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As articles in the Summer 2002 FREE INQUIRY demonstrated, many humanists best de scribed as naturalistic—humanists

whose worldview rejects the transcendent or supernatu-ral—continue to call themselves “religious humanists.”1 To explore this issue, I re-visited the essay “What Is Humanism?” by Frederick Edwords. Edwords, former executive director of the American Humanist Association and current editor of its magazine, The Humanist, has presented this treatment of humanism to various groups since 1989.2 His essay offers a unique opportunity to reconsider the historical emergence of contemporary naturalistic humanism, along with some prob-lems that attend its linguistic legacy to the present day.3

In “What Is Humanism?” Edwords delineates a broad array of what we might call “hyphenated humanisms” that have arisen since the Renaissance (e.g., classical, modern, secular, etc.). When he gets to “religious humanism,” Edwords touches on a problem as old as contemporary humanism itself. In the process, he unwittingly points up some of the unfortunate repercussions that come of stretching pivotal terms like reli-gion and religious well beyond their standard meanings.

I will suggest here that religious humanism when applied to naturalistic humanists, is an unfortunate and misleading usage. It represents an unsatisfactory “resolution” that was adopted at a historical inflection point in the emergence of contemporary naturalistic humanism. And it represents a semantic distortion whose repercussions extend far beyond the “merely semantic.” In this article I will suggest alternative language that I hope will meet the needs and desires of natu-ralistic humanists without requiring that they continue to use inevitably misleading terminology.

At the outset, I should stress that I am not suggesting that every use of the term religious humanism is improper. It is legitimately used by (true) religionists with a humanist bent. If one defines humanism broadly enough—say, as a preoccu-pation with what it is to be human, an overriding concern with humanity, or a pan-human ethical or moral commitment—then some Catholics, Hindus, and Mormons, among others, can properly call themselves religious humanists. Similarly, Unitarian Universalists who subscribe to their own broadly humanist principles, but believe that a transcendent force operates in the universe, are religious humanists. [See James Haught’s article in this issue for more on religion and agnos-ticism within Unitarian Universalism.—EDS.] Pantheists with true dedication to the welfare of all humanity may properly be designated religious humanists. Even teleologists committed to humanist principles, but who believe that an invisible hand guides human destiny to a transcendent omega point, qualify.

My concern lies squarely with use of the term religious humanism by naturalistic humanists, which poses serious problems with respect to the notions of both religion and humanism.

WHAT IS (RELIGIOUS) HUMANISM?Frederick Edwords is, of course, by no means the only natural-istic humanist to use or defend the term religious humanism. It has been in use at least since the early part of the twentieth century, most notably in Humanist Manifesto I (1933). But his essay furnishes a unique opportunity to analyze the term, its internal contradictions, and the confusion it produces within the context of contemporary naturalistic humanism.

Edwords demonstrates that for quite some time human-ism has been hot verbal real estate. Many people with many agendas have wanted a piece of this upbeat-sounding word. As Corliss Lamont noted, “Humanism is such an old and attrac-tive word and so weighted with favorable meanings that it has been currently adopted by various groups and persons whose use of it is most questionable.”4 This is obvious from the eight

Frank L. Pasquale, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist who, following a career in international business and cross-cultural training, is doing research and writing on religion, culture, humanism, morality, and church-state “separation.” He resides in Portland, Oregon.

‘Religious Humanism’AND THE DANGERS OF SEMANTIC DISTORTION

Frank L. Pasquale

‘Religious Humanism’AND THE DANGERS OF SEMANTIC DISTORTION

Frank L. Pasquale

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DRAWING CLEAR BOUNDARIES: SECULAR VS. RELIGIOUS HUMANISMDRAWING CLEAR BOUNDARIES: SECULAR VS. RELIGIOUS HUMANISM

hyphenated humanisms which Edwords lists: Renaissance, Literary, Cultural, Philosophical, Christian, Modern, Secular, and Religious. To these we may add others cited by Lamont, including Academic, Naturalistic, Catholic, Integral, Marxist, and so on. Hot property, indeed!

In his essay, Edwords opens discussion of the “religious humanism” problem with his observation that:

The most critical irony in dealing with Modern Humanism is the inability of advocates to agree on whether or not this worldview is religious. Those who see it as philosophy are the Secular Humanists while those who see it as religion are Religious Humanists. This dispute has been going on since the early years of this century when the secular and religious traditions con-verged and brought Modern Humanism into existence.

But he goes on to state that:

Secular and Religious Humanists both share the same world-view and the same basic principles.

