Humanist Manifesto

Context

Humanism is a term that can have different meanings to different people and, because it refers to a philosophical and ethical belief system, any discussion of humanism is necessarily complicated. The term is used, for example, to refer to a Renaissance movement that emphasized “the humanities,” that is, secular knowledge, particularly the knowledge obtainable from study of the Greek and Roman classics. One of the key figures in this movement was Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist who did his most important work in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Erasmus was a Catholic priest who published new, groundbreaking Latin and Greek translations of the Bible and contributed to the burgeoning quest for secular knowledge during the Renaissance.

In the modern world, references are made to such subdivisions as cultural humanism, environmental humanism, philosophical humanism, literary humanism, and numerous others; additionally, there are people who classify themselves as Christian humanists, Jewish humanists, Islamic humanists, and even Buddhist humanists. However, two broad types of humanism are widely recognized: secular humanism and religious humanism, although the distinctions between the two sets of views is not always sharp or clear. Secular humanism, as the name implies, is an entirely secular philosophy. It emphasizes justice, ethics, and human reason. It rejects any and all appeals to the supernatural or religious dogma. It takes the position that humans can lead upright, happy, and functional lives without any appeal to God or traditional religious tenets. As a practical matter, secular humanists tend to regard traditional religions as regressive, oppressive, backward, superstitious, and closed-minded. Secular humanism has sometimes been referred to as scientific humanism, for the belief system is based in large part on humans’ growing understanding of the processes of the natural order. Many secular humanists, in fact, have been scientists; among them were Albert Einstein, Linus Pauling, E. O. Wilson, and Carl Sagan. In contemporary life, the term secular humanism is often used as an insult by some people who adhere to traditional religions. They believe that secular humanists have a disproportionate effect on politics, culture, art, and entertainment and that the goal of secular humanists is specifically to undermine the traditional religious beliefs of the majority of the population. Religious fundamentalists, in particular, cast a wary eye on those they regard as secular humanists.

The other broad type of humanism is referred to as religious humanism, and it is this type of humanism that is espoused in the Humanist Manifesto—whose authors, it should be noted, included numerous ministers and professors of theology. Although religious humanists occupy common ground with secular humanists, there are important differences. Religious humanists, for example, are more likely to believe in religious experiences that imply the presence of a deity; secular humanists reject the validity of these experiences. While religious humanists tend not to believe in traditional conceptions of God, they do recognize the existence of the divine, of ideals and beliefs that transcend physical reality; secular humanists regard the so-called divine as a metaphor that refers to purely material truths. Finally, many forms of religious humanism explicitly express a belief in God; secular humanists, in contrast, regard belief in God as irrational.

The history of humanism is long and complex. Although humanist views date back to the ancient Greeks and Romans as well as to Renaissance thinkers, modern humanism can trace its roots back to the Enlightenment philosophy of the eighteenth century, which elevated science and human reason and rejected at least some of the dogmatism of traditional religion. The principal religious philosophy of Enlightenment thinkers was deism. Deists believed in God, but they rejected the notion that God involved himself in human affairs and that knowledge about creation was obtainable only through religious revelation, arguing instead for the primacy of human reason and observation. In the nineteenth century, Auguste Comte published A General View of Positivism (1844), which outlined the positivist philosophy—essentially a sociological view of the human condition based on science rather than theology and that Comte called the “religion of humanity.” Also during the nineteenth century, writers such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Karl Marx outlined influential historical and philosophical views that rejected theological interpretations of the human experience.

As a more organized movement, humanism took shape through the formation of the Humanistic Religious Association in 1853 in London. The purpose of the organization was to promote knowledge of science, philosophy, and the arts. The organization’s constitution stated: “In forming ourselves into a progressive religious body, we have adopted the name ‘Humanistic Religious Association’ to convey the idea that Religion is a principle inherent in man and is a means of developing his being towards greater perfection.” The constitution went on: “We have emancipated ourselves from the ancient compulsory dogmas, myths and ceremonies borrowed of old from Asia [that is, the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam] and still pervading the ruling churches of our age.” A next step was the founding of the Free Religious Association in 1867. The goals of the association, founded in part by William J. Potter and David Atwood Wasson, were to emancipate religion from dogmatic traditions and to affirm the validity of individual reason and conscience.

Yet another step in the organization of a humanist movement was the formation of the Society for Ethical Culture by Felix Adler in 1876. Adler, a German Jew and rationalist, regarded Ethical Culture as a new form of religion. It would eliminate the unscientific dogmas of former ages, but it was to retain the ethical messages of those religions. In Adler’s view, traditional religious dogma was incompatible with the findings of modern science, although Adler wanted to retain the good works and moral views of traditional religion. One signer of the 1933 manifesto was V. T. Thayer, the educational director of the network of Ethical Culture Schools.

In the United States, religious humanism gained a foothold after a Unitarian minister, John H. Dietrich, came across the term humanism in a magazine and adopted it to describe his own religious views; some historians regard Dietrich as the “father” of religious humanism—particularly after the publication of his book The Religion of Humanity in 1919. A decade later, in 1929, Charles Francis Potter (who also signed the Humanist Manifesto) established the First Humanist Society of New York. His advisory board included luminaries such as the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, the educator John Dewey, the novelist Thomas Mann, and the physicist Albert Einstein. Potter and his wife, Clara Cook Potter, published Humanism: A New Religion in 1930, and throughout the 1930s the two advocated women’s rights, birth control, an end to the death penalty, and divorce law reform. Meanwhile, in 1927, a group of professors and seminarians at the University of Chicago formed the Humanist Fellowship, which published The New Humanist.

The publication of the Humanist Manifesto was not the result of an organized movement, nor did it emerge from a conference or symposium. In 1933 Raymond B. Bragg, a Unitarian minister, was the associate editor of The New Humanist. He was also the secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference (the organization that oversaw the Unitarian Church in the central third of the nation), and, as he traveled about, people suggested to him that the journal should publish some kind of statement outlining the religious humanist position. Interestingly, thought was given to having Charles Francis Potter write such a statement, but the idea was rejected because, in the eyes of some, Potter was not regarded as entirely reliable. The task of preparing a first draft was turned over to Roy Wood Sellars, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan. The draft was passed around among like-minded people, rewritten, and edited until it appeared in the May–June issue of The New Humanist. Its signatories included clerics, college professors, journalists, and others. Perhaps the most famous signer of the manifesto was John Dewey, whose name survives as that of one of the United States’ most famous progressive educators.