Humanists The People

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HumanistsThe People
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Humanists
CURTIS W. REESE STATESMAN OF RELIGIOUS HUMANISM

• Curtis Williford Reese was born September 3,
  1887, on a farm in Madison County, North Carolina
  which is in the western part of the state in the
  Blue Ridge Mountains. The Reeses were very devout
  Southern Baptists and many of them had been
  ministers. Reese once said "One of my paternal
  great-grandfathers was a Baptist preacher, one of
  my paternal grandfathers and two of my paternal
  uncles were Baptist preachers, my father is a
  Baptist deacon, two of my brothers are Baptist
  preachers, and a sister married a Baptist
  preacher.
• He entered the Baptist College at Mars Hill,
  North Carolina, and graduated in May 1908. He
  was ordained into the Baptist ministry.
• It was during his seminary studies that Reese
  first began to have any doubts about his
  religious faith. Since he felt that the Bible was
  divinely inspired, it came as quite a shock to
  encounter "higher criticism" even in a
  conservative Southern Baptist context. Also,
  Reese had a friend, Ralph E. Bailey, who later
  made the transition from the Baptist ministry to
  the Unitarian.

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Humanists
Children at the Abraham Lincoln Centre, where
Reese was the Dean from 1930-1957

• Graduating from seminary in 1910, Reese took a
  job as an evangelist in the Illinois State
  Baptist Association
• In 1911, he obtained a Ph.D. from Ewing College
  a Baptist School that has since gone out of
  existence.
• He said I preached twice each Sunday, but
  following the evening service my conscience
  bothered me. I could and did preached what I
  believed, but I did not feel free to say what I
  did not believe
• He decided to examine more closely the Unitarians
  because of a work that he had read by Francis G.
  Peabody, a Unitarian social reformer.

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Humanists
Reese becomes a Unitarian

• Reese wrote the minister of the Unitarian Church
  in Toledo, Ohio, and set up a meeting with him.
  At this meeting Reese presented a statement of
  his faith which consisted of the following (1)
  a Universal Father, God, (2) a Universal
  Brotherhood, mankind, (3) a Universal right,
  freedom, (4) a Universal motive, love, and (5) a
  Universal aim, progress. When Reese inquired if
  his faith were consistent with Unitarianism, the
  minister assured him that it was.
• This move from the Baptist faith to the Unitarian
  was not taken lightly by Reese, for it caused him
  great personal turmoil as well as creating a
  problem with his family. He said "My mother said
  very sincerely that she would rather have seen me
  dead. This is understandable, for had she heard
  of my death she would have had the satisfaction
  of knowing that I was flying around with angels
  in heaven. But now she was sure that if and when
  I died, I would burn in hellfire and brimstone
  forever and ever.

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Humanists
Chronology of Reeses Career

• Reese then became the minister of the Unitarian
  church in Des Moines, Iowa in 1915. He also
  became involved in a number of social problems.
  It did not take long for Reese to be moved by the
  poor housing conditions The Iowa Housing Bill was
  drawn up and, with Reese's intense lobbying, the
  bill passed without a negative vote.
• He accepted the position of Secretary of the
  Western Unitarian Conference in 1919. Reeses
  new base of operation was Chicago, and in his new
  administrative position his main responsibility
  was to help churches secure the right, most
  capable minister for their pulpits.
• Reese was elected to the Board of Directors of
  the Meadville Theological School, which at that
  time was located at Meadville, Pennsylvania.
  Reese wanted the school to be relocated in
  Chicago.
• In January, 1930, Reese gave up his position as
  Western Conference secretary and accepted the
  position as dean at the Abraham Lincoln Centre in
  Chicago. The Centre was founded in 1905 by the
  Unitarian minister, Jenkin Lloyd Jones. Reese
  lived in an apartment in the Centre designed by
  the famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright. It
  should be stressed that Reese spent the larger
  part of his professional career as the dean of
  the Abraham Lincoln Centre namely, from the
  spring of 1923 until February 12, 1957, when he
  was forced to retire as the result of a severe
  coronary.
• The Centre was so well-known that both the House
  and the Senate of the State of Illinois, on
  separate occasions, passed resolutions commending
  it for its fine service to the state. It was from
  the context of a kind of settlement house and
  social and cultural centre that Reese worked and
  wrote about the world, rather than from a vantage
  point such as an academic institution or a church
  pulpit.

