Has Humanism any Future? My 2003 Conway Hall lecture

By David Warden

I was invited to give a talk on this topic to South Place Ethical Society in London in 2003. The text from which I spoke is reproduced below, together with a subsequent exchange with Don Johnson of the Ethical Society of St Louis, Missouri. It’s good to know that, 23 years later, we’re still here so humanism did have a future. But to what extent do I agree with my 44-year old self? What has changed since those pre-smart phone days and what has stayed the same? I’ll make a few comments below and I’ve written a companion piece for this issue of Humanistically Speaking. Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes.

The view from 2026

One of my main concerns in 2003 was that none of the national organisations were nurturing local groups. Humanists UK today is trying to nurture its own local groups, and maintain links with older autonomous partner groups but, considered as a whole, there's a perception that local groups remain on the ‘critically endangered’ list. In recent years they have been hit by the multiple challenges of YouTube, GDPR (data protection regulations) and the pandemic. Young people and students have almost completely vanished from organised humanism, although Faith to Faithless is doing excellent work in supporting people leaving high control religions.

In 2003, I called for an educational course about humanism and, following an early pilot led by Chris Worfolk at Leeds University, I pioneered the One Life course which has been adopted by Humanists UK. I called for humanist groups to have their own libraries and Dorset Humanists has run a small lending library for many years. I complained about ‘anti-religious aggression’. There's rather less of that nowadays but, despite organised humanism’s repeated calls for democratic pluralism, in my experience there’s more intolerance of political views which do not fit the parameters of ‘progressivism’.

Back in 2003, I observed that the British Humanist Association had about 4,000 members. Based on its published subscription income for 2024 (just shy of £1 million), Humanists UK now has perhaps in the region of 20-30,000 paying members, and many more supporters. This increase is encouraging, but these numbers do not automatically translate into vibrant local humanist communities. I called for educational services for local schools, and humanism has made impressive inroads into religious education syllabuses in the intervening years.

I complained about the fragmentation of organised humanism and lack of clarity about the word ‘humanism’. Perhaps I’ve learned to live with this. The word 'humanism' is an umbrella term for many different streams of thought and orientations. Perhaps ‘fragmentation’ can be positively reframed as ‘pluralism’ and ‘diversity’. I say more about the rich history of humanism in my companion piece.

I was also very provocative about New Humanist magazine, claiming that it had given up on humanism altogether (a view which the editor at the time contested). My complaint, really, was that it had become a liberal culture periodical which did not engage much with the humanist community. Maybe it will improve now that Humanists UK has become its owner.

Even in 2003, the received wisdom was that ‘people don't join groups anymore’. That may be the case, but here in Bournemouth we haven't given up enticing them to join our humanist group. Our paid-up membership has increased from 60 to 200+ and we are still growing, albeit slowly.

The ‘future of humanism’ remains a contested term. Some of us see it in terms of political activism to create a better world while others hold fast to humanism’s as yet unfulfilled promise to provide a meaningful alternative to religion. Sometimes there's an uneasy relationship between the two, but ‘both/and’ is usually better than ‘either/or’. Hopefully, the humanist community can forge a tolerant and dynamic new synthesis.

“I remember well your illuminating address Has Humanism Any Future? that appeared in the South Place Ethical Society Record. I was much impressed by it.” Don Johnson, Senior Leader, New York Ethical Society from 1986-1998 and leader of St Louis Ethical Society, Missouri. 22 December 2005

The 2003 talk at Conway Hall (South Place Ethical Society)

I’m delighted and honoured to address you this afternoon on the subject Has Humanism Any Future? 

My talk is organised into four parts:

Part One     : 6 Propositions

Part Two    : 6 Humanist Beliefs

Part Three  : 4 Deliberate Omissions

Part Four   : Some practical pointers

A few months ago I was rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and I came across a first edition Conway Memorial Lecture, published in 1929, and entitled The Religious Advance Towards Rationalism. At the back of the book there are some delightful details about South Place Ethical Society.  The ‘Object of the Society’ is ‘the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment, the study of ethical principles, and the promotion of human welfare, in harmony with advancing knowledge’.  It also lists your social activities as ‘social evenings, dances, discussions, play readings, rambles, and co-operative holidays’!

Before I attempt to answer the question Has Humanism Any Future? – a little information about me.  I was born in the seaside town of Bournemouth and I went to local schools there.  As a serious and pious young man I intended to become a Christian minister and I went to study theology at Darwin College in the University of Kent at Canterbury.  But calamity struck just three weeks before my final exams: I lost my belief in God.  Unlike the poet Shelley, who was expelled from university for his pamphlet on atheism, I took my exams and I graduated with honours. But a degree in theology is not a lot of use once you’ve become an atheist and I eventually found my way into the recruitment and training profession.  Over the years I’ve maintained a lively interest in theology and religion and nearly two years ago I decided to join the Dorset Humanist Association.  I could have joined them years ago but at 44 I think I’m still their youngest member!

