The New Humanism conference at Harvard #4 - some conclusions

If something happens at Harvard then, as if by magic, it will most definitely be seen to have happened. Harvard is certainly a brand name with which to conjure. Arriving from the UK and familiar (as an outsider) with the earlier Cambridge the elements of surprise will evidently be different.

How are we to understand this event? There is, as always, the surface, "THE NEW HUMANISM", shimmering and eye catching; the reflective, "Celebrating 30 years of the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard" lending credibility through the steering of a steady course; lastly the refractive, "Diverse, inclusive, inspiring", bending the enlightenment to lead our eyes past the immediate object to elsewhere, but to where?

A new man inhabiting a still new job,

Greg Epstein took over from Tom Ferrick, who was the first Harvard Humanist chaplain. Greg with an eye on the future and an eye on the past responds to the inevitable challenge of envisioning a new world. That is what the USA, what Harvard, does. Key speaker, award recipient and performer at the New Humanism conference, Salman Rushdie also knows the value of seizing the moment. Recently installed as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University, Georgia, Atlanta. He told a group of news reporters in February that he chose Emory "because they asked me and nobody else ever had."

In these troubled times, the climate changes and a wave may suddenly sweep over the rock pools to launch diverse organisms into wider seas. Who will eat whom? Who will grow sustained by which chain of events? Tom Ferrick, once a Catholic chaplain was Jesuitical in his advocacy of even greater plurality in the

chaplaincy at Harvard. As a result Greg Epstein now sits on the executive committee of a 38-member Harvard United Ministry interfaith corps of chaplains. In 2005 he received ordination as a Humanist Rabbi from the International Institute for Secular and Humanistic Judaism. He holds a BA (Religion and Chinese) and an MA (Judaic Studies) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is currently completing a Masters of Theological Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. Epstein is a mentor for Harvardians who question their faith or simply don’t believe in God. As faculty advisor to the Harvard Secular Society (HSS), he advises and guides a growing group of atheist, agnostic, and Humanist undergraduates. But what should be the extra-curricular business of this Humanist chaplain? Greg clearly decided to set a new and bold course. Harvard's isn't the only Humanist chaplaincy in the country but there aren't many. Greg has made it clear that among his several goals was to campaign to help establish a Humanist chaplain on every campus in the United States. If these putative chaplains were to be seen as promoting opposition to religion and in particular Christianity the likelihood of their coming into existence brings to mind snowballs and hell!

Chefs are often inspired by newly available comestibles. Awareness of atheism in the US has almost never been greater but this is a spicy ingredient. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and others have seized the opportunity, with the help of their astute publishers, to purvey some piquant fare to a public palate grown jaded. The neo-con stew with its religious flavourings for many, at first, tasted OK being redolent of ‘genuine’ old country ingredients, but it has now severely upset most peoples' digestion.

During the conference I heard Greg Epstein being described more than once as an entrepreneur. I don't believe this term would be as readily employed in similar circles in Europe. I think that all that was being meant here was that Greg is dynamic, with bright ideas and an ability to seize the opportunity, to make things happen which means recognising and understanding the market and where and how money could be raised, and support garnered, if the product is properly presented.

Greg's new "New Humanism" is fully formed and lives in the land of Coca Cola. What do I mean by this? Just that there is an unquestioned acceptance that an idea or product can be fashioned and promoted so as to meet (or create) a common world-wide need or demand and that such a target group not only exists but is a global consumer community which is neither, in itself, good nor bad. It is just a fact. What can be good or bad is the product. Humanism with its fundamental belief in the essential similarity of human beings is clearly off to a head start. Whether Humanists should resist the urge to fight or flee if Humanism is considered a religion is maybe, in this instance, a moot point. At a drinks convention many might well have strong feelings about what should be defined as a non-alcoholic cocktail and would argue where the lines should be drawn. Most of us recognise that there are instances where fine distinctions count.

Among the participants at the New Humanism conference at Harvard were the young and the old. The old had heard all the arguments about classification and definitions many times. Most, if not all, are capable of backing a bright new venture, that's why we were here, but memories of bitter tastes can make some things hard to swallow. Many Humanists have painfully sloughed off a religion and needed to be reassured that it wasn't just God that had been extirpated from Humanistic Judaism or Humanist Unitarian Universalism but that, maybe even more crucially, the authoritarian and exclusive tendencies of some (most?, all?) traditional religions were also being eschewed.

The young were, as they should be, impatient. Many didn't recognise the complex landscape; the need to do many things at one and the same time; to honour, to placate, to flatter, to accommodate, to pacify, to excite, to engage and to sell.

