Life stance

A person's life stance, or lifestance, is their relation with what they accept as being of ultimate importance. It involves the presuppositions and theories upon which such a stance could be made, a belief system, and a commitment to potentials working it out in one's life.
 
It connotes an integrated perspective on reality as a whole and how to assign valuations, thus being a concept similar or equivalent to that of a worldview; with the latter word (derived from the German ) being generally a more common and comprehensive term. Like the term worldview, the term life stance is a shared label encompassing both religious perspectives (for instance: "a Buddhist life stance"  or "a Christian life stance" or "a Pagan life stance"), as well as non-religious spiritual or philosophical alternatives (for instance: "a humanist life stance" or "a personist life stance" or "a Deep Ecology life stance"), without discrimination in favour of any.

Origins of the phrase 
Humanists interested in educational matters apparently coined the neologism life stance in the mid-1970s; Harry Stopes-Roe of the Rationalist Press Association and British Humanist Association developed the concept originally in that context.
The term originally arose in the context of debates over the controversial content of the City of  Birmingham's Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education, 1975.  That document referred to "non-religious stances for living". According to Barnes:

In the late 1980s Harry Stopes-Roe initiated a successful campaign for the adoption of the term by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and by other organisations (see also his comments quoted below on its provenance). 
It was not an uncontroversial proposal among humanists.

The term was introduced as part of an attempt to establish a clear identity for Humanism, in order to gain recognition and respect.

According to Stopes-Roe:

Definition

Harry Stopes-Roe, who fought for the term's acceptance by the Humanist movement, defined "life stance" as follows:

The British Humanist Association, drawing in part on jurisprudence related to the term "religion or belief" in the European Convention on Human Rights, has put forward a more analytical definition:

Orthography
A life stance may be distinguished from general support of a cause by capitalization of the first letter. For instance, the life stance of Humanism is distinguished from humanism generally. Many life stances may contain humanism to a greater or lesser extent as instrumental value in order to fulfill their own chosen intrinsic value(s). However, Humanism regards it as having intrinsic value.

Not all life stances use this orthography.

Spectrum
The term was intended to be a shared label encompassing both religions and alternatives to religion, without discrimination in favour of either.

A life stance differs from a worldview or a belief system in that the term life stance emphasizes a focus on what is of ultimate importance. Life stance differs from eupraxsophy in that the latter typically implies a strictly non-theistic outlook, whereas a life stance can be theistic or non-theistic, supernaturalistic or naturalistic.

Religious life stances

A religion is a set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and/or moral claims about reality, the cosmos, and human nature, and often codified as prayer, ritual, and law.  Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience. The term "religion" refers to both the personal practices related to communal faith and to group rituals and communication stemming from shared conviction.

In the frame of European religious thought, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane. Religion is often described as a communal system for the coherence of belief focusing on a system of thought, unseen being, person, or object, that is considered to be supernatural, sacred, divine, or of the highest truth.  
Moral codes, practices, values, institutions, tradition, philosophy, rituals, and scriptures are often traditionally associated with the core belief. Religion is also often described as a "way of life".
Religion is freedom from fear. Faith in the self-constructed illusory structures designed to make life meaningful.  Inevitable misguided emotional evolution in our society is rampant with examples of our inability to rationalize and judge without subjectivity our role, nature and potential.
T.:)

Non-religious life stances

Alternatives to religion include life stances based on atheism, agnosticism, deism, skepticism, freethought, pantheism, secular humanism, spiritual but not religious (SBNR), Objectivism, existentialism, modern incarnations of Hellenistic philosophies, or general secularism.

Humanism

Humanism is an example of life stance which may be considered to be religious (usually in a non-theistic, ethical sense) or non-religious or anti-religious. One of Stopes-Roe's reasons for advocating the adoption of "life stance" as a label for the Humanist movement, was his hope that it would end the arguments between the different sides as to how best to characterise their position (note that Stopes-Roe uses the term "god-religious" to distinguish theists from non-theists in what follows):

Bill Cooke comments:

Values and purposes

Different life stances differ in what they hold as intrinsic values and purposes in life.

See also 
 Intentional stance
 Lifestyle (sociology)
 Meaning of life
 Personal life
 World view
 Basic belief
 Belief

References

Bibliography 

Barnes, L. Philip (2008). "The 2007 Birmingham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education: a new direction for statutory religious education in England and Wales", Journal of Beliefs & Values, Vol. 29 (1), April, pp. 75–83.
British Humanist Association (1975). Objective, fair and balanced: a new law for religion in education. London: BHA.
Cooke, Bill (2003). The Blasphemy Depot: a hundred years of the Rationalist Press Association. London: RPA.
Cox, E. (1975). "Principles behind Syllabus Making", Learning for Living, Vol. 4 (4), p. 132.
Fowler, Jeaneane D (1999). Humanism: beliefs and practices, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press.
Greer, J.E. (1985). "Edwin Cox and Religious Education", British Journal of Religious Education, Vol. 8 (1), pp. 13–19 .
Hull, John (1984). Studies in Religion and Education, London: Falmer.
Kurtz, Paul et al. (ed) (1989). Building a world community: humanism in the 21st century, Prometheus Books, pp. 166–
Slotte, Pamela (2008). "Waving the ‘Freedom of Religion or Belief’ Card, or Playing It Safe: Religious Instruction in the Cases of Norway and Finland", Religion and Human Rights Vol. 3 (1), March, pp. 33–69..
Stopes-Roe, H[arry].V. (1976). "The concept of a 'life stance' in education." Learning for living, Vol. 16 (1), Autumn, pp. 25–28.
Stopes-Roe, Harry (1983). "Moral Practice and Ultimate Reality", Journal of Moral Education, Vol. 12 (2), pp. 81–91.
Stopes-Roe, Harry (1987). "Humanism as a life stance", Free Inquiry, Vol. 8 (1), Winter 1987/88, pp. 7–9, 56.
Stopes-Roe (1988a), "Humanism as a life stance", New Humanist, Vol. 103, (2) October, pp. 19–21.
Stopes-Roe, Harry (1988b). "Controversy: In defence of a life stance", New Humanist, Vol. 103 (4), December, pp. 8–9.
Stopes-Roe, Harry (1996). "The Presuppositions of Dialogue: a fair vocabulary." Journal for the Critical Study of Religion, Ethics and Society, Vol. 1 (2), Summer/Fall, pp. 9–15.
Stopes-Roe, Harry (2007). "Life stance", in Flynn, Tom (ed.). The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief. Amherst, New York: Prometheus, pp. 506–507.
Walter, Nicolas (1988a). "Rationally speaking: against Humanism as a life stance." New Humanist, Vol. 103 (3), October, p. 4.
Walter, Nicolas (1988b). "Rationally speaking: what kind of humanists?", New Humanist, Vol. 103 (4), December, p. 4.

Personal life
Intention
Belief
Philosophical theories