I had the pleasure of attending a Passover Seder last week, and I enjoyed experiencing the ritual and the food and learning some history.  I have been to some non-Jewish “Seders” as well, which take the basic Passover theme of liberation from oppression and use it in a more general way to create secular rituals.  I’m of two minds about this. I know that most ritual has been borrowed at least in part from somewhere else, and that human rituals travel and evolve over time and across cultures.  Yet it seems a little rude to me to “use” another group’s ritual for a different purpose.  I feel the same qualm about celebrating Kwanzaa, since although it was created by a humanist and is the winter solsticetime ritual that makes the most sense to me, I’m not African-American.  At the Ethical Society, we often adapt traditionally religious music to make it…

In his occasional New York Times blog, Stanley Fish makes the brilliant analogy between Roland Burris’ appointment to the Senate and Saint Augustine’s role in the Donatist controversy. Fish’s central question is critical, not only for the case of Roland Burris but for the many acts that constitute our public life: Does “the lawfulness of an official action…depend on the purity of the person who performs it”?

On first thought, it might be very tempting to answer “yes.” But as Fish (and St. Augustine before him) quickly point out, that would undermine nearly every facet of public life and action. Just one example: “Is your marriage invalidated because the clerk or cleric who performed it cheated on his wife or stole from the poor box?”

Which takes us back to St. Augustine. In Fish’s words:

This last question is not new. It was debated in the 4th and 5th centuries in the context of what…

I’m not necessarily a fan of Keith Olbermann–I don’t know enough about his work–but his commentary last week in support of marriage equality and love says everything I believe, and much better than I could say it:

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. Last year I took part an an interfaith symposium on domestic violence sponsored by the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, and one thing it turned out that all the religious organizations represented had in common was a tendency to stick our heads in the sand when it comes to this issue. Most of us don’t want to believe that domestic violence is something that happens in our members’ homes–but it does. Domestic violence happens to people of all creeds, colors, classes, and sexual orientations. And of course it happens all the time, not just in October, but such awareness months are welcome reminders to speak up–and the more that we talk about domestic violence and let our members know about resources such as MCADSV, the easier it is for victims to have the courage to seek help.

PS. It seems weird to say Happy…

OK, this is a little melodramatic and contrived, but it is a question I was asked at an interreligious lecture, and I believe that this question reveals a lot about one’s religious vision. So I would like to hear from our readers and from the other bloggers how you would answer this question:

You and a companion are lost in the Sahara desert after a car crash on a deserted road, and no one knows to come and look for you. After a day waiting and hoping someone would come, you and your companion decide to start walking with your last two canteens of water. Your companion drinks all of his water right away, you use your sparingly. Late in the day, he falls and breaks his leg. He is delirious from the trauma, cannot travel any more, and cannot even stand for you to carry him because of the pain.…

The Ethical Society, and our national federation, the American Ethical Union, has long supported abortion as being an often difficult but spiritual and ethical choice. Our highest value is the worth and dignity of every person, and since pregnant women are clearly people, while pregnancies are not clearly people (witness all the arguments and differences of opinion on when human life begins), our official stance (individual members, of course, have freedom of opinion) is that to force a woman against her will to carry a pregnancy she does not want threatens her physical, psychological, and spiritual health, and therefore it violates rather than affirms her worth and dignity.

The Missouri Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is an organization that brings together representative voices for the millions of clergy and lay people from every major religion and denomination (and many minor ones) who support women’s and men’s sexual health and reproductive rights. MoRCRC’s…

One of the members of the Ethical Society of St. Louis who has a background in Buddhism has been teaching a class in “Ethical Mindfulness,” in which he’s trying to blend the mindfulness meditation practice of Thich Nhat Hanh with the philosophy and social activism of Ethical Humanism. I have been getting great benefit from these classes. Humanism has many positive ideals, but we humanists are still working to create or find common practices that help people develop their ethical ideals and the habits to act on them. This seems to be where we can learn a lot from classical Buddhism, which is generally non-theistic and which focuses on practices that help us become more aware of ourselves and our actions, and therefore more able to choose “right action” rather than to react out of anger or fear.

Developing the habit of following my breath and observing my thoughts and feelings…

(Disclaimer: I caught one of the nasty colds going around, so if this is less than coherent, apologies.)

In the comments to my first post on Religious Humanism, the question came up, Where do morals and ethical values come from?

Most of us have had our moral ideals shaped in part by our religious communities, but in perhaps a less straightforward way than we think. I’ve read that most people don’t actually know the moral principles of their own religions—they can’t name more than half the Ten Commandments, for example, and I’d bet that most members of the Ethical Society couldn’t tell you our 8 Commitments of Ethical Culture off the top of their head, nor do most humanists know the details of the latest Humanist Manifesto.

Yet it’s been my experience that most people, whatever their religion or life philosophy, share basic moral instincts, such as not to harm or use others, and to…