What I’m going to do is present you with a number of propositions and beliefs which we can debate until teatime or until the last train back to Bournemouth.

My first proposition is this: Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement.  We know this is true because we’ve all met people who are broadly in sympathy with Humanism, and may even call themselves Humanists, but they feel no need to join a Humanist organisation.  That’s putting it politely, of course.  They may have attended Humanist meetings in the past and been so appalled by our introspective approach that they never want to set foot in another humanist meeting ever again.  We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because so many aspects of our civilization are implicitly humanistic: democracy, human rights, science, education and so on. 

Thirdly, we know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because the word ‘humanistic’ regularly crops up in psychology (1), in sociology (2) and in management literature (3).  Recently I have been corresponding with a ‘humanistic counsellor’ in Brighton who informed me that humanistic counselling is the third main school of psychotherapy, following on from psychoanalysis and behaviourism.  Humanistic psychology was inspired by American writers such as Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers and is represented today by the Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (4).  The word humanism even crops up in theology and some of you may remember the fuss that was made a few years back when an Anglican priest, Anthony Freeman, published a book entitled God in Us: The Case For Christian Humanism (5).  There was nothing new or startling about the book but the Anglican Church seems condemned to fight the same battles over and over again in every generation.  The Anglican Church is riddled with humanism just as it is riddled with fundamentalism and this explains why it is finally beginning to break up (6).  My brother, who is a liberal Anglican priest, confided to me only a few weeks ago that he believes the fundamentalist wing of the Church of England is ‘evil’.  It’s difficult to see how such an organisation can hold together for very much longer.  Furthermore, if statistical trends are to be believed, Christianity will be winding itself up in Britain by about the year 2050 (7). 

We also know that Humanism is bigger than the Humanist movement because, according to the  World Christian Encyclopaedia there are 900 million non-religious people in the world (8), of whom 180 million are explicitly atheist (9).  That’s a tiny proportion of the world population, but much bigger than the number of atheists who have, so far, been gathered into the bosom of organised Humanism. 

My second proposition is this: Organised humanism is just the tip of the iceberg.  At the visible tip of the iceberg we’ve got the British Humanist Association, the International Humanist and Ethical Union and, of course, the South Place Ethical Society.  Below the water level, we’ve got implicit humanism in democracy, human rights, science, human endeavour, humanistic psychology and so on.  So what do we know about visible or explicit Humanism?  We know that the British Humanist Association has got nearly 4,000 members and we know there are about 50 local groups. We also know that the IHEU has about 100 member groups around the world.  Now let’s do some maths – I hope you all brought your calculators. If every humanist group in the world is the same size as the British Humanist Association (a very big assumption obviously), then we’ve got around 400,000 humanists in the world.  We already know that there are 180 million atheists in the world, so if we put these two figures together, the total number of known humanists divided by the total number of known atheists, it means that so far, organised humanism has managed to capture less than 0.2% of its hottest market.  If, on the other hand, we divide the total number of known humanists by the total number of non-religious people in the world, our hit rate goes down to a rather disappointing 0.04%. 

So my third proposition is this:  Organised humanism is not doing very well.  It’s not doing very well in absolute terms and it’s not doing very well compared to its rivals.  Let’s take another look at the British Humanist Association and then compare it to one of its rivals.  The BHA’s parent organisation, the Ethical Union, was founded at the end of the 19th century and the headquarters of the BHA are here in London.  It doesn’t have any formal relationship with its local groups which are autonomous.  The local groups meet wherever they can, usually in community centres, sometimes in pubs and wine bars, and they meet about once a month for talks and discussions.  They might occasionally hand out leaflets but probably only in English. This is a very loose, decentralised organisation and today its UK membership is about 4,000 (10). 

Let’s compare it to another organisation which seems to be doing rather better.  This organisation also started at the end of the 19th century and its headquarters are now in New York.  It has a very structured and supportive relationship with its local groups.  All the local groups have physically built their own buildings.  They meet three times a week for study and they hand out free literature in dozens of different languages.  This is a highly disciplined and committed organisation and today its UK membership is about 350,000 members.  Now when I tell you that this organisation is the Watchtower Society, more commonly known as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, no doubt you will be horrified that it’s being compared in any way whatsoever to the BHA.  But one of my aims is to shock the humanist movement out of its complacency and to raise awareness of what our rivals are doing, how they are operating, and their steady advance across the globe and into the minds of our fellow human beings.  Christianity may be on the wane in Britain, but across the world fundamentalists are on the march and they are extremely well organised. 

