A journey to humanism: religious highways, interfaith streets, humanist trails

By Chris Highland

How does someone move from evangelical certainty to humanist freethinking? Chris Highland retraces his remarkable spiritual journey through Christianity, Judaism and Zen Buddhism, discovering that each tradition, in its own way, helped lead him beyond faith.

Chris is a teacher, writer and humanist celebrant living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.

A Presbyterian minister; a Jewish rabbi; a Zen Buddhist priest; an Evangelical professor; a Catholic priest. In their own way, each of these religious leaders became guides along my journey to humanism. My emergence from faith – what I sometimes call my personal exodus – can be framed as a natural evolution from the hard, paved roadways of religious experience to a more open, wilder path of freethinking. The uncertainties of a dusty, dirty trail felt more natural to me than the hot pavement of certainties and “rights of way”.

The main road I travelled in early years was shared with my family’s Presbyterian household. This fairly smooth road got bumpier when I was driven to my knees by Billy Graham, accepting his “Crisis Christ” – the call to make an urgent, life-changing decision for Christ. The momentum carried me to Evangelical and Pentecostal interchanges (with no exit). Never travelling far from my home faith, the choice was clear because there was only “One Way”, one choice. Which was, of course, no real choice. No question: I was a Christian. Born (on Christmas Day!), born into the church family, and born again into the Lord’s family.    

As a curious high school kid, I became a leader of our church youth group, and then active in a major evangelical student organisation called Campus Crusade for Christ (at least my Christ). But my soul tank apparently wasn’t full yet. A friend took me to a Pentecostal church and I got “filled” with the Spirit. Now I was gassed up with Jesus, with his Holy Breath in my tyres.

Choosing an Evangelical Christian university in Seattle, I was determined to increase my knowledge of the Bible and build up my rock solid faith. Little did I know I would face one more conversion. I was “saved” by philosophy and exposure to World Religions. The doors and windows of my nicely-boxed faith were blown open as I discovered an unfamiliar landscape of ideas, questions and worldviews I had never considered. Engaging with great minds (from the Christian Kierkegaard to the Jewish Martin Buber and the atheist Nietzsche) while meeting people with very divergent beliefs, broke open new avenues for encountering something potentially greater than faith: wisdom. And this was happening in a conservative Christian school!

After teaching an Adult Education course on World Religions in my home church, the pastor suggested I attend a seminary in California. One attraction was the school’s connection to a consortium of seminaries in the San Francisco Bay Area. My mind continued to expand as I chose classes taught by Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist professors. Yet, it was outside the classrooms where my deeper education opened new paths. As an instructor in a private school for adults with physical and mental challenges, I found my Sunday mornings consisted of walking students to an innovative Catholic community. The young priests presented models for inclusive gatherings where differences of belief didn’t matter. At the same time, while continuing my seminary studies, I began attending a welcoming Jewish synagogue that met on campus, and took personal retreats at a Zen Buddhist farm on the coast where I learned the value of silence, simplicity and slow breath. I had come a long way from the One Stop Shop of faith.

Unlike most of my classmates, my first “call” was not to a church. I became the first interfaith chaplain in a county jail near San Quentin, California's most famous state prison. After ten years inside, I was “released” from the steel chaplaincy to a street chaplaincy, also directed by an inter-religious coalition. After another ten years among “urban refugees” I moved back to the Pacific Northwest to live for three years in a one-room cabin on an island. While building a trail system in the forest surrounding a 45-acre organic farm, I worked as an administrative assistant for a youth organisation, with an office on the lower level of a church. 

With fresh forest breezes and salty sea winds in my lungs, I sat by my woodstove to write and publish several nature “meditation” books as well as a collection of stories from my chaplaincy years. By this time, I was clearing my own path through life. Any divinity had evaporated into air or dissolved into the earth.

Returning to California to marry my (progressive minister) wife, I abandoned anything supernatural. Initially taking a position as a shelter director, overseeing a “rotating” shelter held in various churches and synagogues each night, I became a housing manager for independent seniors in two homes owned by an ecumenical non-profit.

Since relocating to North Carolina and becoming a Humanist Celebrant, I’ve been an instructor in lifelong learning programmes on several university campuses, teaching courses on Freethought, Humanism and Christian Nationalism. Now and then I’m invited to speak at a Unitarian or Progressive Protestant church. At the same time, I write two weekly newspaper columns on religion from a secular perspective. I continue to publish collections of columns and essays while volunteering at a Planned Parenthood clinic. We stand with women seeking healthcare, shielding them from loud anti-abortion preachers. I often wonder: could I have been one of those self-righteous protesters harassing women, if I had never taken a different trail?

Those faith leaders who encouraged me along the way may never know how much they inspired me to become a wiser human being, someone who chose a path beyond faith.