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Humanists
Authority of Evidence

• Traditionally, said Reese, humans have claimed to
  arrive at truth in four ways through revelation,
  intuition, speculation, and the scientific
  method.
• It was obvious to Reese that revelation cannot be
  accepted as a source of truth for supernatural
  revelation is itself a product of the human mind.
  Humans determine what revelation is.
• Intuition is also invalid for arriving at truth.
  While people may intuit certain truths, their
  validity must be checked by experience.
  Consequently, the truth derives not from
  intuition but from the test of experience. At
  most, intuition provides the possibility of
  truth.
• Humans speculate because they have highly
  developed minds. If speculation is to be
  trustworthy, it must be premised upon the facts
  blasted from the quarry of reality by the power
  of human investigation. Hence, there is both
  true and false speculation.
• The scientific method is the only way to
  establish truth, said Reese, and the specific
  method was the source of authority. Although
  Reese cautioned that the scientific method cannot
  always separate truth from falsehood, he thought
  it was the best method for arbitrating
  conflicting claims to truth. Reese wanted to
  extend the method beyond the limited domains of
  the hard sciences.
• Reese frequently quoted Thomas Huxley The
  deepest sin against the human mind is to believe
  things without evidence.

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Humanists
Reese on Ethics

• For Reese, the responsibility for morality
  resides in humans, for they initiate morality and
  experiment in ethics. One aim of humanistic
  ethics is to develop individual freedom. Moral
  living is possible only to people who have the
  freedom to initiate behavior and who operate in a
  universe where nothing is ultimate and fixed.
• To act from passion or prejudice always causes
  suffering.
• Reese held human life to be of supreme worth.
  He did not believe its value derives from our
  creation by a Supreme Being, but life is
  inherently good.
• This view led Reese to take verbal swats at both
  traditional Christianity and Marxism
  Christianity for holding that people were created
  to glorify God, and Marxism for holding that
  people are an instrument for establishing the
  social order.

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Humanists
Religion Without God

• In his theological writings, Reese did not use
  the concept of God to account for the existence
  of the universe, for humans, for ethics, for the
  church, or for religion. He ignored the subject
  of immortality.
• Reese did not declare himself among those who
  held to a pantheistic view of God. After 1920,
  the nearest that Reese came to affirming a belief
  in a God was a statement in his book on Humanism
• the liberal recognizes and zealously
  proclaims the fact purposive and powerful cosmic
  processes are operative, and that increasingly
  man is able to cooperate with them and in a
  measure control them.
• Liberalism is building a religion that would not
  be shaken even the thought of God were outgrown.
• Reese was a pioneer of religious humanism. His
  type of humanism was undoubtedly a religion
  without God.

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Humanists
JOHN H. DIETRICH THE FATHER OF RELIGIOUS
HUMANISM

• John H. Dietrich was born on January 14, 1878, on
  a farm near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. His
  family had descended from some German-Swiss who
  had emigrated to Franklin County, Pennsylvania,
  in 1710 from the vicinity of Berne, Switzerland.
  Dietrich's parents were simple, uneducated farm
  people, his father being a fairly successful
  sharecropper. His family professed the Reformed
  faith, which had originated with Ulrich Zwingli,
  the Zurich reformer in the sixteenth century
  Protestant Reformation. It was a rural minister
  who suggested that young John, who was a good
  student, become a minister.
• In 1893 the Dietrich's moved to the village of
  Marks, Pennsylvania, and John entered Mercersburg
  Academy. He managed to crowd four years work into
  three, while walking eight miles a day to and
  from the Academy and doing farm chores yet, he
  graduated as valedictorian of his class in 1896.
  In 1900 he graduated from Franklin and Marshall
  College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and returned
  to Mercersburg as a teacher
• Dietrich entered the Eastern Theological Seminary
  of the Reformed Church which was affiliated with
  his alma mater. Immediately after his graduation
  from seminary in 1905, Dietrich became the
  minister of St. Marks Memorial Church in
  Pittsburgh. A certain professional jealousy had
  developed among the Reformed clergy against
  Dietrich, for he had been too successful. During
  his relatively short tenure at St. Mark's the
  membership had doubled and attendance at the
  Sunday services had tripled even members of
  other Reformed churches often came to hear the
  popular young minister.
• Dietrich did not believe in the infallibility of
  the Bible, nor in the virgin birth and deity of
  Jesus, nor in the traditional understanding of
  the atonement. He accepted the theory of
  evolution and revised the worship service so that
  the Apostles Creed was delineated and secular
  readings were incorporated.
• The heresy trial was set for July 10, 1911. At
  first Dietrich thought that he would give a well
  prepared defense, but in time decided that such a
  move would not accomplish anything of a positive
  nature hence, he refused to defend himself and
  was "defrocked." This occurred in spite of the
  continuous support of his board of trustees and
  the members, generally, at St. Mark's. After his
  last Sunday as minister, St. Mark's was closed
  and the next service was not held until a year
  later.