My fourth proposition is this: Organised humanism is not doing very well because it’s fragmented, it lacks clarity, and it lacks confidence.  The fragmentation of organised humanism is a legacy of our history.  The National Secular Society has its roots in 19th century socialism and the co-operative movement (11).  The BHA has its roots in the Ethical Movement of which the South Place Ethical Society is a noble remnant.  The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association was set up in 1979 and the International Humanist and Ethical Union was set up in 1953 and is a loose coalition of humanist, ethical and secular organisations around the world.  If you are a humanist in Britain today, you have the option of joining a local group but not the BHA or you can join the BHA but not a local group or you can join both if you want to.  Many people seem to be confused about the relationship between these two things.  If you are an enthusiast, you can subscribe to all of the existing organisations, at a combined annual cost of around £100 and receive 5 periodicals.  The Freethinker is an autonomous  publication which prides itself on anti-religious aggression (12). Humanist News describes what the BHA is doing, mostly UK-based campaigns and news about the ceremonies network.  International Humanist News is an update on international humanism, focussing in particular on human rights.  The Gay and Lesbian Humanist is rather narrowly focused on attacking the church on gay issues.  And the New Humanist, published by the Rationalist Press Association, has recently doubled its readership by giving up on humanism altogether (13). 

Now I’m not suggesting that we can or even should merge these organisations(14) and publications but the fragmentation of UK humanism is a severe impediment to our cohesion and our effectiveness.  I find it confusing and rather expensive to subscribe to such a plethora of humanist journals, each one focussing rather narrowly and sometimes aggressively on its own concerns.  But my main concern is that none of these organisations is nurturing local groups. The BHA prides itself on ‘punching above its weight’ (15).  It would have more weight to punch with if local groups were growing and multiplying instead of struggling to exist.

I also said in my fourth proposition that organised Humanism is not doing very well because it lacks clarity.  There are too many vague definitions of Humanism floating around.  According to the BHA Humanism is an ‘approach to life’ (16).  This strikes me as a bit feeble.  According to the Humanist Philosophers Group, Humanism is ‘an evolving tradition of thought’ (17). Well they would say that wouldn’t they but it’s not much use as a soundbite. The International Humanist and Ethical Union is keen for us all to use the word ‘lifestance’ but this word just makes me cringe.  I’d like to suggest that the way forward is to clarify what our core beliefs are and then we can market Humanism with a greater sense of confidence as a coherent system of belief.  I’m not suggesting of course that a Humanist system of belief should become a rigid orthodoxy, but I think we can fairly easily identify what our core beliefs are.

My fifth proposition is that UK Humanism is lagging far behind its continental counterparts.  According to a Dutch humanist website, 25% of the Dutch population explicitly identify themselves as Humanists (18).  No doubt there are historical and cultural reasons why Dutch Humanism is so far ahead of us, but one of the main reasons appears to be that they’ve maintained a strong link between secular humanism and humanistic psychology.  In Holland and in Belgium you’ll find humanist counsellors and chaplains working alongside their religious counterparts in schools, hospitals and prisons.  It seems that Humanism is widely recognised as an alternative to supernatural religion.  In effect, it’s a secular religion. 

My sixth proposition is that Humanism should be competing with religion, rather than whingeing about its privileges.  Let me try and be clear about this.  I don’t particularly want unelected bishops to sit in the House of Lords, I don’t like the fact that the BBC won’t let Humanists anywhere near Thought for the Day, and I certainly don’t like the fact that so few of our children are taught about Humanism in religious studies. But as long our membership continues to languish at around the 4,000 mark we will continue to be sidelined. 

So how can Humanism compete effectively with religion? I think that in order to compete, what we need to have is a clearly-defined belief system.  What I’d like to do now is sketch out what Humanism as a belief system might look like. So far, I’ve presented you with six propositions.  And now I’d like to present you with my six humanist beliefs. 

My first humanist belief is this: I believe in personal autonomy

For me, this is the foundation stone of humanism.  The belief in autonomy is what marks us out very sharply from traditional religions.  Fundamentalist religions are based on what  theologians call ‘heteronomy’.  Heteros is a Greek word meaning ‘other’.  And nomos is a Greek word meaning ‘law’.  So heteronomy means being governed by someone other than yourself.  And in the case of religion, it means being governed by God.  But seeing as God doesn’t really exist, religious heteronomy in effect means being governed by religious authorities who’ve had the audacity to declare themselves the mouthpieces of God.  Religious heteronomy is a fundamental attack on what it means to be a human being.  To be fully human, we need freedom, independence, to exercise our own initiative; not to have our lives pre-planned be under constant surveillance.  So when I say, as a humanist, that I believe in personal autonomy, what I’m saying is that I believe in myself and that I want to learn how to be fully in control of my life.  I think this is a very attractive belief so our humanist belief system has got off to a flying start. 

