page_title: Secular humanism
section_title: Ethical movement
hierarchical_section_title: Secular humanism / History / Ethical movement
caption_attribution_description: English: Dr. Felix Adler, Chairman, National Child Labor Comittee. Attribution to Hine based on provenance. In album: Miscellaneous. Hine no. 3479. No date or location recorded on caption card; 1913 estimate based on captions for photos with neighboring numbers.
context_page_description: Secular humanism is a philosophy or life stance that embraces human reason, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.
  Secular humanism posits that human beings are capable of being ethical and moral without religion or belief in a deity. It does not, however, assume that humans are either inherently good or evil, nor does it present humans as being superior to nature. Rather, the humanist life stance emphasizes the unique responsibility facing humanity and the ethical consequences of human decisions. Fundamental to the concept of secular humanism is the strongly held viewpoint that ideology—be it religious or political—must be thoroughly examined by each individual and not simply accepted or rejected on faith. Along with this, an essential part of secular humanism is a continually adapting search for truth, primarily through science and philosophy. Many secular humanists derive their moral codes from a philosophy of utilitarianism, ethical naturalism, or evolutionary ethics, and some advocate a science of morality.
context_section_description: Another important precursor was the ethical movement of the 19th century. The South Place Ethical Society was founded in 1793 as the South Place Chapel on Finsbury Square, on the edge of the City of London, and in the early nineteenth century was known as "a radical gathering-place". At that point it was a Unitarian chapel, and that movement, like Quakers, supported female equality. Under the leadership of Reverend William Johnson Fox, it lent its pulpit to activists such as Anna Wheeler, one of the first women to campaign for feminism at public meetings in England, who spoke in 1829 on "rights of women". In later decades, the chapel changed its name to the South Place Ethical Society, now the Conway Hall Ethical Society. Today Conway Hall explicitly identifies itself as a humanist organisation, albeit one primarily focused on concerts, events, and the maintenance of its humanist library and archives. It bills itself as "The landmark of London’s independent intellectual, political and cultural life."
  In America, the ethical movement was propounded by Felix Adler, who established the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1877.  By 1886, similar societies had sprouted up in Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis.
  These societies all adopted the same statement of principles:
  The belief that morality is independent of theology;
  The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the world's religions;
  The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
  The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
  The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies;
  The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.
  In effect, the movement responded to the religious crisis of the time by replacing theology with unadulterated morality. It aimed to "disentangle moral ideas from religious doctrines, metaphysical systems, and ethical theories, and to make them an independent force in personal life and social relations."  Adler was also particularly critical of the religious emphasis on creed, believing it to be the source of sectarian bigotry. He therefore attempted to provide a universal fellowship devoid of ritual and ceremony, for those who would otherwise be divided by creeds. For the same reasons the movement at that time adopted a neutral position on religious beliefs, advocating neither atheism nor theism, agnosticism nor deism.
  The first ethical society along these lines in Britain was founded in 1886. By 1896 the four London societies formed the Union of Ethical Societies, and between 1905 and 1910 there were over fifty societies in Great Britain, seventeen of which were affiliated with the Union. The Union of Ethical Societies would later incorporate as the Ethical Union, a registered charity, in 1928. Under the leadership of Harold Blackham, it renamed itself the British Humanist Association in 1967. It became Humanists UK in 2017.
caption: Felix Adler, founder of the ethical movement
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