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Humanists
Dietrich Becomes a Unitarian

• The minister of the First Unitarian Church in
  Pittsburgh, Dr. Walter L. Mason, was much
  impressed with Dietrich he recommended that
  Dietrich be invited into ministerial fellowship
  with the American Unitarian Association, and
  Dietrich accepted the invitation. Mason even went
  so far as to invite Dietrich to become his
  associate with the idea that in time he would
  take over as senior minister of the church, but
  Dietrich refused the generous offer because he
  was not sure that it would be honorable to locate
  so near his old church.
• On September 1, 1911, Dietrich became the
  minister of the First Unitarian Society of
  Spokane, Washington. When he arrived he had a
  congregation of about sixty which met in a
  run-down frame building. He left Spokane in 1916,
  and at that time he had a congregation of over
  fifteen hundred, which met in the newly completed
  Clemmer Theater.
• During his Spokane ministry, Dietrich lectured on
  comparative religions in 1913-1914, and as a
  result, he began to question even his liberal
  view of Jesus as the greatest spiritual leader of
  all history. He came to believe that the world
  owed a great debt to Buddha, Confucius, the
  Hebrew prophets, and the Greek philosophers. He
  also accepted the "scientific method" as the most
  effective means for arriving at truth. He began
  to refer to prayer as "aspiration" and used
  secular readings in his worship service. In a
  sense, he saw the church as a kind of continuing
  education center for adults, and his sermons
  became well prepared lectures.
• Crowds came in 1914 to hear him lecture on the
  various countries involved in the First World
  War, and in 1915, he came out strongly for family
  planning in a sermon entitled, "The Right to Be
  Well Born." As a result of his sermon topics and
  his views about them, he was constantly being
  attacked by fundamentalists. It was also during
  his Spokane ministry that Dietrich began to refer
  to his faith as being humanistic.

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Humanists
Dietrich Moves to Minneapolis

• On November 1, 1916, Dietrich became the minister
  of the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis a
  church which Professor Zueblin of the University
  of Chicago would later describe as "an
  organization in whose nest had been hatched most
  of the liberal and reform legislation of the
  state of Minnesota." Again Dietrich took a
  church, which, although it had seen better days,
  was currently in a depleted condition, and built
  it into a large, vibrant, and effective
  institution. As his congregation progressively
  swelled, in December, 1925, it was necessary for
  the First Unitarian Society to move to the
  Garrick Theater which could accommodate the large
  crowds.
• In 1933, he was awarded a Doctor of Divinity
  Degree by the Meadville Theological School. In
  1935 Dietrich announced to his congregation that
  the time had come for him to resign from his
  pulpit and to retire from the active ministry.
  Although he was only fifty-seven at the time, he
  felt that many ministers held onto their churches
  long after their usefulness, with the result
  being a decline in the effectiveness of the
  church.
• Hence, he wished to retire while his church was
  strong. He helped secure a successor, who took
  over more and more of the responsibilities until
  Dietrich was able to fade completely from the
  picture. Dietrich, then, was minister of the
  Unitarian Society of Minneapolis from 1916-1936,
  senior minister from 1936-1938, and minister
  emeritus, 1938-1957.
• After retirement, Dietrich continued to deliver
  occasional lectures.

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Humanists
Dietrichs Main Concern

• Dietrich's main concern was to develop a
  religion which was not dependent upon the
  existence of God for its basic premise.
  Traditionally, religion in the West, whether
  orthodox or liberal, has been so closely
  identified with belief in the existence of God
  that, at least one of the criteria is, if one
  believes in God, he is religious, and if he does
  not believe in God, he is not religious. Dietrich
  and the other religious humanists were
  challenging this view.
• Dietrich was maintaining that it is possible
  in the best sense of the word to be religious
  without belief in God.

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Humanists
Dietrichs Thoughts and Quotes

• Dietrich said, I seek not so much to persuade
  you to my way of thinking as to stir you up and
  stimulate you in your attempt to solve the vital
  questions of life for yourself.
• Dietrich asserted that what people need is not a
  theological doctrine about the unity of God as
  advocated by the early Unitarians they need a
  human doctrine stressing the unity of all people.
• Morality is not imposed from without, but is
  based on human experience of what brings about
  individual and social welfare specifically,
  right action is that action which leads to the
  preservation and enrichment of both the
  individual and the social life, and wrong action
  is that which tends to the destruction and
  impoverishment of life.
• Dietrich maintained that wrong is wrong, not
  because some god forbids it, but because it is
  wrong.

