Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (44 page)

Current humanist chaplaincies are found at

American University (Washington, DC)

Columbia University (New York)

Glasgow Caledonian University (United Kingdom)

Harvard University (Massachusetts)

Rutgers University (New Jersey)

University Hospitals Leicester (United Kingdom)

University of Leeds (United Kingdom)

The British, Dutch, and Belgian Armed Forces

The Military Association of Atheist and Freethinkers in the United States is working hard to get humanist chaplains on this side of the pond. Some organizations are offering training and support to humanist chaplains both in Europe and the United States.

One of the keystones of humanism in recent years has been the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University. It was established in 1977, but it’s only since a secular humanist rabbi named Greg Epstein became Harvard’s Humanist Chaplain in the autumn of 2005 that the Harvard Humanists have become a leading voice in global humanism. In addition to hosting high profile events, giving awards to prominent humanists, launching a Humanist Community Project (see “
Moving beyond words
” at the end of this chapter), and establishing a strong humanist presence in community service and interfaith work.

In 2007, the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy celebrated its 30th anniversary by hosting an event called The New Humanism. It was designed to counter the growing public perception that the more aggressive New Atheism was the only nonreligious game in town. It gave its name to the growing new humanist movement and spawned a thoughtful new online magazine called The New Humanism (
www.thenewhumanism.org
) that’s become a mouthpiece for that movement. And Epstein’s book
Good Without God
has become one of a small handful of must-reads for those hoping to understand how nonreligious people see and interact with the world, and how they sort out ethical questions without a religious framework.

Epstein has also become a lightning rod for many atheists because of his criticism of the in-your-face tactics and tone of the New Atheists, including Dawkins, Hitchens, and blogger PZ Myers.

Setting a place at the table — national and international humanism

National and international humanist associations have played a huge part in promoting humanism as a meaningful and rewarding life stance, including the American, Canadian, and British Humanist Associations, as well as the International Humanist and Ethical Union.

The Brits have a bit of a leg up on the Americans, mostly because Britain went secular so quickly in the late 20th century, giving secular Britons the critical mass that allows a much greater presence in the culture. For comparison, the US Congress currently has just one representative who is religiously unaffiliated, but the British Parliament has more than 100 openly nonreligious members in the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group. Although the nonreligious are at 20 percent in the United States, British surveys put the UK nonreligious as high as 76 percent. That kind of thing makes a big difference when you’re trying to get yourself heard.

That’s not to say it’s all drumstick lollies and peppermint humbugs for the British humanists, of course. The humanist voice still encounters some resistance to real equality in UK culture. One 21st century example is Thought for the Day, a brief daily reading on BBC Radio 4 that offers “reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news.” In 2002, the BHA and the National Secular Society asked the news service to include the humanist perspective as well.

When the request was denied, the Humanist Society of Scotland created Thought for the World, a daily secular podcast on which prominent British humanists offered reflections on daily life and events from a humanist perspective — and much more interesting (frankly) than the pablum served up by Thought for the Day. See if you agree — search online for it and have a listen.

The American Humanist Association does a terrific job making the humanist voice heard in the United States, with public awareness programs, charity work, and local chapter support for those individuals who identify as humanists.

Then of course there’s the International Humanist and Ethical Union, which I discuss in
Chapter 8
. The IHEU continues to form that international umbrella few nonreligious folks could have dreamed of just a few generations ago — a kind of United Nations for world humanism.

Promoting humanism in Africa

Africa has had a troubled history in modern times — hundreds of years of colonialism and slave trading, followed by a century of combat, genocides, epidemics of malaria and AIDS, and excruciating poverty. The religious history has also been strange and unique. A century ago, only one percent of the world’s Christians lived in sub-Saharan Africa. Then evangelical Christianity swept into the vacuum left when the European powers went home. Today, more than 25 percent of the world’s Christians live in this region. Africa is quickly becoming the new face of Christianity.

Some of the results of this process have been neutral or good. But there’s also been an increase in antigay intolerance, including a proposed national law in Uganda to make homosexuality a crime punishable by death. Uganda has also suffered from the longest running civil war in history as the Lord’s Resistance Army fought for three decades to instill a Ten Commandments-based government in Uganda.

In the midst, a small but steady humanist movement has formed in several countries including Uganda and Nigeria. Being an African humanist right now isn’t easy. Leo Igwe, the most prominent Nigerian humanist and a former IHEU representative, is leading a difficult struggle against witchcraft accusations in West Africa. Women accused of being witches are rounded up from their villages and relocated to witch camps in Northern Ghana. While trying to draw world attention to this practice and the abduction of witch children, Leo has been arrested and beaten more than once, and his family has been threatened. But he persists in fighting this abuse of human rights — a powerful way to apply humanist values to a real-world problem.

Uganda humanists have started a small but successful network of humanist schools, providing science- and critical-thinking–based schools as an alternative to religious schools in the country. And one of the most prominent political columnists at the
Uganda Daily Monitor
is an articulate humanist and atheist named Alan Tacca.