Religion: Humanism’s Tenth

Birth control, group health, euthanasia (mercy-killing), the abolition of capital punishment, eugenics, calendar reform are causes which might seem something dissimilar. Yet in Manhattan last week, representatives of organizations vowed to these six causes met in a united front. This clan gathering, celebrated the tenth birthday of the First Humanist Society, a body devoted to the spread of a man-centred, God-denying religion.

Religious Humanism—not to be confused with the philosophic “New” or “Literary” Humanism championed by Walter Lippmann, Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer More some years ago—is considerably older than the First Humanist Society. In Minneapolis, Rev. John Hassler Dietrich, nominally Unitarian, has preached this non-supernatural faith for nearly 25 years. But the Manhattan society was founded and is run by one of the most articulate and ubiquitous of U. S. divines, Dr. Charles Francis Potter, onetime Baptist, onetime Unitarian, onetime Universalist. Long a popularizer of religion, in books and lectures, Dr. Potter is currently absorbed with the study of extrasensory perception (telepathy, clairvoyance, prophecy), believes it possible to identify this phenomenon with Humanism. It has been Dr. Potter’s custom to brighten his services by such devices as using rosebuds to baptize babies. He has made his Humanists work at their rather insubstantial faith by devoting themselves to self-improvement (through art, music, etc.) and to human improvement, through cooperation with “progressive” organizations. Hence Dr. Potter chose, from among 20-odd causes recommended to Humanists, the six rosebuds represented at last week’s meeting.