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By Agence france-presse
NEW YORK: It looks more like a
theater than a church, there are no sacred symbols, and the faithful
who gather at this monumental Art Nouveau edifice believe deeply
that there is not necessarily a god.
Here, across from Manhattan’s
Central Park, the Society for Ethical Culture, whose motto is
“Deed before Creed,” along with other US non-theist, atheist,
agnostic and independent groups, are gaining ground in the United
States.
According to the Pew Forum, those
who see their spiritual dimension as “unaffiliated” make up 16
percent of Americans, but they are the fastest-growing segment of
the complicated patchwork of US spiritual life.
“It feeds my spiritual, ethical
and social needs,” said Judith Wallach, a member of the ethical
society for years who acknowledged having a religion but not a
strong belief in God.
God’s popularity would appear
to be somewhat under fire in the very religious-minded United
States—books such as Christopher Hitchens’ God is not Great, Sam
Harris’ The End of Faith and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion
have all become US best sellers in the past three years.
Some experts see the trend as a
reaction to hard-line attitudes among Christians, Jews and Muslims
in a world that is traumatized and skeptical after the September 11,
2001 terror strikes.
Others think it is part of a
broader shift.
“More and more people are
discovering that they can lead good, fulfilled, moral lives without
religion,” said Daniel Dennett, a philosopher who teaches at Tufts
University in Massachusetts and author of essays such as
“Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life.”
“God is not exploding—which
is what Nietzsche supposed—God is slowly evaporating before our
eyes,” he said.
New York’s Society for Ethical
Culture was founded in 1876, with Darwin’s ideas in full flower,
by Felix Adler, a humanist son of a rabbi who immigrated from
Germany. Today, it has 3,000 members.
The society admits atheists and
people who maintain their religious affiliation. Its Sunday morning
meetings are not masses, but rather “platforms.”
They start with a brief concert
and include conversations, song and a half-hour discussion of a
particular topic. They wrap up with a collection of funds for a
humanitarian cause.
This week, it was for victims of
the massive earthquake in China. Next Sunday the society will debate
the war in Iraq and the use of torture, to which it is opposed for
“humanist” reasons.
“These services bear some
similarities to traditional religious services in regard to the
inclusion of music, community sharing, and a sense of aesthetics.
“They differ in their
flexibility and openness to different perspectives and absence of
worship to a supreme deity,” explained Bart Worden, president of
the National Leader’s Council of the American Ethical Union.
Says Worden: “Families bring
their children to learn how to live in a world of diversity,
respecting differences and finding common ground with others, and
making a contribution to the well-being of the world.”
Jesai Jaymes is 55 and works in
theater. He joined the society last week after finding it on a
stroll through Central Park.
“I am meeting bright,
intelligent people who want to do things and that is what attracted
me to it,” said Jaymes, who was raised Catholic and has a Jewish
father.
It is “an organization in which
it is possible to participate and be active, rather than contemplate
things,” added Jaymes, who was happy “finding an organization
that supports social activism rather than belief and prayer: I can
pray in the park, where I do my yoga and my meditation.”
With a doctorate in art history,
Ruth Cohen, a society member for years, has a special appreciation
for the imposing building home to the society, built in 1910, called
Viennese-secession Art Deco style.
Its decorative motifs are somber
and abstract, there are human figures and no traditional symbols of
major historic faiths. “The auditorium is built in such a manner
that the speaker is even with his audience,” she noted.
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