American Religious Humanism. - book reviews

by Mason Olds (Minneapolis, MN: University Press of America, 1996); 237 pp.; $19,95 paper,

--reviewed by Michael Werner

Some books appear like sunshine in the middle of winter. Just when they are needed most, they radiate light while bitter winds blow. Such is Mason Olds' book, American Religious Humanism. It serves as a superb exposition of religious humanism at a time when the philosophy is under attack, seemingly from all sides. As liberal churches, including the Unitarian Universalist Association, move toward more conservative positions, many religious humanists feel uneasy. On the other hand, some humanists have portrayed religious humanists as theists, which they are not. In fact, they probably constitute the largest percentage of organizationally active humanists in the United States.

Meticulously researched and eloquently written, this book unveils the history by which present-day humanism can be understood. Humanism may have its roots in Greece, but modern twentieth-century humanism is wholly owned by those who, early in this century, sought to intentionally integrate its story into a whole fabric of thought and practice based in liberal religion.

Olds' revision of his 1977 original work began as a history of three crucial figures in humanism: John Dietrich, Charles Francis Potter, and Curtis Reese, who served for seventeen years as the first president of the American Humanist Association. Although somewhat weak on recent history, this book portrays humanism as an evolutionary project with a captivating history, including the development of the Free Religious Association, where such freethinkers as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Felix Adler envisioned a naturalistic religion centered on human welfare. The book shows how certain thinkers sought a religion based in reason and science, in which one could denounce supernaturalism and still believe in the functional aspects of religion: community, ethical education, and the observance of rites of passage, such as marriage, birth, and death.

Olds is no mere apologist for the humanist position and fairly represents the educated critiques of humanism seldom heard. However, one serious omission is the participation of women in this history. For example, Sarah Oelberg coined the word protohumanist for those women ministers sent to the "wilds" of the Midwest in the last century, who paved the way for the likes of Reese and Dietrich. Another omission concerns the development of Kwanzaa by humanist counselor Ron Karenga, who desired a Christmas-like celebration for African Americans that spoke to ennobling character issues instead of supernaturalism. These omissions may be due to the difficulty in broadening Olds' original focus to cover the entire humanist history.

What Mason Olds has shown is that modern humanism was brought to this century and sustained not by the "village atheist" but by those who sought to reconstruct religion to affirm its elements of reason, compassion, human worth, and dignity.

Michael Werner is a former board member of the American Humanist Association. Copies of this book are available from Friends of Religious Humanism, 7 Harwood Drive, Amherst, NY 14226-7188.

COPYRIGHT 1997 American Humanist Association
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