This is puzzling, since the customary or standard meaning of secular is, for example:

1. concerned with the affairs of this world; not spiritual nor [sic] sacred. 2. . . . not concerned with religion nor [sic] religious belief.5

These terms would hardly suggest that secular and “reli-gious humanists” share the same worldview, even if they hold some basic principles in common. Edwords seeks to resolve the conundrum by noting that:

It is only in the definition of religion and in the practice of the philosophy that Religious and Secular Humanists effectively disagree.

And further on, he elaborates:

The definition of religion used by Religious Humanists is a functional one. Religion is that which serves the personal and social needs of a group of people sharing the same philosoph-ical worldview.

Here, more serious concerns arise. While anthropologists and religion scholars debate precisely where the edges of reli-gion feather into other cultural dimensions, or into philosophy or nonreligious belief systems, two defining attributes are consistently applied to the word religion in standard usage:

1. Something having to do with a supernatural, spiritual, divine, non-material, metaphysical or transcendent dimension of some description, and2. Something having to do with human rituals or practices associated with, or some human involvement or relationship with, that dimension.

After noting that “some definitions of religion are too restrictive” (e.g., “belief in God”) and some “definitions of religion are not helpful largely because they are vague” (e.g., “worldview”) the Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions settles on the following, which, it asserts, “has received reasonable acceptance by most scholars”:

[R]eligion is a system of communal beliefs and practices rela-tive to supernatural beings.6

I would actually consider this too restrictive, since there are properly religious belief systems which admit of transcen-dent realms or processes, or of supernatural forces, not neatly packaged into discrete “beings.” Closer perhaps, is the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus’s primary definition of religion:

1. the belief in a superhuman controlling power, esp., in a per-sonal God or gods, entitled to obedience and worship7

As suggested by Tom Flynn elsewhere in this issue, reli-gion may be defined as “at minimum a belief in . . . a realm transcending that of ordinary experience.” But, Edwords’s definition does not at all reflect this primary defining attribute of religion—belief in the supernatural or transcendent. Again:

Religion is that which serves the personal and social needs of a group of people sharing the same philosophical worldview.

In fact, following from this, wouldn’t value system or belief system or culture or association or society (in the sense of a group of people sharing a particular philosophy) meet his defi-nition of religion? Continuing, Edwords states that

the true substance of religion is the role it plays in the lives of individuals and the life of the community. Doctrines may differ from denomination to denomination, and new doctrines may replace old ones, but the purpose religion serves for PEOPLE [sic] remains the same. If we define the substance of a thing as that which is most lasting and universal, then the function of religion is the core of it.

By this token, if one defines the most lasting and universal attribute of “psychiatry” as “that which serves the mental or emotional well-being of people,” then psychiatry is functionally equivalent to meditation or counseling or psychotherapeutic drugs. In the same way, religion becomes anything that serves “the personal and social needs of a group of people sharing the same philosophical worldview,” like an association or a society, or a culture, or a value or belief system. They’re all functionally indistinguishable from religion as defined by Edwords.

All of this leads him to note that:

The fact that Humanism can at once be both religious and secular presents a paradox, of course, but not the only such paradox.

Is all this truly a paradox, or merely confusion caused by the distortion and misuse of the word religion for rather special purposes? For it is upon the quicksand of the distorted use of religion that Edwords erects the semantic house of cards he calls “religious [and yet naturalistic!] humanism.” He does so on behalf of those who reject notions of the supernatural and yet still want

a basis for moral values, an inspiring set of ideals, methods for dealing with life’s harsher realities, a rationale for living life joy-ously, and an overall sense of purpose . . . [as well as] a sense of belonging, an institutional setting for the moral education of chil-dren, special holidays shared with like-minded people, a unique ceremonial life, the performance of ideologically consistent rites of passage (weddings, child welcomings, coming-of-age celebra-

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tions, funerals, and so forth), an opportunity for affirmation of one’s philosophy of life, and a historical context for one’s ideas.

Edwords notes in this connection that he

was once asked by a reporter if this functional definition of religion didn’t amount to taking away the substance and having only the superficial trappings.

His reported answer was the perplexing statement quoted earlier that “define[d] the substance of a thing [as that] which is most lasting and universal” and so, defined religion solely in terms of its purported function (that is, serving the personal and social needs of its adherents).

Now, I honestly do not care what terms we create or use to denote things, entities, concepts, or phenomena, as long we do so clearly and without ambiguity or contradiction. Edwords’s purposes—and apparently those of (naturalistic) “religious humanists”—have overwhelmed linguistic rigor and so, not surprisingly, given rise to a raft of “paradoxes.”

Apart from poetry, little except confusion is achieved by stretching the meaning or use of words utterly beyond their normal usage, as we see when Edwords ends up declaring that:

. . . Religious Humanism should not be seen as an alternative faith, but rather as an alternative way of being religious.