My second belief is this: I believe in critical reasoning

Now the distinction between humanism and religion on this front is less clear-cut.  I was speaking to a Muslim a couple of weeks ago who told me that the Qu‘ran could not have been written by the Prophet Muhammad because Muhammad was illiterate.  Therefore the Qu‘ran must have been written by Allah.  Now the only way I can start to counter this fairly simplistic line of reasoning is by doing some historical research.  The point to note is that my Muslim friend doesn’t just believe that the Qu‘ran was written by God – he is armed with a particular line of reasoning which sounds plausible to him.  What humanists need to do is not condemn him for being ‘irrational’ but challenge his belief on historical grounds and this requires patient historical study.  It’s not that religious people are against reason.  The problem with religion is that its reasoning processes are  superficial and therefore potentially very dangerous.

My third belief is this:  I believe that morality is a human construction like language and law

One of the chief objections to Humanism is that it denies any objective basis for ethics and leaves morality subject to the whims of individual taste.  But there’s no reason why there should be a perfect system of ethics any more than there should be perfect systems of language or law.  All of these things are subject to human debate, historical evolution and social consensus.  We can’t deduce a perfect system of morality from religion or from utilitarianism or from any other moral theory (19).  Moral theories might help us, but ethical decision-making is messy and difficult.  Morality is not just an outcome of personal choice however.  It’s a complex system of negotiation between the individual and the communities in which he lives.  The advantage of a humanist approach to ethics is that this complexity is not sacrificed to the moral tyranny of the Bible or the Qur'an. 

My fourth belief is this: I believe in growing to my full potential

It’s very fashionable these days to talk about personal growth and the bookshops are full of self-help books to help you Unlimit Your Life (20).  But this belief is one of the things that clearly differentiates us from our religious competitors.  Religion tends to view human nature as intrinsically evil and the purpose of human life as submission to God in the hope of life everlasting.  The only type of personal growth recommended by religion is growth in submissiveness.  Humanism, on the other hand, encourages people to be assertive and to have self-respect.  It frowns on fatalism, and encourages people to identify and destroy self-limiting beliefs.  Now whether you do this through humanistic psychology or neuro-linguistic programming or good old fashioned positive thinking is entirely your own choice.  But as humanists, we should be experts in the art and science of helping people to realise their full potential in life.  This is one the most exciting things that humanism can offer and it requires us to re-engage urgently with the humanistic psychology tradition associated with Carl Rogers and other important thinkers. 

My fifth belief is this: I believe in humanist spirituality

I didn’t really want to use that word, spirituality, because of its religious connotations.  But I think there is an important dimension in human life to which the word spirituality refers.  I’m thinking about primal needs which can’t be satisfied by the free-market economy.  For instance, during the week I might rely on instant meals from the supermarket but on a Friday or a Saturday night I get pleasure from preparing a meal from scratch, soaking the beans, chopping up the vegetables, frying them gently in olive oil, adding some crushed garlic, cumin seeds and a good splash of red wine.  From a purely rational point of view, this makes no sense at all. If all I need to do is eat, I might as well carry on eating instant meals.  But I recognise that I have primal needs that can’t be satisfied by rationality but only by getting in touch with my deepest feelings about things.  I have a primal need to cook.  Now whether the results of my cooking should be described as primal I will leave others to judge. 

Unfortunately, this is where traditional religion has a distinct advantage over humanism.  Ancient church buildings and religious rituals connect with these primal instincts.  The slightly musty smell inside a village church, the sense of connection with countless generations of worshippers, the soaring vaults of Cathedral naves, the penetrating blast of a church organ, the purity of chorister voices, the soothing effect of flickering candles, the sumptuous costumes of bishops and deans.  It’s pure theatre.  And what have we got? We’ve got Conway Hall but apart from this we mostly meet in drab community centres.  Well, let’s set our sights a bit higher.  Let’s start building humanist buildings that connect in some way with people’s deepest values.  Humanism is a very young movement (21).  We need to start thinking on a grand scale and start planning for the next thousand years. 

This belief in a humanist spirituality also presents a challenge to economic assumptions about human well-being.  It encourages the  recognition that beyond a certain optimal point the accumulation of possessions starts to erode our sense of well-being.  A striking example of this is the spectacle of celebrities like Elton John having periodic clear-outs of expensive clutter.  On a more realistic level, it might involve spending more time learning a musical instrument and less time listening to CDs, or more time painting and less time worrying about whether you’ve taken in the latest blockbuster exhibition at the Royal Academy.  ‘Humanist spirituality’ means developing some resistance to the over-commodification of life. 

