branches

American Humanist Association; Humanists UK; Ethical Culture; Humanists International; Sunday Assembly; the Norwegian and Dutch humanist associations, which function almost as state-supported secular denominations.

Of note

Included because the dossier's question is what a religion is. Humanism has ethics, ceremony, community, chaplains, celebrants, a canon of texts and formal legal recognition — and no god and no afterlife. If that counts, the category is wider than most people think. If it does not, the reason has to be stated.

Its timeline

  1. 1876 CE New York Society for Ethical Culture founded.
  2. 1896 CE The Ethical Union; Ethical Culture builds schools, settlement houses and one of the first free kindergartens in New York.
  3. 1933 CE Humanist Manifesto I.
  4. 1952 CE The International Humanist and Ethical Union founded in Amsterdam.
  5. <strong>1961 CE</strong> Torcaso v. Watkins — the US Supreme Court strikes down a religious test for public office and, in a footnote, lists secular humanism among religions that do not teach belief in God. The footnote has been argued over ever since by both sides.
  6. 1973, 2003 CE Manifestos II and III.
  7. 1970s–present Humanist celebrancy grows rapidly in the UK, Scotland, Norway and the Netherlands.
  8. 2010–2013 CE Sunday Assembly founded in London and spreads to dozens of cities; the model proves harder to sustain than expected, which is itself instructive about what congregations do.
  9. 2014 CE Humanist chaplaincy formally recognised at Harvard; a humanist becomes the university's chief chaplain in 2021.
  10. 2019–present Humanists UK litigation on assisted dying and on compulsory religious education; humanist marriages remain unrecognised in England and Wales despite Scottish and Northern Irish recognition.

Sources

Not yet checked against named sources. This entry is the house's reading; until it is checked, treat each claim as unverified. Correct it, with a source.

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