They are not religious, so they don’t go to church. But they are searching for values and rituals with which to raise their children, as well as a community of like-minded people to offer support.
Dozens of parents came together on a recent Saturday to participate in a seminar on humanist parenting and to meet others interested in organizing a kind of nonreligious congregation, complete with regular family activities and ceremonies for births and deaths. . . .
Humanism is both a formal movement and an informal identification of people who promote values of reason, compassion and human dignity. Although most humanists are atheists, atheism is defined by what is absent — belief in God — and humanists emphasize a positive philosophy of ethical living for the human good.
The seminar’s organizers wanted to reach out to people like the Proctors — first-time parents scrambling for guidance as they improvise how to raise their daughter without the religion of their childhood.
“I’m often told that when people have kids, they go back to religion,” said John Figdor, a humanist master’s of divinity student who helped organize the seminar. “Are we really not tending our own people?”
Across the country, religious observance hits a low for people in their mid-20s and steadily increases after that, “in conjunction with marriage and children,” said Tom Smith, of the General Social Survey at the University of Chicago, which has polled people about religious affiliation and practice for decades. . . .
The Proctors found themselves making decisions about religion when they had a daughter last year. Andrea said her parents asked, “Of course you’re going to baptize her, right?” She answered, “Actually, no.”
Instead, Andrea did a Google search for someone who might perform a nonreligious ceremony to mark Sienna’s entry into the world and found Epstein, the Harvard humanist chaplain.
Epstein officiated at the ceremony, while both sets of grandparents spoke about their hopes and dreams for the child, Andrea said. The Proctors named “guide parents” instead of godparents.
Hey, the humanists don’t need to go to all of the trouble to create a church with God. Just go to a liberal mainline congregation. Here they will find rituals, liturgies, and sacraments still going on, long after the theologians and pastors have abandoned the Christian faith.
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