The UU in HUUmanism By Robert P. Tucker, Ph.D. [Minister Emeritus of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lakeland, Florida] The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Lake County, Eustis, Florida October 4, 2015 - Copyright 2015 Robert P. Tucker Once upon a time, a Unitarian Universalist slipped off of the edge of a high cliff. Immediately he reached out and grabbed onto a vine. Dangling there, he cried out: Is anybody up there who can help me?! Yes, came the response of a deep, perfectly modulated baritone voice. I can help you. What should I do? yelled the man. Let go! was the answer. The man looked far down at the huge, sharp rocks below, with absolutely nothing between him and them. In a panic, he called out: Who are you? God, came the reply. The man looked down again. He thought God might, indeed, be able to facilitate his way into Heaven which seemed at that moment much more important to God than it was to him. The man wanted a more interim, more here-and-now solution to his problem. So, finally, the man called out again: Is anybody else up there?! [Vaughn-Foerster, 12] That little joke pretty well summarizes the view of most Unitarian Universalists during the past 100 years: we are not so much atheistic as we are agnostic; and we do not so much deny the existence of heaven as we affirm the importance of this world. There s a name for people like us: Humanists. In the past half century, Christian fundamentalists have done everything they could to tarnish that name. But their actions have arisen out of prejudice, fear, and ignorance, for it is a title that many Christians have worn proudly for centuries. One of the finest examples of that was theologian and medical missionary, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. [Bullock, 163f.; Lange, 36] Humanism, of course, is older than Christianity. It goes back at least 500 more years to the great philosophers of Greece and Rome. Indeed, it is Protagoras who probably deserves the nickname, Father of Humanism, for it was he who declared: Man is the measure of all things. [Died c.410 B.C.E.; Lane, 90; cf. Bullock, 159] Modern dictionaries define humanism as a devotion to the humanities and to literary culture; as the revival of classical letters, the individualistic and critical spirit, and the earthly concern that characterized the Renaissance; as humanitarianism; as a philosophical doctrine, attitude or way of life centered on human interests and values that often, but not always, rejects supernaturalism and stresses an individual s dignity, worth, and capacity for self-realization through the use of reason. [Merriam-Webster s, 564] I hope that in those words you hear and recognize echoes from our own Unitarian Universalist Principles! [Singing, x] In any case, the focus upon improving the lives of human beings in this world is universal to all forms of humanism. Apart from that, however, there has always been and there continues to be a wide variety of positions that have fallen under the name of humanism. In the journal of Religious Humanism, Carol Wintermute once provided a brief survey of the history and types of humanism. She knew whereof she spoke for she was the president of the North American Committee for Humanism and the vice-president of the Friends of Religious Humanism society. In addition, she is a Unitarian Universalist. [Wintermute, 88-103] According to Wintermute and others, such as British historian Alan Bullock, humanism arose among the Greek philosophers long before there was a word to describe it. [Wintermute, 89f; Bullock, 11f] It included both a humanitarian concern for all people and a particular concern to improve oneself through education. Soon Roman thinkers applied their Latin term, humanitas, to these ideas.