My sixth belief is this:  I believe that the ultimate meaninglessness of life releases us from anxiety

Whenever I speak to a general audience about humanism, I inevitably get the question about the meaning of life.  Margaret Nelson, an email friend of mine, from the Suffolk Humanist Association insists that the meaning of life is 42, but I think we can improve on this.  When I was studying theology at the University of Kent it occurred to me, in a philosophical moment, that if the human brain is programmed to think contextually then Sartre’s comment that a ‘godless universe is absurd’ is a logical and necessary truth.  But if you try to solve the problem of absurdity by enclosing the universe in a God-shaped wrapper (that’s what I meant by thinking contextually) you’re immediately faced with the same problem at one remove. If God is just existing without any explanation then God’s existence is equally absurd.  So religious people haven’t solved the problem of absurdity at all.  All they’ve done is push it beyond their mental horizons. I think we need to accept and even celebrate the absurdity of the universe.

Whenever I start to worry about my mortality and the frustration of unfulfilled dreams, I comfort myself with the thought that, in the end, it doesn’t really matter. (22)  In rare moments of Buddhist enlightenment, I simply let go.  Fortunately, none of these morbid thoughts stop me from getting out of bed in the morning.  Humanism is about making plans and it’s about constructing meaning but it’s also about living in and for the moment.  Humanism is a form of existentialism (23).

These six beliefs are my six pillars of humanism.  And of course it’s a personal selection. You may be surprised at some omissions from my list of beliefs so what I’d like to do now is look at four of the things I’ve consciously omitted.

Atheism

The last time I explained humanism as a system of belief, a humanist in the audience expressed surprise that I hadn’t included atheism. There’s a reason for this.  I do happen to be an atheist but atheism is merely a technicality.  If God’s existence was proved beyond reasonable doubt, it wouldn’t make any difference to me.  I would still be a humanist because I believe in autonomy.  Atheism supports my belief in autonomy, but it’s not a necessary precondition. 

Secularisation

You might also be surprised that I haven’t argued for the secularisation of society or the separation of church and state or the abolition of faith schools.  Well, this is because I believe in free-choice rather than social engineering.  Secularism is not a neutral position.  It’s an ideological position. I mentioned earlier that the National Secular Society has its roots in 19th century socialism and I think there is still an element here of state control, of intellectuals knowing what is best for society.  Why should we have a secular society if the majority of taxpayers don’t want it to be secular?  I believe that Humanism should simply compete in the marketplace of ideas.

Morality without religion

You may’ve also noticed that I haven’t made any explicit connection between Humanism and morality.  This is because I want organised Humanism to give me the opportunity to explore ethics;  I don’t want organised Humanism to assume that I want to become more moral or more altruistic.  I’m trying to achieve a balance in my life between altruism and egoism (24), between my interests and the interests of others.   This is what I meant when I spoke about ethics being a process of negotiation between me and the community in which I live. 

Let me give you an example.  Four-and-a-half years ago, my father suffered a stroke.  My mother was unable to look after him and as a family we faced a difficult dilemma.  Should one of us give up our career in order to make his final years as happy as possible or should he go into a nursing home?  Now, if I was a moral and altruistic person, maybe I would have given up my career without hesitation.  A Christian friend of mine has done just that.  She sacrificed her life in order to look after her elderly mother who suffers from multiple sclerosis.  But I don’t believe in Christian ethics any more than I believe in Christian doctrines.  The outcome of this story is that my father spent four years in a nursing home and between us my sister and I saw him virtually every day for those four years.  I sometimes felt that I’d been sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service but I undertook it willingly to bring some relief to my poor father.  Through those years I often agonised over whether we’d done the right thing despite the protestations of many people who told us how good we were to give my father so much of our time.  I don’t accept we were good or bad – we simply made a rational calculation and did what we could within those limits, and with the natural compassion felt by most children for their ageing parents.

Felix Adler, the founder of the Ethical Culture Movement wanted to ‘rescue…the wisdom and the moral insight that past generations have stored in their religions’ (25).  To a large extent, modern Humanism is still based, albeit unconsciously, on Adler’s assumption that religious morality is a good thing and needs to be preserved and promoted.  I disagree.  And I take comfort in the fact that the German rationalist Ernst Haekel was bold enough to declare that “The supreme mistake of Christian ethics... is the exaggeration of love of one’s neighbour at the expense of self-love” (26).  That’s not to say that we can’t learn anything from religious ethics.  But as humanists we need to be critical and sceptical in the field of ethics just as we are in every other field.  Morality isn’t something that can be dished out quantitatively like Christmas presents.  Morality is about the quality of our relationships.