And:

The paradoxes don’t end here. Religious Humanism is usually [usually!?] without a god, without a belief in the supernatural, without a belief in an afterlife, and without a belief in a “higher” source of moral values.

And:

These paradoxical features not only require a unique treat-ment of Religious Humanism in the study of world religions, but also help explain the continuing controversy, both inside and outside the Humanist movement, over whether Humanism is religion at all.

We can avoid much of this controversy. If something doesn’t exhibit the standard defining attributes of the terms religion or religious (at minimum, concern with a supernatural or transcendent realm), then it isn’t religion or religious. It’s something else, and should be called something else.

Edwords begins to close his exposition by noting that:

Once we leave the areas of confusion it is possible to explain, in straightforward terms, exactly what the Modern Humanist phi-losophy is about. It is easy to summarize the basic ideas held in common by both Religious and Secular Humanists.

This is a philosophy:

. . . for people who think for themselves

. . . focused upon human means for comprehending reality

. . . of reason and science in the pursuit of knowledge

. . . of imagination

. . . of compassion

. . . for the here and now

. . . [which is] realistic

. . . [and] in tune with the science of today.

Partial overlap in belief systems or semantic space is fine. But based on everything Edwords has said about “religious humanism” as he is using the term, it isn’t religion and it isn’t really religious. It has some ideas or attributes in common with secular humanism, and some practices or rituals in common with religion qua religion in its ritual sense. In the final analy-sis, however, is something actually more different from religion than from secular humanism, but distinctly different from both.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?The forgoing may lead some to ask, “What difference does all this really make?” The difference is that by distorting religion or religious in the ways described here, (naturalistic) “religious humanists” actually aid and abet parties whose pur-poses threaten the rights and aims of naturalistic humanists!

Confusion within contemporary (naturalistic) humanism about whether humanism is religion has contributed to sim-ilar confusion, or worse, in the public square. Opponents of humanism often exploit apparent admissions by naturalistic humanists that contemporary humanism, of whatever stripe, is a “religion” or “religious.” Others argue that secular humanism rests upon a kind of “faith in reason,” and so indeed represents an alternative “religious faith.” Since religion denotes belief in the supernatural or transcendent, however, this fundamentally misrepresents secular, or any form of naturalistic, humanism.

Some critics have argued further that “secular humanism” or “secularism” are what the Supreme Court has “forced upon the public square” and into public schools. Thus, the argument continues, since even “secular humanism” is a “reli-gion” of a sort, then there is no such thing as truly achievable government neutrality with respect to religion, and so “true” religions should enjoy the same sponsored presence in public schools as those of “secularism” and “secular humanism.”

The Supreme Court succumbed to the same dangerous error when it categorized secular humanism as a “religion” (in a footnote to Torcaso v. Watkins 367 U.S. 488 [1961]). This was later used by Justice Antonin Scalia to argue for either the inclusion of “creation science” or exclusion of evolutionary theory in the public schools (in Edwards v. Aguilard 482 U.S. 578 [1987]).

So it is that apparently harmless semantic distortions—dis-tortions disseminated by naturalistic humanists themselves—can threaten us down the road. These examples should serve to indicate that the debate about “religious humanism” is more than merely semantic. Real issues are at stake. At the very least, confusion results; at worst, that confusion can lead to serious negative consequences in social discourse, political debate, and even jurisprudence and legislation.

WHAT TO DO?I know that some may still object that modern humanism emerged, in part, from a Unitarian Universalist religious heritage, and so, retained certain aspects of that heritage. They will point to the many references to “religion” and “religious humanism” in Humanist Manifesto I. But on this basis, one could point out that Christianity emerged from a Judaic cultural and religious heritage and has retained certain obvious aspects of that heritage—for starters, the entire Old Testament. Given that, and following the example set by the

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illegitimate use of religious humanism, we should really call Christianity “Christian Judaism.” Or our non-“Native-Ameri-can” culture should really be called “European America” and our national acronym should be the U.S. of E.A.

Everything emerges from something prior. But as a newly emergent entity or concept evolves, it exhibits new defining attributes that make it progressively more distinct from its “parentage.” Based on such distinctions, we give the new entity or concept a new name to signify its distinctness. If it becomes different enough, a hyphenated or adjectivally-modi-fied name reflecting its parentage confuses more than it clar-ifies. At this point, it’s best to give the new thing an entirely new name. I suggest that this is the case with (naturalistic) “religious humanism.”