2 Later on, however, the meaning of that term changed. When the Renaissance blossomed in the 14 th through the 17 th Centuries, an Italian teacher of classical languages and literature was called umanista by students, and their course of studies was referred to as a studia humanitatis. These so-called humanists, however, did not yet share the kind of secular free-thinking we often associate with contemporary humanism. As Wintermute explains, it was not the rationalistic and anti-metaphysical revolutionaries who called themselves humanists in those days. During the Renaissance, and in fact for four centuries after it began, those who called themselves humanists had no desire to break with the past. They were rooted in ancient languages and cultures and were even opposed [to] the new invention of printing and the development of science! The real scientific and intellectual revolutionaries of the 16 th and 17 th Centuries, the Enlightenment philosophers of the 17 th and 18 th, the political and social revolutionaries of the 18 th and 19 th Centuries were not the so-called humanists of their time, but were: the British Freethinkers, the Deists, the Scottish Moralists, the French Philosophes, the British Utilitarians and the American Transcendentalists. As Wintermute points out, They...didn t call themselves humanists. We do, today, only because the meaning of that word changed, again. [Wintermute, 90] The word humanism as we use it did not appear until 1808 when it was coined, as humanismus, by a German scholar. [Bullock, 12] By the mid-1800 s German educationalists were arguing that what must be cultivated is the excellence of human nature as opposed to the Church s teaching of a human nature that is depraved [by original sin] and in need of salvation from [beyond]. This view was labeled humanistic and it highlighted the growing tension between a rationalistic approach based on science and a religious approach based on revelation. By 1859, this new definition of humanism had been applied retroactively to the Renaissance, and thereby to a lot of people who never used such a term for themselves! [Bullock, 12] It was both unhistorical and anachronistic. In applying the term both backwards and forwards, history was rewritten in a confusing way. [Wintermute, 90-1] Above all, what the misnamed humanists of the Renaissance hadn t intended was that in reviving the classical period, they revived its ideas as well : When they looked at the pagan world, the skeptical and naturalistic aspects of ancient philosophy and science, they began to downplay the reigning Christian scholarship and science. By analyzing and critiquing all ancient works equally, the Bible began to receive the same treatment. This process undermined the unique authority that the Judeo-Christian tradition had enjoyed [and opened the door to a revival of Paganism in the modern world]. [Wintermute, 90] In the 19 th Century, left-wing, Young Hegelians like Ludwig Feuerbach (d. 1872) and Arnold Ruge (d. 1880), developed a radical critique of religion which argued that religion should be replaced by philosophy, magic by science, divinity by humanity, and theism by humanism. They spoke of humanism as their new religion which would raise every man to his human reality, in a political and commercial community of [free and] equal associates. [Ruge in Wintermute, 92] Other groups also called themselves humanists in the 19 th Century. They included people like: Marx and Engels, the Freemasons, thinkers such as Thomas Paine and Positivists such as Auguste Comte. [Wintermute, 92] In Britain, Freethinkers described their version of humanism as secularism. They rejected both theism and atheism, and attempted to avoid all ultimate questions entirely, stressing instead the need to improve conditions in this life. [Wintermute, 92f.] As the 20 th Century dawned, humanism appeared in the form of Pragmatism with people like William James and John Dewey among its representatives. [Wintermute, 93f.]
3 Some 20th Century humanists, like Corliss Lamont, repudiated the goal of making humanism into a new religion. They preferred to think of it as a purely secular and naturalistic philosophy. Their approach was taken up by the American Humanist Association, the Council for Secular Humanism, and the Skeptical movement. [Wintermute, 99f.; cf. Lamont] Not even all of these different versions exhaust the wide variety of humanisms which exist today, however! Wintermute* also lists, among others, Scientific Humanism*, Secular Humanism*, Rational Humanism*, Socialist Humanism, Ecological Humanism, Ethical Humanism, African Humanism, Superhumanism, Transhumanism, Posthumanism, World Humanism, as well as Humanistic Psychology, Behaviorism, Objectivism, Existentialism, Humanitarianism, Scientology, and various organizations made up of Rationalists and Atheists. [*items with asterisk are added from a list on the cover of Free Inquiry, Fall 1996, vol. 16, no. 4; Wintermute, 100] On top of these, there is yet one more major type that I have not mentioned. It is: Religious Humanism, and that, of course, is where Unitarian Universalists come into the picture. Historian Alan Bullock says quite bluntly: The claim sometimes made by both secularists and fundamentalists that secularism represents humanism is a travesty as much a travesty as to take fundamentalism to represent religion. [Bullock, 160; secondary quotation marks added] Wintermute concurs. Catholics, Jews, Muslims all religions, she writes, have had their humanistic versions. [Wintermute, 94] Bullock and Wintermute offer details about the history of Religious Humanism that go beyond what I have time to tell you. Suffice it to say, their expositions make it clear that the modern, 20 th Century Humanist Movement emerged from within both religious and non-religious organizations. [Wintermute, 95-6; cf. Bullock, 160-5] In that process, Unitarians first, and then Universalists, became prominently involved. Wintermute describes it this way: Unitarians in the Midwest [United States] in the early 1900s were the ones to go further in discarding not only the second and third persons of the Trinity but [also] the first. They replaced supernaturalism and theism with naturalism and humanism... Around the time of WW II one tenth of Unitarians were humanists... Humanism grew so rapidly that by the time of the [Unitarian Universalist] merger in 1961 the Unitarian Universalist Association was more than half humanist. [Wintermute, 97; cf. Robinson, 143-159] Historian Conrad Wright says that Unitarian humanists emerged one by one on the religious landscape, isolated radicals in voluntary exile from supernatural theology and churchly intolerance, each pursuing a oneman reformation under the aegis of Unitarianism. He mentions John H. Dietrich, Charles Francis Potter, and Curtis W. Reese as the most outstanding early exemplars and says that with them, Unitarian humanism was born. [Wright, 110f. Today (10/4) is the 53 rd anniversary of Potter s death at age 77: Schulman.] [In their wake,] humanism swept through the denomination, becoming its most vital and distinctive theological movement since Transcendentalism. Advocating science against supernaturalism, democracy against tyranny, reason against superstition, [and] experience against revelation, humanists plowed new ground among the Unitarians. [Wright, 111] Then, in 1933, the Humanist Manifesto (I) was published. It outlined the basic position of Religious Humanism in 15 carefully worded principles. Thirty-four persons, including John Dewey, signed the declaration. Of those, one half were Unitarian and Universalist ministers. [Conrad, 114; Church, 158f.; Miller, 109f.] In 1973, an updated version was published. It was called the Humanist Manifesto II. Like the first, many of its signers were Unitarian Universalist clergy. [Miller, 112; Church, 158f.] Again, in 2003, a further revised version, called The Humanist Manifesto III, was published; and it, too, was signed by many prominent Unitarian Universalist clergy and officials. [HM III]
4 Though Universalists were slower than Unitarians to jump on board the humanist bandwagon, they too became part of the new movement. Probably their most energetic proponent was Kenneth L. Patton, the minister of the Charles Street Meeting House in Boston. Here is how he described his religiously humanistic congregation: [Our] Meeting House has one basic and simple idea: to find a religious setting for a religion of one humanity and one world... Our unofficial motto... [is], I am human, and nothing that is human can be alien to me. We are a completely free-mind fellowship, with no creed or confession of faith. We look for insight and wisdom to all of humanity, for truth and goodness have never been the monopoly of any one people or religion. For this reason we do not call ourselves Christian or Jewish or Buddhist, although these traditions are greatly cherished along with the others. We include all and exclude none... This, however, does not mean that we are uncritical; quite the opposite. The criteria of evidence, reasonableness and consistency are applied to all. The scientific method...[is] allied to the arts, to philosophy and to naturalistic mysticism, to give us a religious approach that is at once hard-headed, tough-minded, and appreciative and warm-hearted. Belief is allied with doubt, affirmation with criticism. We reject all creeds and dogmas on principle, for only the open mind is free to probe and discover. But we can accept the other person s faith as part of the human scene, and appreciate it, without accepting it as adequate for our own use. To criticize is not to reject. This point must be emphasized, for it is the dividing line between the free mind and fanaticism. It is the doorway to a universal religion that rigorously seeks the truth, and yet is also inclusive and welcoming to all. [Cassara, 275f.; redacted for punctuation and removal of sexisms] That is the kind of congregation we have here and because it is we can say (in the words of John Dietrich): This faith of ours...is the most revolutionary thought that has ever been introduced into the religious world. We do not believe in...a miracle-working God as taught by the popular religions, who will intervene at the critical moment, ignore all the stupidities and blunders of humanity, and, without any regard for natural law, establish his kingdom... In fact, we believe that such faith is a menace to the world insofar as it teaches people to depend upon God for what they should do themselves... [That view] places all the responsibility...on God... Our view places it where it belongs, on us. If there is ever to be established an era of peace and justice and good will, we insist that it depends upon ourselves upon what we are and what we do. We hear clearly the command, You yourselves must do the good which you desire. And we answer this command with a dynamic faith in humanity and in our power to be and to do everything that is needed. We say to the world, Behold what humanity has achieved... Every institution that exists... educational, social, religious, political has been thought out and then wrought out by human beings. All the truth and justice and social order that we know...are the product of human effort... Humanity s ability to be and to do is limited only by the degree of our faith in our own powers... It is not faith in dogmas and creeds that the world demands today; it is faith in oneself and in other people. If the world at large had that faith, we could indeed remove mountains, even the mountains that stand in the way of human betterment. We [hear] talk about the dangers of a lack of faith in God, but...we...are responsible for every undesirable feature of our civilization and...we are responsible for the future condition of our society. The life of humanity...rests in our hands... We can make this world what we will. We hold the keys to the future... If there is ever to be a better...human society, it will depend upon us and...no one else.
