Nevertheless, I am interested in SoF’s stated purpose of ‘exploring religion as a human creation’ and I would like to tell you about our little Humanist experiment in Dorset.
Dorset Humanists started life about ten years ago when a previous Humanist group, about which nothing is now known, was ‘revived’. For the first five years of its life, no-one could be sure that the new group would survive because its membership was so precariously small. And then, five years ago, the new group started to take off and we are now able to boast a membership of 120 with a regular monthly attendance of 40-50 people.
What then is Dorset Humanists? We are a Humanist group affiliated to the British Humanist Association. The BHA’s efforts are mainly focused on political campaigning and the maintenance of a ceremony officiants’ network. Affiliated groups therefore are allowed to organise themselves autonomously with no interference from the centre.
We meet in a community centre in Bournemouth and we have regular monthly meetings with speakers on a wide range of topics. We’ve had several ‘big’ names including Peter Tatchell who spoke to us on Human Rights Day and Stuart Lee who told us about his battle with the fundamentalists over ‘Jerry Springer The Opera’. I myself have just delivered a talk about the life and works of Tom Paine, and every February we celebrate Darwin Day with a buffet lunch and a talk on a subject of scientific interest. We make donations to a variety of charities through a fund called ‘Humanist Aid’ and we support a Humanist school and orphanage in northern India. We are well-represented on local SACREs (Standing Advisory Councils on Religious Education) and we regularly talk to schoolchildren about Humanism. We also receive regular invitations to get involved with other multifaith organisations in the local area. The only thing which stops us is lack of time and resources.
We do not conduct ceremonies ourselves for weddings, funerals and baby-namings but we are associated with a well-established local group of nonreligious/Humanist officiants.
Our membership is predominantly elderly but our members are valued equally, regardless of their age. Some of them meet socially in between our regular monthly meetings, either for pub lunches or to have discussions on topics of interest. One of our members, a former Mayor of Bournemouth, has just written a short book entitled ‘Hypocrisy to Humanism’.
He was an Anglican lay preacher for forty years and has finally found his ‘spiritual’ home in Dorset Humanists. One of the aspects he likes most about us is the fact that the ‘congregation’ is allowed to talk back to the speaker – a democratic luxury he never encountered in a church.
The question I would like to address in front of my SoF audience then is this: are Dorset Humanists ‘exploring religion as a human creation’? This is not a question I could easily address in front of a Dorset Humanist audience because the word ‘religion’ is anathema to most Humanists. We are ostensibly a secular rather than a religious humanist organisation. But I wonder whether there is any meaningful distinction between the two types of humanism. Neither group is interested anymore in theology; our focus is on values. If you like ‘ologies’ we could Message in a Bottle Dorset Humanist David Warden asks: Are we exploring religion as a human creation?
It depends on what is meant by ‘religion’.
Dorset poet Thomas Hardy wrote ‘God’s Funeral’. s so of fi ia a 84 July 2007 16 reclassify ourselves as ‘axiologists’ – theorists and practitioners of values. Tom Paine’s classic triad of values – liberty, reason and humanity – neatly sums up what we’re about.
Some religious humanists still talk about God as some kind of metaphor or symbol for those underlying values. Anthony Freeman is perhaps the most prominent exponent of this view. I note with interest, however, that others such as Don Cupitt and John Hick are coming round to the view that we may have to drop the God-talk in view of the fact that God remains so stubbornly realist and sectarian. Religious humanists also tend to talk about Jesus quite a lot as someone who shows us the way to be or become ‘fully human’. I am weary of this pious nostalgia. I am not even convinced that Jesus was an historical person given the very severe problems explored by John Bowden in Jesus: The Unanswered Questions (1989, SCM). Robert Funk and the Jesus Seminar may have uncovered the ‘real’ Jesus but does it matter whether Jesus was real or not? All that matters is that Jesus said some very humanist things such as ‘the Sabbath was made for man…’ and ‘Let him that hath no sin…’. Can we thank him for that and move on?
Secular humanists are not fixated on any one hero, guru or saviour. We have a pantheon of heroes to celebrate – Paine, Mill, Darwin, Russell and so on. We are also interested in the humanistic psychologies of Fromm, Rogers and Maslow. It’s true that we are still stuck, to some extent, in the realist discourse of Dawkins but perhaps that’s excusable given the frightening resurgence of fundamentalism.
The answer to the question ‘Are Dorset Humanists exploring religion as a human creation?’ depends, of course, on the meaning one gives to the word ‘religion.’ If religion entails subscribing to a superstructure of doctrinal beliefs revealed in sacred texts, and the adoration of an almighty God, then the answer to the question is of course a resounding ‘No’. If, on the other hand, religion is community of like-minded individuals getting together to celebrate and practise their core values then the answer to the question is surely ‘Yes’.
As a Dorset Humanist, I would like to extend warm greetings to members of SoF. Our different versions of Humanism may be not altogether to each other’s taste, but I am convinced that we are navigating the same sea.
DavidWarden graduated in theology from Kent University in 1982 and now works in local government.