For those naturalistic humanists who wish to emphasize certain ritual, social, or celebratory experiences that are important to them (and which may have been adapted from truly religious practices, albeit after rejecting the religious concepts that once underlay them) I would suggest the terms celebrant humanist and celebrant humanism.

Beyond the concern for celebratory ritual, the observa-tions made by Robert M. Price and Malcolm D. Wise in the Summer FREE INQUIRY remind us that there is something else of importance to some naturalistic humanists and surely to most celebrant humanists. It is an experience which some, like Price and Wise, refer to as “numinous,” “divine,” or “spir-itual.”8 But these terms drive us into the same semantic web as does the illegitimate use of religion and religious, since the experience to which we refer actually involves no assumptions of the uncaused-causal divine, the supernatural, transcendent, numinous or the spiritual. It is, rather, a quite human percep-tual, cognitive, affective, and expressive response to life, to existence, to sentience itself, and to the grandeur of all that we know and do not (yet) know of the universe. It is the experience of awe, wonderment, even the sublime, with perhaps a measure of “free-floating gratitude” (though without any specific object of that gratitude). Throw in Wise’s “feeling of interconnected-ness,” if you wish. But it does not transcend the natural world or human psychological and affective experience.

For those naturalistic humanists who wish to express or reflect on such experiences, I offer an addition to the “dis-spir-ited lexicon” that Tom Flynn presented in the Summer FREE INQUIRY. There, he urged secular humanists to leave all refer-ences to “spirituality” behind and offered alternative words that enable them to do this.9 I would like to suggest that, instead of ruminating on the “mysterium tremendum,” the “spiritual,” or “spirituality,” naturalistic humanists refer to the (nonspiritual) sense of awe and to the new words, inspiral (IN-spur-uhl) and inspirality (IN-spur-AL-i-tee). With these terms, all naturalistic humanists (and particularly celebrant humanists) who gnash teeth about having to leave the “spiritu-al” and “spirituality” at the meeting-room door, but who yearn for some nontranscendent way of expressing a special sense or feeling they have when inspired by nature or existence, may now express this with nary a spirit in sight.

IN SUM . . .These suggestions leave us with two distinct groups of nat-uralistic humanists who share a common naturalistic worl-

dview, but who differ in experiential emphasis or proclivity. Celebrant humanists are those who tend to value social cel-ebratory ritual and inspirality somewhat more than secular humanists, who generally tend to de-emphasize or eschew celebratory ritual and/or inspiral experiences.

Quite apart from these are true religious humanists—those who believe in a supernatural or transcendent realm, but who share with naturalistic humanists a concern for human wel-fare, an ethical commitment to humanity, or any other of the central nonreligious principles characteristic of contemporary (unhyphenated) humanism.

With these distinctions in place, we will leave religion and the religious to the (true) religionist, spirituality and the spir-itual to the spiritualist, and yet enable celebrant (and when so inclined, secular) humanists to speak of the earth-bound experience of awe, of inspirality and the inspiral, free from oxymorons and dangerous semantic distortion.

AcknowledgmentsMy thanks to Tom Flynn and to Dick Mase of the Humanists of Greater Portland, Oregon, for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this essay.

Notes1. For example, see Robert M. Price’s use of the term

religious humanism in “Religious and Secular Humanism, What’s the Difference?” FREE INQUIRY 22, no. 3 (2002): 47–48.

2. Frederick Edwords, “What Is Humanism?” ©1989 by Frederick Edwords, published at many locations on the Web including www.infidels.org/library/modern/fred_edwords/ humanism.html. Since I quote repeatedly from this essay, specific citations will not be provided for each quotation.

3. This designation follows Corliss Lamont in The Philosophy of Humanism (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1982 [1949]). There, he states that “[t]he adjective naturalistic shows that Humanism, in its most accurate philosophical sense, implies a world-view in which Nature is everything, in which there is no supernatural and in which man is an integral part of Nature and not separated from it by any sharp cleavage or discontinuity” (1982: 22). This term is less ambiguous than to either “contemporary” or “modern” humanism, since true religionists can properly refer to themselves as humanists, broadly defined. Lamont endeavored to lay claim to (unhyphenated) humanism for the naturalists, but this is problematic.

4. Lamont, Note 3, 1982, p. 21. 5. The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, American

Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 1365.6. Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Reli gions

(Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1999), p. 915.7. Oxford Dictionary, Note 5, 1996, p. 1270.8. Robert M. Price, Note 2, and Malcolm D. Wise,

“Religion and Spirituality, A Humanist View,” FREE INQUIRY 22, no. 3 (2002): 49.

9. Tom Flynn, “When Words Won’t Die: A Dispiriting Proposal,” FREE INQUIRY 22, no. 3 (2002): 50–51.