5 This is the basis of the faith that we call [Religious] Humanism... [and] I am assured that there is no possible future for religion except as it broadens itself out into this [religious] humanistic position. All real progress is brought about by the application of this spirit of [religious] humanism, by a real and living faith in the power of humanity itself... Every advance in freedom and self-development is a result of the application of this spirit. But in the past it was applied by science and technology, and not by religion. It is right that science and technology should be behind all efforts toward progress. But religion should be there also, and should be the inspiring force [Dietrich, 66-68; redacted, and punctuation and unintended sexisms have been modified or replaced] The good news is that religion can be present as the inspiring force of human progress so long as Unitarian Universalists remain committed to our profound tradition of Religious Humanism. ============================================================================== Sources Church, F. Forrester. Beyond Idolatry. Our Chosen Faith John A. Buehrens & F. Forrester Church. Boston: Beacon Press, 1989. Bullock, Alan. The Humanist Tradition in the West. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1985. Cassara, Ernest. Universalism in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1971. Dietrich, John H. Ten Sermons. Yellow Springs, OH: Fellowship of Religious Humanists, 1989. Free Inquiry (cover s list). Fall 1996, Vol. 16, No. 4. Humanist Manifesto III. www.americanhumanist.org Lamont, Corliss. The Philosophy of Humanism. 8th Ed. Amherst, NY: Humanist Press, 1997. Lane, Hana U., Ed. The World Almanac Book of Who. New York: World Almanac Publications, 1980. Lange, Fred E., Jr. Famous Unitarians/Universalists. Scotch Plains, NJ: Lange, 1995. Merriam-Webster s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Ed. Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1998. Miller, Russell E. The Larger Hope: The Second Century of the Universalist Church in America, 1870-1970. Boston: U.U.A., 1985. Robinson, David. The Unitarians and the Universalists. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 1985. Singing the Living Tradition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Vaughn-Foerster, Don W. Religious Humanism. The Human Quest. March-April, 1998; p. 12. Wintermute, Carol. Varieties of Humanism. Religious Humanism, Vol. XXXIII, Nos. 3 & 4, Summer/Fall, 1999. Wright, Conrad. A Stream of Light: A Short History of American Unitarianism. 2nd Ed. Boston: Skinner House Books, 1989. You may contact Dr. Tucker at: drroberttucker@aol.com See Dr. Tucker s summation of the relation between UUism and Humanism which is attached
Religious Humanism is like all other Humanisms in being primarily focused upon making this world a better place for all people everywhere, for that is the chief concern of any Humanism. What distinguishes Religious Humanism from some other forms of Humanism is its Positive attitude toward religion (which it accepts, supports, and promotes as one valuable resource, among others, for wisdom and inspiration, especially in morals and ethics) and its Positive attitude toward the world s great religious geniuses (Gautama, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, et al., whom it esteems as worthy guides to better living). Since neither theism nor atheism is provable nor disprovable, Religious Humanism includes both theists and atheists who tend to consider themselves Agnostics (meaning that they admit to not yet having sufficient knowledge upon which to make metaphysical judgments, and are committed to remaining open-minded to new evidence from any and all sources). ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Unitarian Universalism is officially, sociologically, theologically and legally a religion whose adherents are, by adhering to its Principles, religious. Insofar as UU s have the improvement of this world for all people everywhere as their primary concern, they are also humanists. [Cf. the UU Principles and Sources, p. x of the hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition.] Robert P. Tucker, Ph.D. Copyright 2015 Robert P. Tucker