"Building Humanist Community: Hard Lessons from the UUA"
Sponsored by the Greater Boston Humanists and the Humanist Community at Harvard
From the GBH Meetup event (where you can RSVP):
There will be a lunch provided by GBH at noon and the lecture begins at 1pm.
Once one of America’s most influential denominations and developer of modern humanism, the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA), has imploded over the past 40 years, shrinking to 0.51% of the population. Why? What can humanists learn from this experience in trying to build secular communities? Former AHA president Michael Werner ticks off the reasons, from an obsession with indiscriminate pluralism to a disdain for the Humanist values that drove the UUA’s rise to prominence in the first place. “Follow the money,” Werner urges, as he analyzes one policy failure after another. His book Regaining Balance - The Evolution of the UUA is not an obituary, but a prescription for recovery.”
MICHAEL WERNER has worked in many Humanist /Atheist / Freethought organizations, and much of his life has revolved around progressive activism. He has been President of the American Humanist Association, Vice President of the Unitarian Universalist Humanist group, HUUmanists; member of the North American Committee for Humanism; an adjunct faculty member of the Humanist Institute, speaker for United Coalition of Reason, and current President of the Humanist Foundation. He has taught widely at major universities. He was one of the early developers of SMART Recovery, a Self-Management and Recovery Training recovery program for addictions.
We welcome all secular, atheist, non-theist, Ethical Culture, and others to join us as we work with HCH to build humanist community in Boston.
FREE PARKING in the Littauer Library Lot near the Science Center will be available during the event: Enter the Science Quadrangle from Oxford St. and follow the road through to its end in the Science Center/Law Library area. Phillips Brooks House is in the very corner of Harvard Yard (which is also accessible by the MBTA).