What is Humanism?

Growing up in a fun­da­men­tal­ist, evan­gel­i­cal Baptist church, I often heard of many exis­ten­tial threats I was told threat­ened our faith. High on the list were the com­mu­nists, who hat­ed God and democ­ra­cy and want­ed to destroy the church and our coun­try. I was also taught that the United Nations was evil. Their goal was to cre­ate the one-world gov­ern­ment proph­e­sied in the book of Revelation and ush­er in the reign of the Antichrist.

But the threat I heard about most often was the “sec­u­lar human­ists.” They hat­ed God and opposed the church at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. Their goal was the total destruc­tion of every­thing we, as Bible-believ­ing Christians, held sacred: the fam­i­ly, the Bible, the free­dom to wor­ship, and our very nation “under God.”

Obviously, the Devil was behind all of these threats. But it took peo­ple to do his evil bid­ding — those evil humanists.

Today, I am a Humanist. I’m a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the American Humanist Association and a mem­ber of a local group of like-mind­ed folks. As an insid­er, I can tell you one thing for cer­tain: if those Baptist folks who “exposed” the agen­da of human­ists were right, we’re los­ing the bat­tle to destroy Christianity.

Of course, I said that tongue-in-cheek because (unless I missed the secret meet­ings) no such agen­da to destroy anyone’s faith exists.

Fifty years ago, church­es like the Baptist church I grew up in were on the fringe. Today, they dom­i­nate the pub­lic sphere. They are embod­ied by a form of Christianity — one that mix­es American excep­tion­al­ism, nation­al­ism, far-right pol­i­tics, and a warped view of the mes­sage of Jesus — which has become ascen­dant in the United States.

They are unit­ed by a view of America that observers have called “Christian Nationalism.” They want noth­ing less than to see the United States become a Christian theoc­ra­cy. They talk about reli­gious lib­er­ty, but what they real­ly seek is to impose their own notion of moral­i­ty on the entire coun­try. That’s not lib­er­ty where I come from — that’s tyranny.

Allow me to state clear­ly that while this is the dom­i­nant view of mod­ern Christianity these days, it is by no means the view of all Christians. I know many right here in Winchester who abhor the tenets of Christian Nationalism and active­ly work to pro­mote accep­tance, tol­er­ance, com­pas­sion, and humil­i­ty — what they inter­pret as the real mes­sage of Jesus.

As a Humanist, I can work with folks like that. While we may dis­agree about the exis­tence of a super­nat­ur­al world of gods, angels, dev­ils, and demons, we see eye-to-eye on vir­tu­al­ly every social and polit­i­cal issue fac­ing our nation.

You may be ask­ing the ques­tion: what does it mean to be a Humanist? There are many def­i­n­i­tions out there and some dis­agree­ments about what they mean. To me, it’s pret­ty simple.

To be a Humanist means to be a good per­son with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly need­ing the threat of eter­nal pun­ish­ment or the promise of eter­nal rewards. Some Humanists believe in God, but most do not. Either way, Humanists believe in being good for good­ness sake.

Humanists are not out to destroy the church or to harm any­one’s faith in what­ev­er deity they wor­ship. Quite the oppo­site, in fact. 

We believe it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to care for each oth­er, care about social jus­tice, and uplift the dis­ad­van­taged. We believe that all life — human and non-human — has val­ue and is wor­thy of being nur­tured and pro­tect­ed. We believe fight­ing for the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state is essen­tial — in oth­er words, true reli­gious free­dom for every­one.

As I said, we have a group of Humanists who meet month­ly here in Clark County. We meet on the sec­ond Wednesday of each month at 6 PM in the Clark County Public Library com­mu­ni­ty room.

Here are the four prin­ci­pal goals of our group:

• Community — to cre­ate a safe space for sec­u­lar peo­ple to fel­low­ship togeth­er, to laugh and learn, and to “be there” for one another
• Service — to work toward mak­ing our town more wel­com­ing and inclu­sive for every­one, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who don’t feel safe or com­fort­able in reli­gious institutions
• Education — to learn and to teach about Humanism and its aims and goals
• Activism — to cham­pi­on those whose rights are not being upheld and whose voic­es are not being heard

Are you a Humanist, or are you curi­ous about it? We wel­come you to join us this evening for our month­ly meet­ing. We also have a web­site and a Facebook page if you want to check us out virtually.