Religion bashing

Earlier in the talk I spoke rather disparagingly about ‘anti-religious aggression’ (27).  I hope you won’t form the impression that I’ve gone soft on religion.  Some humanists evidently have.  Alfred Hobson and Neil Jenkins in their book Modern Humanism (28) argue that “In view of the value of religion to its [followers], the Humanist movement makes no attempt to convert religious people to Humanism”.  I think this is underselling Humanism. I believe passionately that Humanism is a good belief system and that fundamentalism is profoundly bad for individuals and for society.  I care passionately about children being given an informed choice between humanism and anti-humanism.  Of course I’m fully-signed up to the principles of toleration and respect for individual people, whatever their beliefs, but toleration and respect doesn’t mean giving up our critical edge. 

Getting the right balance is difficult and my impression is that organised humanism often gets it wrong.  Our arguments against religion are aggressive and unsophisticated and we often use insulting language. For example, describing religious people as ‘bigots’ merely demonstrates that we’re losing the argument.  And let’s stop using the word ‘religionist’.  No-one else uses it. Why should we?

The alternative approach is to use our deadly weapon: well-informed, critical reasoning.  We need to sharpen up our act by diligent study of our opponents’ arguments and by practising our debating skills.  Every good humanist should have a Christian friend, a Muslim friend, a Hindu friend, a Watchtower friend.  Not an exclusive list. We need religious friends who are prepared to debate the arguments with us.  We may never convert them, but every time we debate the issues with them we are sowing the seeds of doubt.  And the seeds of doubt may eventually grow into the fruits of reason.

In the final part of my talk, I’d like to explore some of the practical implications of what I’ve said so far.  

What is the purpose of organised humanism?

Jonathan Miller, a prominent atheist, has recently been quoted as wondering why Humanists need to get together at all.  He seems to view us as a peculiar sect (29).  I agree with Jonathan Miller to some extent; I acknowledge that we are a peculiar sect.  But the reason why organised Humanism needs to exist is to give people a choice between traditional religion on the one hand and nothingarianism on the other.  Nothingarianism equates all too often to limited moral and intellectual horizons and a susceptibility to all sorts of quackery.  Humanism is a learning community which gives people the chance to practice their thinking skills and widen their moral horizons. 

I think the Dorset Humanist Association has got just about the right mix of talks, discussions and social events but we’re also trying to establish friendship links with humanists abroad.  We’ve recently made contact with humanists in India, Nigeria and in Holland and these international links are starting to give us a more 3-dimensional understanding of Humanism.

At the moment we’ve got about 60 members but I’d like to see that double on an annual basis until we have to split into a number of satellites.  (30)

The received wisdom is that ‘people don’t join groups anymore’.  I accept it’s a challenge but I don’t think we should be too defeatist about this.  Many people are looking for something to believe in and belong to beyond the narrow confines of hedonistic individualism.

One of the things we’d like to do is offer an educational course in Humanism covering religion, philosophy, psychology and ethics.  We’d also like to foster stronger relationships with other UK groups and provide educational services to local schools. You have a wonderful humanist library here in Conway Hall.  I’d like every humanist group in the country to build  up its own humanist library. 

So Has Humanism Any Future?  I said near the beginning of my talk that humanism is bigger than organised Humanism and I’m confident that even if organised Humanism collapsed, humanism would still be a powerful and pervasive force in the world.  As for organised Humanism, I think it does have a future but whether it continues to exist as a peculiar sect or grows into a thriving belief system is partly up to us.  One of my fantasies is that in 100 years’ time, a young man will be rummaging in the bookshops of Hay-on-Wye and he’ll come across a first edition of a Conway lecture entitled Has Humanism Any Future?.  And by then, he will know the answer.   

Afterword

This lecture was referenced by Don Johnson in an address to the Ethical Society of St Louis, Missouri:

The Distinctiveness of Ethical Culture

Platform Address by Don Johnson, Leader

Delivered on August 22, 2004

Extract:  “David Worden (sic) of the Dorset, England, Humanist Association had a very illuminating article on humanism in the Ethical Record, which is the monthly newsletter of the London South Ethical Society. It's not actually a part of Ethical Culture at this point, but it's been around longer than any of the societies, before Felix Adler in fact founded Ethical Culture, and continues ethical emphasis in its programming. But he listed some ideas that are central to humanism which I think are also central to us: personal autonomy for every person, the necessity of critical reasoning, morality seen as a human construction, the potential of growth to full potential for each person, a humanist spirituality that responds to and satisfies primal needs, and seeing life as having no purpose or meaning already set but rather we make it for ourselves. And to his, I added, the necessity of community life for becoming our best selves, which he did not include.

