HumanLight Celebrations A Chance to Illuminate Humanism's Positive Secular Vision

By Gary Berg-Cross

Here in DC, late December comes with darkening and colder evenings which we compensate for with events that promote cheerfulness. As in other Western countries there’s a post harvest tradition of settling in by a fire with some time for food-centric gatherings of friends and families. Fred Edwords has a nice summary on the origins of celebrating holiday events in a Keynote address given at Bridgewater, NJ, 12/18/05.

Religious cultures have colonized these winter days in a variety of ways. The result is a “traditional holiday season” aha Christmas. It’s veined through with old and new supernatural religious spirit and beliefs and now peppered with shopping fever. For many people in modern society aren’t comfortable with late December as a Christian religious holiday. To be sure there are people of different faiths who also have their holidays and want to occupy late December with their cultural message and style of celebrating. More recently that interesting secular minority of Americans without religious faith have elbowed themselves into the December holiday window. In 2001 a new Humanist way to observe the winter season was inaugurated in New Jersey by members of the New Jersey Humanist Network. It's call HumanLight.

On Dec 23^rd (between the Winter Solstice and Christmas) an increasing number of secularists celebrate HumanLight. It’s an event that the HumanLight organization promotes to “illuminate Humanism's positive secular vision” and as the AHA said in a 2009 announcement – “affirm the positive values of humanism during the time period of the “traditional” winter holidays.”

Gary Brill, who co-founded the holiday, says that HumanLight events or parties are usually family occasions. Here is DC we are lucky to have a community holiday party event due to the Kalmanson’s (Jenny and Phil) WASH members of Laurel MD. In past years dozens of guests have gathered in his home to celebrate a secular holiday. You can see details on the WASH community event page. But now there are more events in the area.

The Baltimore Coalition of Reason also has a cerebration at 7:00 pm, Friday, December 23, 2011 at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, 12 W. Franklin St. (Corner of Charles and Franklin) (Directions at http://firstunitarian.net )

The Baltimore Coalition of Reason also has a cerebration at 7:00 pm, Friday, December 23, 2011 at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, 12 W. Franklin St. (Corner of Charles and Franklin) (Directions at http://firstunitarian.net)

The Alexandria HumanLight and Solstice Celebration is Tuesday, December 20, 2011, 6:00 PM at Hard Times Cafe 1404 King St, Alexandria, VA (map). This is a "low-key celebration with plans to deliver about 5 minutes of presentation to contemplate what science tells about about our place in the universe (Solstice) and to celebrate the awesome responsibility and inspiration we gain by making our universe a better place."

Last year there were 27 places around the world that had community events and if the DC-Baltimore area is any indication the # is growing. It’s just a small, fun step towards a new tradition and something to make the December a little bit fuller time for non-believers.

See http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Some-American-Atheists-Celebrate-Their-Own-Holiday-112438494.html for an interview with the Kalmansons.

Welcome news to Secularism lovers

The world’s first journal dedicated to the exploration of secularism and nonreligion will begin publication in January 2012. The new journal is a partnership of the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture (ISSSC) at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and the Non-religion and Secularity Research Network (NSRN), an international and interdisciplinary network of researchers founded in 2008.

The journal will be co-edited by Ryan T. Cragun, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Tampa, and Barry A. Kosmin, Research Professor of Public Policy & Law and director of the ISSSC at Trinity College. Lois Lee of NSRN and the University of Cambridge, England will be Associate Editor.

The scope of the international academic journal, to be called Secularism and Nonreligion, will be interdisciplinary. Its aim is to advance research regarding all of the various aspects of “the secular” across societies and cultures.

Articles, written in English, will be accepted from experts in the social science disciplines of psychology, sociology, political science, women’s studies, economics, geography, demography, anthropology, public health, public policy, law and religious studies. However, contributions also will be considered from researchers in the fields of history, neuroscience, computer science, biology, philosophy and medicine.

Articles published in the new journal will focus on the secular at one of three levels: the micro or individual level, the meso or institutional level, or the macro or national and international level. Submissions should explore all aspects of what it means to be secular at any of the above-cited levels, what the lives of nonreligious individuals are like, and the interaction between secularity, nonreligion and other aspects of the world. Articles will explore the ideology and philosophy of the secular, secularism, nonreligion and atheism.

Although Secularism and Nonreligion will adhere to a traditional blind, peer-review referee process, it will be an open-access journal, meaning all articles will be freely available and able to be downloaded on the journal’s Web site: http://www.secularismandnonreligion.org/.

The editors are now accepting submissions of academic articles and book reviews, with the first volume of the journal to be published in 2012. Additional information about how to submit papers and publication procedures can be found on the Web site.

Members of the journal’s international editorial board include Kada Akacem at the University of Algiers in Algeria; Andrew Singleton at Monash University in Australia; Nathalie Caron at the Universite de Paris-Est Creteil in France; Stacey Gutkowski at the King’s College, London in the UK; Stephen Bullivant at St. Mary’s University College, Twickenham in the UK; David Voas at the University of Manchester in the UK; Will Gervais at the University of British Columbia in Canada; and Guy Ben-Porat at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel.

The editorial board members from the United States are John Alcorn at Trinity College; Daniel Blackburn at Trinity College; Deborah Cragun at the University of South Florida; Joseph Hugh Hammer at Iowa State University; Karen Hwang Center for Atheist Research; Ariela Keysar at Trinity College; Juhem Navarro-Rivera at the University of Connecticut; Terry Parssinen at the University of Tampa; Frank Pasquale at the Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture; Darren Sherkat at Southern Illinois University; Donald Westbrook at Claremont Graduate University; David Wulff at Wheaton College; and Phil Zuckerman at Pitzer College.

For more information, contact Barry Kosmin at: barry.kosmin@trincoll.edu, or

Ryan Cragun at: ryantcragun@gmail.com,

                                                                        ###