Desultory Notes On Religious Humanism

I find that I cannot eat the bread of religion (whether the unleavened bread of orthopraxy or the leavened bread of ecstatic piety) without the salt of humanism.

My particular "sect" of humanism is that of the sober Romantics (e.g., Wallace Stevens, who found the term "humanism" itself mildly offensive); but I cheerfully recognize all the great humanists the world over: "religious" (Muslim, Christian, Confucian, Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Jewish), atheist, and agnostic.

As a humanist, I recognize that the aforementioned categories are not necessarily antithetical to one another. Indeed, there is much overlap between and among them--depending upon what aspect of which category one considers.

Whenever the great religious traditions produce humanistic sub-traditions, they save themselves from themselves.

Rather than offer a definition of religious humanism, I will cite two examples.

1. There is an anecdote about Henry David Thoreau that captures wonderfully the attitude that underlies religious humanism. It is said that, as Thoreau lay dying, he received a visit from an aunt who asked him if he had made his peace with God. Unflappable as always, Thoreau is said to have replied, "Why, aunt, I did not know that we had ever quarreled."

Religion for the humanist is not built upon the presumption that human beings require reconciliation with the divine--which makes it, I think, particularly difficult (but, thankfully, not impossible) for Christians to be humanists. Indeed, some of history's great religious humanists have been Christians who were able to overcome the dogmatic presumption that human beings are born into this world alienated from God.

2. My Rabbi, one of the great humanists of Jewish history, is said to have uttered these words: "The son of man is lord even of the Sabbath." Perhaps one of the most succinct assertions of religious humanism ever formulated.