This was one of the largest gatherings (nearly 600 registrants) of a wide range of Humanist groupings* brought together in one significant place. It was overwhelmingly American (with some observers, like myself, from overseas) but this is still the American age and so what happens here could well be of worldwide significance. Greg states somewhere that organised Humanism is the natural successor to religion. He takes it as a given that most people need many aspects of what religions provide (and he does so with an American eye maybe not fully realising the degree to which societies around the world differ). Many at the conference were not antagonistic to religions. They were happy with the idea of the "New Humanism" meeting the needs of those tens of millions of Americans and potentially billions worldwide by providing a home, a belief community of which they can be part. With the broad church of New Humanism it was also thought we can be ready to welcome those who leave their theistic religions but still with an attachment to their religious cultural identities. More than this there was the belief that globalisation and global communications were making possible global reactions to global problems.

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Just some of the organisations with members present or participating in the New Humanism Conference

Camp Quest - the first summer camp for secular children
University for Humanistics , Utrecht, the Netherlands
Humanist perspectives Magazine , Canada
Congregation Beth Adam, Cincinati, Ohio
Student World Assembly, Ontario, Canada
Center for Naturalism, Somerville, MA
Unitarian Universalist Association USA
The Humanist Institute USA
American Humanist Association (note: thanks to anon comment for pointing out that I had got the link wrong - it's corrected now!
British Humanist Association
American Ethical Union
Center for Inquiry New York City
Center for Inquiry Transnational
Institute for Humanist Studies Albany NY
Secular Coalition for America
Society for Humanistic Judaism Farmington Hills MI
Secular Student Association USA and international
Harvard Secular Society Cambridge, USA
International Humanist and Ethical Union
The Humanist Association of Norway
The Humanist Association of Ireland
The Humanist Association of Canada
Appignani Foundation USA
Council for secular humanism USA


From an online blog – part of a response by Greg Epstein to some critics

First, I don’t care how effective certain writers can seem to be, or how many copies of atheist books they are selling right now, I believe we have to do our best to be the change we want to see in the world. One of the changes I want to see is, I don’t expect religious people to change overnight and become like me, but I’d like to see them reach out to me in friendship and respect and work with me on that which we have in common, such as the desire not to see the environment go down the sewer. We atheists and Humanists can’t solve that problem alone. In fact, no one single group of human beings can solve any problem alone in the world we live in today. We have to find ways to work with one another, and to see the good in one another. I feel the general spirit of the “New Atheism” (which I admit is a sort of unfortunate name, but let’s work with what we’ve got for a bit here) has simply not done nearly enough to offer the kind of respect it would like to see. We want to be treated as equals? Let’s raise hell about it, fine, but perhaps think twice about slamming me so hard as some kind of Uncle Tom (I definitely heard that one on a few blogs) if I want to speak for myself, and for the millions of atheists and Humanists out there who actually *like* and care deeply about a lot of religious people and don’t feel the need to hurt their feelings in addition to disagreeing with them. Sam, in the AP article in question, had no problem implying pretty bluntly that religious people are all stupid. Richard was quoted as saying that teaching about hell might be worse than sexual abuse. These kinds of statements are not simply the height of rationality and science. They come off as extremely obnoxious to a lot of people. Is it as bad as violence? No, for goodness sake, no. Is it hate speech? No. But is that what I called it? Also, no. I figure if Sam is willing to imply that an entire several billion people who don’t agree with him on religious issues might not because they’re stupid, then he might also be okay with the fact that I can allude to the idea that this might sound at least slightly reminiscent of fundamentalism to a goodly number of people out there. Thus, my use of the f-word, albeit in scare quotes.
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I believe Humanism will become a true force to be reckoned with when we all begin to understand that we are a diverse movement with real disagreements and even some real dislikes, and yet it doesn’t stop us from being considered united on an important level. Think about, for example, Conservative Christians and Liberal Episcopalians. When it comes to so many things, they don’t just disagree--they flat out hate each other! And yet the very social power of Christianity (I don’t necessarily admire that Christianity has so much social power, I’m just trying to consider it realistically here) is that these two groups can co-exist in their differences and resentments and yet almost no one would ever think to suggest that either group was not Christian. That’s what we need! We need for there to be the New Humanists and the New Atheists, the Greg Epsteins and the Brian Flemings and the Richard Dawkins’s and the EO Wilsons and all the rest, and despite our obvious differences, no one in the world would think to question the obvious fact that we are all part of one diverse but united Humanist/Atheist (or if you prefer I personally have no issue with your calling it Atheist/Humanist) movement! *That* would be progress. I can’t wait to make progress along side you.