There are some propositions he made about humanism, four of them that I also want to make about Ethical Culture:

Ethics is bigger than Ethical Culture. We call this place “The Ethical Society.”  It's easy for people to misunderstand what we are saying by that. It can be read as “the people who gather here are the ethical people.” But that's not what's meant. It's “The Society for Ethical Culture,” not “The Society of Ethical Culture.” We are a group seeking to be ethical and using ethics as a means to be our best selves. We have not arrived and ethics is bigger than Ethical Culture. There are lots of people who have been offended, and rightly so, if they've thought that we see ourselves as more ethical than the rest of them in some other religious tradition. That's not what Ethical Culture is about. Organized Ethical Culture is just the tip of the iceberg. The yearning for the good, the practice of the ethical is present in the world in many ways, and though we continue to remain a very, very small group, many of the things that Ethical Culture stood for, in its 125 years plus, have become reality. And in some sense, we've had influence way beyond our numbers, as people who have been part of the Society and the movement know.

Third, organized Ethical Societies are not doing very well. We are continuing as a movement to lose members, have fewer funds, and need to find ways of making ourselves better known. And finally, organized Ethical Societies often are not doing very well because they are fragmented, although much less so in this Society. I've sensed none of the cliquish political groups at each other's throats here as I have in some other places in the Ethical movement, and I think it speaks very highly of the St. Louis Society and of the community spirit that exists here. One of the reasons we are not doing very well is because we lack clarity about who we are. We have seen ourselves as the “ethical people” over against realizing we are part of an ethical process that other people are too, and this particular community is the one that supports us and helps us in our ethical search and struggle.”

A copy of the full text is available from David Warden.

An email exchange, c. December 2005, followed: 

To the Ethical Society, St Louis

Hello!

I was browsing on Google and came across Don Johnson's Platform Address dated August 22, 2004 which included some references to a talk I gave to South Place Ethical Society in London a couple of years ago. I would be most interested to contact Don if you are able to help me.

I am trying to encourage British Humanists to reconnect with our Ethical heritage (we were Ethical Societies up to about 1963). We have been rather taken over by an aggressive secularism which is a pity. Maybe we could establish a twinning link with the St Louis Ethical Society?

Kind regards

David Warden (spelt Worden in Don's talk)

Dorset Humanists, UK

Hi David,

This is Don Johnson, responding to your e-mail. I have retired and now live in the Blue Ridge mountains of southwest Virginia. I remember well your address that appeared in the South Place Record. I was much impressed by it. Also, we had several British members from the New York Ethical Society (I was Senior Leader there from 1986-1998) who moved back to the London area. They lost a son on Pan Am 103 and made contacts with the South Place group for a memorial but were deeply disappointed by the ‘aggressive humanism’ you refer to in your note. The Record tends to largely reflect this particular viewpoint, and must be part of the reason for the small size of the South Place group.

Anyway, it was very good to have the contact with you. Thanks for writing.

Don Johnson

Endnotes

1. For example, John Rowan’s Ordinary Ecstasy: The dialectics of humanistic psychology (2001) Brunner Routledge

2. For example, Peter Berger’s Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective (1963) Pelican

3. For example, the ‘human relations’ school associated with seminal thinkers Mary Parker Follett (1920s), Elton Mayo (1930s) and Douglas McGregor (1960s).  McGregor’s “Theory X” managers view workers as essentially lazy and uninterested, whereas “Theory Y” managers believe that workers respond positively to responsibility and autonomy.

4. UK Association of Humanistic Psychology Practitioners

5. 1993, SCM Press

6. The Anglican Communion seems to be on the verge of schism over the appointment of the first ‘out’ gay bishop, Gene Robinson, in the American Episcopal Church (November 2003). 2009 note: “US president-elect Barack Obama has invited the world's first openly gay Anglican bishop to offer the prayer that will mark the beginning of the inauguration festivities.” Guardian 13/1/09

7. According to Religious Trends, 2002-2003 (Christian Research, 2002 – quoted in BHA policy on religion and schools),  7.4% of the UK population go to Christian churches.  That’s about 4.5million people.  If the churches are losing a million members a decade (see Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel, page 205) Christianity in the UK will be over by the middle of the 21^st century.  This is backed up by The Christian Research English Church Census, 2005.  If the decline in Church of England membership between 1989 and 2005 (-31%) is extrapolated into the future, the last member will be turning off the lights in 2063.

8. According to the World Christian Encyclopaedia 2001, the non-religious population of the world has grown from 3m to 900m in the last 100 years. Quoted in the IHEU book, Levi Fragell’s essay, p113.

