HUMANISM

• outspoken atheist Kurt Vonnegut to give the prestigious annual Ware Lecture at the General Assembly of 1984

• Unitarians were largely responsible for the first Humanist Manifesto

• William Schulz claimed, in 2000, that there were more Humanists in UU churches than in the AHA.

• About a hundred UU ministers—a significant fraction of the entire UU clergy—marched with Martin Luther King in Selma in 1965, and the murder of one of them (James Reeb)

• UU (James Barrett) was murdered in 2003 while trying to protect an abortionist from religious-right violence

• Linus Pauling co-founded the International League of Humanists) was a UU.

• People for the American Way founder Norman Lear was another Ware lecturer in 1994

• Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.), a Unitarian Universalist, was the first member of the U.S. Congress to announce in public that he did not believe in God.

1920 Unitarian minister Curtis Reese could announce to his colleagues that God was "philosophically possible, scientifically unproved, and religiously unnecessary."

Reese-style Unitarian Humanism, by the time of the merger with the Universalists in 1961, it was the majority point of view in most UU churches.

Since then things have drifted in a different direction. Particularly among the ministry, there is a trend to view traditional religion not as an encrustation to be shaken off, but as a resource to be mined

Finally, UU congregations are tolerant to a fault. Literally anyone can show up at a UU church, believing any kind of craziness, and will not be told to go away.

• But if you want to be accepted for the Humanist you are

• If you want allies in the struggle to make the world a better place

• If you are stimulated by diverse points of view and enjoy engaging people who frame the world differently