Humanist Parents Seek Communion Outside Church

Washington Post ^ | December 21, 2008 | Robin Shulman

[Between the Lines]

They are not religious, so they don't go to church. But they are searching for values and rituals with which to raise their children, as well as a community of like-minded people to offer support.

Dozens of parents came together on a recent Saturday to participate in a seminar on humanist parenting and to meet others interested in organizing a kind of nonreligious congregation, complete with regular family activities and ceremonies for births and deaths.

"It's exciting to know that we could be meeting people who we might perhaps raise children with," said Tony Proctor, 39, who owns a wealth management company and attended the seminar at Harvard University with his wife, Andrea, 35, a stay-at-home mother.

Humanism is both a formal movement and an informal identification of people who promote values of reason, compassion and human dignity. Although most humanists are atheists, atheism is defined by what is absent -- belief in God -- and humanists emphasize a positive philosophy of ethical living for the human good.

The seminar's organizers wanted to reach out to people like the Proctors -- first-time parents scrambling for guidance as they improvise how to raise their daughter without the religion of their childhood.

"I'm often told that when people have kids, they go back to religion," said John Figdor, a humanist master's of divinity student who helped organize the seminar. "Are we really not tending our own people?"

Across the country, religious observance hits a low for people in their mid-20s and steadily increases after that, "in conjunction with marriage and children," said Tom Smith, of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, which has polled people about religious affiliation and practice for decades.

Religious congregations are good at supporting parenting, said Gregory Epstein

[Notwithstanding]

They are first time parents at ages 35 and 39.

That explains a lot.

[Notwithstanding]

This story is written by an ignoramus.

Christians by definition have always been and still are “people who promote values of reason, compassion and human dignity.” After all, reason is evidence of the Creator’s genius. It was the belief in one rational God that made the amazing advances in science possible; when the gods were vengeful and capricious and did not follow any laws science was seen as a pointless endeavor, but an ordered universe created by a lawgiver who follows his own physical laws fosters a desire to learn about these laws as a way to understand the Creator.

Fides et Ration, dude. You can’t have one without the other.

[Notwithstanding]

This story is written by an ignoramus.

Christians by definition have always been and still are “people who promote values of reason, compassion and human dignity.” After all, reason is evidence of the Creator’s genius. It was the belief in one rational God that made the amazing advances in science possible; when the gods were vengeful and capricious and did not follow any laws science was seen as a pointless endeavor, but an ordered universe created by a lawgiver who follows his own physical laws fosters a desire to learn about these laws as a way to understand the Creator.

Fides et Ratio, dude. You can’t have one without the other.

[hinckley buzzard]

Religious faith is the anchor that holds against the winds and tides of the world. Humanism is the anchor but without the rope.