9. Estimated that 3% of the world’s population [180m] are atheists (Humanist CD Rom published by the BHA).

10. Latest figure is 3743 members which ‘has been static for some time’.  (Report of BHA conference in Suffolk Humanist Newsletter, Winter 2003).  Other snippets include:  ‘Only legacies are preventing the BHA from going bankrupt’.  ‘Members pay 50p a week compared to church members who pay £7.’ 2009 update: BHA membership has grown considerably since this lecture was written and now stands, I believe, at about 7,000 and its finances are much healthier.

11. See Jim Herrick Humanism: An Introduction (2003) RPA, p66

12. In issue 1 of the Freethinker (May, 1881) founder G W Foote wrote: "The Freethinker is an anti‑Christian organ, and must therefore be chiefly aggressive. It will wage relentless war against … Christian Superstition … and it will not scruple to employ … weapons of ridicule or sarcasm." www.freethinker.co.uk

13. This, of course, is a subjective and provocative viewpoint.  The editor of New Humanist has vigorously contested this  in a private email by explaining that humanism is a broad concept and that there is no point duplicating the other humanist periodicals.

14. NSS and BHA seem to have similar agendas but secularists don’t seem to like humanism (maybe because it’s confused with humanitarianism?).

15. BHA website comment

16. BHA website

17. What Is Humanism? (2002) Humanist Philosophers Group, BHA

18. www.human.nl.  I verified this with a student at the University of Humanistics in Utrecht who told me it was nearer 30% although only a fraction of these attend humanist meetings.

19.  Bernard Williams is an example of a moral philosopher who has adopted a sceptical approach to moral theory.  See, for instance, Utilitarianism and Beyond, co-edited with Amartya Sen (1982). Not an easy read!

20. Title of a book by James Faddiman (1989) Celestial Arts, California

21. I would date it to 1933 when Humanist Manifesto I was published, shortly after a breakaway group from the American Ethical Union founded the American Humanist Association. 2009 correction: This note above is not very accurate.  ‘Humanism’ is a 20th century umbrella term for a number of related movements which started in the 19th century including Secularism, Rationalism/Freethought, Positivism, the Ethical Societies and rationally-inclined Unitarianism.  The word ‘Humanism’ was very gradually adopted between 1900 and the 1950s, with much resistance along the way.  It’s not really possible to give a precise date when ‘Humanism’ as a movement was founded although I would insist on ‘the 19th century’.  Any earlier than this is an anachronism.  These movements were a response to the conviction that a rational alternative to Christianity was needed, a conviction which hardly arose in previous centuries.  Obviously, Humanists can look back over the centuries and millennia for rationally-inclined inspiration.

    The American Humanist Association was not a breakaway group from the American Ethical Union. It was brought into being by an autonomous group clustered around Chicago in the 1920s.  The leaders were mostly Unitarian ministers such as John Dietrich and Curtis Reese and also academics like Eustace Haydon.  

22. I acknowledge this is a nihilist position in which Mozart, Chartres Cathedral, and even the Holocaust are consigned to meaningless oblivion in the long-run of cosmological time.  But as an existing human being living on a human timescale, I choose to celebrate humankind’s greatest achievements and deprecate its worst evils.  2009 comment: Don Cupitt is a very good guide to the sort of thing I am struggling to express here.  He believes we should live like the Sun, pouring ourselves out into life and then passing away into oblivion.

23. See Existentialism and Humanism Jean-Paul Sartre (1948).  A member of the audience asked ‘What’s existentialism?’.  I was saved by the fact that we had run out of time.  I’m not sure it’s possible to give a succinct definition of existentialism.  Very roughly, it refers to an introspective period in philosophy when questions about the meaning of human existence took centre stage.  It was probably triggered by the ‘death of God’ as a cultural event and crisis and well illustrated by painters like Picasso.  I think we’ve got over the shock of the ‘death of God’ and nowadays we are just getting on with our lives. 

24. In Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977: Penguin) J L Mackie argues that ‘egoism is not immoral but forms a viable part of any viable moral system’ (p200) .  It is ‘right and proper that [people] should pursue what they see as their own well-being’ (p173).  I also think this concept of balance between egoism and altruism is neatly illustrated by the yin yang symbol [

25. Address by Dr Felix Adler, 10 May 1931, from the American Ethical Union website www.aeu.org

26. Margaret Knight Humanist Anthology

27. Surely ‘aggressive anti-religion’ sits uncomfortably with our self-proclaimed ‘ethical approach’?

28. Published by North East Humanists, 2000, page 92

29. Humanist e-group gossip

30. 2009 comment: Our growth hasn’t been quite exponential, but we now have 120 members and a satellite group starting to form in New Milton, Hampshire.