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Humanists
CHARLES F. POTTER THE REBEL OF RELIGIOUS HUMANISM

• Charles Francis Potter (1885-1962) was a
  Unitarian minister, theologian and author who
  changed, over half a century, from an evangelical
  Baptist to a radical Humanist. Such a
  transformation reflects remarkable openness to
  new ideas, flexibility of personality, and
  capacity for intellectual and theological growth.
  As an innovative and energetic Unitarian and
  Humanist, he significantly impacted both
  traditions.
• Potter was born in Marlboro, Massachusetts, the
  son of Charles Henry Potter, a shoe factory
  worker, and Flora Ellen Lincoln. Raised in a
  pious evangelical Baptist family, Potter was a
  precocious boy who by the age of three was able
  to recite entire Bible passages from memory.
  Ordained at the age of 17, Potter began preaching
  in rural Baptist churches while attending
  Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, where he
  graduated in 1907. Potter accepted a Baptist
  pastorate in Dover, New Hampshire, in 1908 and
  another in Mattapan, Massachusetts, in 1910.
• During Potter's years as a Baptist preacher he
  began to question many of the orthodox Christian
  tenets with which he had been raised. He was
  increasingly influenced by liberal theological
  ideas, especially the "higher criticism" of the
  Bible. In 1914 frustration with Baptist church
  leaders who questioned his theological views led
  to his resignation from the Baptist ministry and
  conversion to Unitarianism.

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Humanists
Potters Unitarian Ministry

• After his conversion Potter moved with his family
  to Edmonton, Alberta, to found a Unitarian church
  and served there as minister from 1914-16.
• He found a new interest in the humanist ideas of
  Unitarians John H. Dietrich and Curtis W. Reese.
  From 1916-19 Potter was the minister of Unitarian
  churches in Marlboro and Wellesley Hills,
  Massachusetts.
• In 1919 he was called to be minister of the West
  Side Unitarian Church in New York City, where he
  served from 1920-25.
• Potter came to national attention in 1923-24 when
  he participated in a series of radio debates with
  the formidable fundamentalist Baptist pastor,
  Rev. John Roach Straton of the Calvary Baptist
  Church in Manhattan. The debates at Carnegie Hall
  stirred public interest in the fundamentalist-mode
  rnist doctrinal questions that were circulating
  at the time.
• In 1925 Potter resigned as minister of the West
  Side Unitarian Church and took a two-year
  sabbatical to study the varieties of religious
  thought in American culture. During this period
  he was a fundraiser and professor of comparative
  religion at Antioch College in Yellow Springs,
  Ohio, and traveled widely throughout the United
  States. In another encounter with national fame,
  Potter acted as the librarian and Bible expert
  for Clarence Darrow and the defense during the
  Scopes evolution trial in Dayton, Tennessee.

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Humanists
Potter Leaves Unitarian Ministry

• Reflecting the continual development of his
  personal religious thought away from orthodoxy
  toward more liberalism, Potter founded the First
  Humanist Society of New York in 1929. The
  organization stated as its philosophy a "faith in
  the supreme value and self-perfectibility of
  human personality, conceived socially as well as
  individually." The First Humanist Society, whose
  advisory board included such notables as Julian
  Huxley, John Dewey, Albert Einstein and Thomas
  Mann, served as a model and catalyst for other
  humanist organizations and for the humanist
  movement in general.
• In founding the Humanist Society, Potter left the
  Unitarian ministry behind and declared that the
  Society would have no creed, clergy, baptisms or
  prayers. "I had given up my fast dwindling belief
  in the deity of Jesus and the doctrine of the
  Trinity," he wrote. "Now, fifteen years later, I
  was leaving not only Christianityif Unitarianism
  is Christianitybut Theism as well.
• In his later years Potter lectured, wrote and was
  active in the liberal theological movement. He
  was almost 77 when he died of stomach cancer in
  New York City.

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Humanists
Potters Thoughts

• "The ideal humanist" Potter once observed, "is a
  well-rounded person, intellectually informed,
  keenly intelligent, intuitively developed, and
  emotionally sensitive. He is well-balanced,
  appreciative of beauty in poetry, music and art
  that is, responsive to sound and harmony, form
  and color, and to the infinite inspirations of
  naturesunsets and stars, mountain-tops and
  flowersbut, most of all, appreciative of the
  marvelous depths and heights and infinite
  possibilities of human personality.
• Generally speaking, Potter thought that science
  should be the source of authority in religious
  humanism. Potter disagreed with the ways
  religious thinkers have traditionally sought to
  establish the truth of their statements.
• Theism said Potter, originates in the unknown.
  The existence and attributes of God are founded
  on superstition, and to start with God is to beg
  the whole question.
• Goodness, said Potter, exists only in humans
  logically, then, to define God as an impersonal
  cosmic force is to deny his goodness.
• What is good and bad must be determined by
  humans simply stated, whatever limits and cramps
  the human personality is bad, and whatever
  contributes to the development of the creative
  personality is good.
• God gets credit for what man has done for
  himself.
• Potter thought religion and gods were created by
  people, and religion itself is but a means to an
  end, the improvement of man. It fails if it does
  not further that purpose.
• Obviously Potter thought religion can exist
  without God.