Godless flocks grow, attract like-minded
WASHINGTON — The name of the gathering almost sounded like an oxymoron: the Humanist Clergy Collaboratory.
A meeting to organize religious leaders — for people who don’t believe in organized religion?
“Well,” Amanda Poppei said, “some people would say we’re not that organized.”
But the humanist clergy — spiritual leaders for people who don’t like to talk about God but do like to gather for a moral purpose — are trying to get a lot more organized. The collaboratory, which Poppei hosted at the Washington Ethical Society, the 73-year-old humanist congregation that she leads in Northwest Washington, brought together about 40 of them for a first-of-its-kind gathering of nonreligious clergy.
These clergy without a God say their movement is poised to grow dramatically right now, as young American adults report a lack of religious belief in higher numbers than ever before, but also yearn for communal ties and a sense of mission in a tumultuous time.
“Even more since the election, we have folks say, ‘I’m really looking for a way either to feel hope or to do justice,’” Poppei said. The Sunday after the presidential election, dozens of distressed liberal Washingtonians showed up at her service, and many have gotten involved in the congregation. Now, Poppei sees an opportunity for not just her community but for humanists nationwide.
Fueled especially by the millennial generation, the portion of Americans who say they don’t ascribe to any particular religion has
increased dramatically, from 5 percent in 1972 to 25 percent today. A small portion of those 25 percent identify as atheist or agnostic. The rest tend to describe themselves using terms like “spiritual but not religious” or just “nothing in particular.”
These nonreligious people, of course, tend not to join religious congregations. But the clergy who gathered at Washington Ethical Society last week offer them just that.
Almost all of these clergy hold services, often on Sunday mornings. As an alternative to theism, these groups proffer humanism — a belief in the power of humanity and the human spirit, without supernatural intervention.
“We need spaces for secular moral stories, to raise up ideals, as a hub for service. We can’t do service as individuals,” said James Croft, who is involved in the 400-member Ethical Society of St. Louis. “Congregations help people make sense of terrible events. Congregations do memorials, weddings, baby namings.”
Humanists looking for gatherings have more options than they might think. At last
week’s meeting, Susann Heap of the United Coalition of Reason demonstrated a new app for finding hundreds of humanist meetings in dozens of cities, with activities ranging from secular meditation to God-free addiction recovery.
Heap, who was in training to become a minister in the Church of England before reading noncanonical gospels and other materials that led to a change of heart, explained the motivation for the app: “Why should a person who doesn’t believe in a deity feel alone?”
Most of the clergy at this summit, who came from as far away as the United Kingdom and Saskatchewan, belong to one of various humanists movements: the Ethical Culture movement; the Society for Humanistic Judaism, which keeps Jewish culture but strips God out of it; and the Unitarian Universalist church, which welcomes members to believe in God or not. Poppei, who trained as a Unitarian Universalist minister and now leads a congregation in the Ethical Culture movement, worked with humanist Rabbi Jeffrey Falick and Unitarian minister David Breeden to convene a broader range of humanists
at Poppei’s congregation for a two-day meeting last month. They think the last such meeting was held in 1984 — and before that, in the 1870s.
The topics of discussion sessions during the meeting include: how humanists should counsel people who are dying or grieving; how people who don’t have faith can still participate in interfaith programs; and what spirituality means, and whether humanists can or should lay claim to it.
“Sometimes atheists, in my experience, they cede too much linguistic ground to theists, when it comes to spirituality,” Sincere Kirabo, a social justice organizer at the American Humanist Association, said in one of the discussion groups.
Barry Swan, the leader of a Rochester, N.Y., humanistic synagogue, agreed. “I have a faith in humanity. I can have faith also. I am also not a nonbeliever.”
The clergy discussed ways that they could work together on future projects, like serving more humanist patients in hospitals, sharing scripts for faith-free weddings and getting involved in social justice movements. The keynote speakers, Kirabo and Kansas City activist Diane Burkholder,
spoke about the humanist community’s need to do more to include black people and address racism.
But for all the grand plans, Poppei boiled the explanation for what these nonreligious congregations can do down to very simple terms. A new member came to her service recently, she said. The woman was in her 30s, had been an atheist all her life, and had never much thought that she was missing anything by not belonging to a religious community. Except one thing.
“I didn’t know, when I got sick someday, who was going to bring me a casserole,” the woman told Poppei.
Now that she’s in an Ethical Culture society, she knows where that supportive casserole will come from, Poppei said. “I think that’s what people are looking for.”