DEAN'S LETTER

In the Confucian traditions, cheng-ming ("rectification of names") is a central activity. Unless we mean similar things by our words, communication becomes difficult and community is reduced to crowd--united only by ambiguous or meaningless slogans. Events since September 11 have been painfully reminding of this.

Consider such terms as "religion" and "faith," or "Christianity" and "Islam." Because they are so hard to define (rectify), any  evaluative adjectives ("good" and "bad") are either misleading or useless. Journalists have been struggling with Muslim vs. Islamicist, for instance. And, less noticed, is the selective evaluation of "fundamentalism." Is it only negative when found among Muslims (or Jews or Hindus)? What of "patriotism"? Does it mean loving one's own nation regardless--or does it mean cherishing certain values in a continuing struggle to create a loveable society?

Long ago, the distinguished Islamist Wilfred Cantwell Smith urged us to drop such nouns as "Christianity" and "religion." As an historian, he looked at people, in history, living in traditions and also changing them. My paraphrase: I don't know anything about Christianity but I know many things about persons who call themselves Christians. And about Mormons, whom some Christians don't recognize as Christian. Were we in Northern Ireland today, we would not be speculating on what "Christianity" means or stands for; we would be examining the beliefs, and particularly the behaviors, of many citizens who call themselves Catholic or Protestant. And we would find them quite wide-ranging.

Using a more academic jargon, intragroup differences typically exceed intergroup differences when we are dealing with large groups. Is there, for instance, a "Christian" position on contraception as of 2002? Certainly not among Protestants! Nor, for that matter, among Catholics. The bishops say one thing, Catholics for Free Choice say another, and the Catholic laity lower their fertility rates to those of their neighbors--perhaps guiltily but nonetheless effectively.

Let's bring this home for humanists. Modern humanists claim some affinities with "Renaissance humanism" but then revert to their perennial arguing over "secular" humanism versus "religious" humanism. Or they debate whether it is better to be an "atheist" than an "agnostic." Some of our close colleagues proclaim a non-supernatural theism. Any philosopher might wonder how this differed from "pantheism" (unless some modern theologian spoke up for "panentheism").

Until we have an agreed meaning for "god," such labels have little meaning. A short time ago a Minnesota Lutheran bishop was evangelizing an Indonesian audience and, horrifiedly, realized that every time he use the word "God" his translator said "Allah." Modern journalists have had parallel problems dealing with Osama bin Laden's vocabulary. How can rectification work here? One anthropologist suggested that there have been 100,000 religions in human history. Even if this is a rounded number, we must assume that many of them engage in god-talk. Must an honest atheist become a comparative religionist and study all of these before claiming the right to say that all are conceptually wrong? That may be asking too much! But we humanists do like to quote Terence "humani nil a me alienum puto." ("Nothing human is alien to me"). At the very least, modern humanists ought to have discovered what others in their time and place intend by their godtalks.

Modern humanism has meant so much more than merely atheism and/or agnosticism, and we should represent it more fully and fairly. Atheism may be viewed as a beginning, but it is the valuation of behaviors that really counts. Ethics has always been central for the shapers of our tradition. And that term has always been carried beyond a simple label for whatever rules and behaviors some person inherits or chooses.

John Dewey was right to urge us to focus on the verbs, on the behaviors. Using reason, developing compassion, discovering better truths, creating more of beauty in what we touch, gaining the insights that permit empathy, empowering those who have been denied power‑these are the humanist virtues. And they are by no means exclusively ours! Would that they might become more consistently ours!!

If the Institute is to become worth the time and money that have been invested, it will need to make such values attractive and widespread. If our neighbors are moved to make their embodiments of Christianity or Islam more generative and supportive of these values, let us applaud them. And where these values are negated by ideologies, religious or secular, let us be precise and firm in our critiques. Above all, let us make it possible for tomorrow's humanists to make the light of the torch that we pass brighter and steadier and more liberating.

Robert B. Tapp