Justice Centered Humanism

Humanists are quick to defend threats to the separation of church and state, but they have not always been consistently unified in engaging with pressing issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality—namely, those linked to economic, environmental, and social justice. Drawing on his tenure as executive director of the American Humanist Association, Roy Speckhardt calls for humanists everywhere to center justice in their humanism by promoting public policy based on ethical humanist principles. Acknowledging the challenges inherent to this type of advocacy and activism—such as balancing short-term needs with long-term goals, and espousing a common humanity without erasing differences—he makes a compelling case for championing justice-centered humanism. He also provides guidance for doing so, whether on the local, state, or federal level. Precisely because there is no such thing as cosmic justice in an afterlife, he reminds, it's especially important that humanists everywhere combat injustice in this life.

Kurt Vonnegut and humanism go hand in hand. In Behaving Decently: Kurt Vonnegut’s Humanism, Wayne Laufert examines how Vonnegut revealed his moral philosophy through the themes and characters in his work and through his public comments. Topic by topic, Vonnegut’s written and spoken views are explored, from his first novel, Player Piano (1952), through his antiwar masterpiece, Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), to the collections of his fiction and nonfiction that appear up till today, long after his death in 2007. His speeches, essays, interviews, and journalism, which support and expand upon the sentiments in his novels, receive proper consideration in this conversational overview of Vonnegut’s life and career. Religion, war, politics, science, art—these subjects and more are seen through Vonnegut’s perspective and are placed within a larger humanistic outlook. His most famous creation, the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, gets his own chapter too. Vonnegut called himself a “Christ-worshiping agnostic,” a term that Behaving Decently analyzes in the context of his upbringing as a freethinker, his wartime experience, his time in the corporate world, and other factors that formed his values. Those values are perhaps best expressed by his character Eliot Rosewater, the damaged, super-rich philanthropist: “God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.” Vonnegut’s real and imagined selves were incorporated into Kurt Vonnegut the author, the public speaker, the interview subject, and even the character that appears in some of his books. After all, he wrote, “I myself am a work of fiction.” That funny, wise, sometimes depressed persona was humanistic. Behaving Decently shows the reader how Kurt Vonnegut reminded us to take small steps along hopeful paths to kindness and community and dignity and art—and farting around.

From 1963 to 1989, the BBC television program Doctor Who followed a time-traveling human-like alien called “The Doctor” as he sought to help people, save civilizations and right wrongs. Since its 2005 revival, Doctor Who has become a pop culture phenomenon surpassing its “classic” period popularity and reaching a larger, more diverse audience. Though created as a family program, the series has dramatized serious themes in philosophy, science, religion, and politics. Doctor Who’s thoughtful presentation of a secular humanist view of the universe stands in stark contrast to the flashy special effects central to most science fiction on television. This examination of Doctor Who from the perspective of philosophical humanism assesses the show’s careful exploration of such topics as justice, ethics, good and evil, mythology and knowledge.

The concept of evolution is widely considered to be a foundational building block in atheist thought. Leaders of the New Atheist movement have taken Darwin's work and used it to diminish the authority of religious institutions and belief systems. But they have also embraced it as a metaphor for the gradual replacement of religious faith with secular reason. They have posed as harbingers of human progress, claiming the moral high ground, and rejecting with intolerance any message that challenges the hegemony of science and reason. Religion, according to the New Atheists, should be relegated to the Dark Ages of superstition and senseless violence. Yet Darwin did not see evolution as a linear progression to an improved state of being. The more antagonistic members of the New Atheist movement who embrace this idea are not only employing bad history, but also the kind of rigid, black-and-white thinking they excoriate in their religious opponents. Indeed, Stephen LeDrew argues, militant atheists have more in common with religious fundamentalists than they would care to admit, advancing what LeDrew calls secular fundamentalism. In reaction to fundamentalist Christianity and Islamism, this strain of atheism has become an offshoot of the religion it tries so hard to malign. The Evolution of Atheism outlines the essential political tension at the heart of the atheist movement. The New Atheism, LeDrew shows, is part of a tradition of atheist thought and activism that promotes individualism and scientific authority, which puts it at odds with atheist groups that are motivated by humanistic ethics and social justice. LeDrew draws on public relations campaigns, publications, podcasts, and in-depth interviews to explore the belief systems, internal logics, and self-contradictions of the people who consider themselves to be atheists. He argues that evolving understandings of what atheism means, and how it should be put into action, are threatening to irrevocably fragment the movement.

Journeys of Faith examines the contributions of the leading figures of the humanistic psychology movement, with particular attention to their spiritual journeys. Rising to prominence in America during the post-World War II years, humanistic psychology is experiencing a resurgence in the present day in response to the need for a psychological approach that addresses meaning and purpose in life. The key players--Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and Rollo May--all rejected the orthodoxy of their religious inheritance in favor of a more humanistic approach and, in the process, discovered a renewed spirituality that, they hoped, would address the concerns of a world yearning for something to believe in. While the humanistic psychologists confronted the world's problems through the lens of psychology, other thinkers, such as the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley, approached them through different, though equally humanistic, perspectives. Others still, such as Paul Tillich, Martin Buber, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, confronted the times through a religious lens. The influence of the centuries-long Jewish tradition of scholarship and social justice and the frequent examples of friendship and professional cooperation between the secular and the religious worlds provide critical subthemes for the lasting appeal of humanistic psychology.

The future of the United States rests in many ways on how the ongoing challenge of racial injustice in the country is addressed. Yet, humanists remain divided over what if any agenda should guide humanist thought and action toward questions of race. In this volume, Anthony B. Pinn makes a clear case for why humanism should embrace racial justice as part of its commitment to the well-being of life in general and human flourishing in particular. As a first step, humanists should stop asking why so many racial minorities remain committed to religious traditions that have destroyed lives, perverted justice, and justified racial discrimination. Rather, Pinn argues, humanists must first confront a more pertinent and pressing question: why has humanism failed to provide a more compelling alternative to theism for so many minority groups? For only with a bit of humility and perspective—and a recognition of the various ways in which we each contribute to racial injustice—can we truly fight for justice.

Faith and Action is the complete collection of the essays of R. J. Rushdoony written for the Chalcedon Report between 1965 and 2001 along with several transcripts of his recorded talks. The large volume The Roots of Reconstruction only contained his Chalcedon Report essays up until 1985, so most of the essays included in Faith & Action were unavailable to readers for many years until now. In order to make the author’s knowledge more accessible, this three-volume collection features some of the most extensive indexing we’ve ever done including a General Index, a History Index, a Scripture Index, a Works Cited Index, and a Chalcedon Report Directory. A total of 183 pages of indexing! This handsome set of books is a must have for any serious library. The central theme of this collection of essays is Christian Reconstruction, which to Rushdoony meant the responsibility of Christian citizenship in the Kingdom of God. For him, his central drive behind his research and writing was to move men to faith and action. Rushdoony was primarily an essayist who vigorously and prolifically wrote on a multiplicity of subjects, issues, and dis­ciplines. Despite his being critical of both the contemporary church for its compro­mise and the humanistic state for its will to be as God, these essays are replete with Rushdoony’s undying faith in the victory of God in history. Rushdoony’s “big idea” was Christian Reconstruction which centered not on a pursuit of political power but rather an equipping of Christians to take back government by means of self-government in terms of God’s law. This three-volume collection will no doubt serve the larger church for many generations as they seek first the Kingdom of God in their spheres, and in their times.