Last week we looked at what is an Ethical Society. This week we look at how the Ethical Society Without Walls is similar to and different from societies with walls, and what we might want to do create a greater sense of community in our society.

An ethical society is a community of people interested in living more ethical lives, believing that human sensibilities and community are the basis we have for living our best possible lives. People in an ethical society come together to support each in the very difficult task of trying to live as ethically as possible. Societies have meetings, or other means to share ideas which are meant to be inspiring and thought provoking.

I see ESWoW as forming community -- slowly. There are many individuals who come to our website, read the weekly newsletter and have no direct connection with others in ESWoW. I think that will always be true. I see in the phone calls we've been having that we do have some people who are developing a sense of connection to our group. My hope and vision is that we will be able to create more connections, primarily online and through email, but also phone and face-to-face connections between individuals who are interested in ethical living. Perhaps we'll have an "ethical buddies" section where people looking to have conversations with other people, either individually or in groups can connect with each other. Read more »

That's a question with many answers. Different societies have different characteristics, and certainly the Ethical Society Without Walls has some very different characteristics - I'll address the particularities of our Society next week, and for this newsletter, will focus on the commonalities of ethical societies.

An ethical society is a community of people interested in living more ethical lives, believing that human sensibilities and community are the basis we have for living our best possible lives. People in an ethical society come together to support each in the very difficult task of trying to live as ethically as possible. Societies have meetings, or other means to share ideas which are meant to be inspiring and thought provoking.

Most societies have a weekly program, some less frequently. For societies that meet in person, the format usually consists of

• Opening Words - usually an inspirational reading related to the main topic of the day
• A Platform Address - sometimes given by an Ethical Culture Leader, sometimes by an invited guest. (The term Platform comes from the practice of the speaker simply being on a slightly raised Platform for visibility in contrast to a sermon being preached from a towering pulpit. The themes of the Platform talks usually address some aspect of ethical living.)
• Discussion of or response to the Platform
• Announcements
• A collection for the financial support of the Society
• Closing Words - again, an inspirational reading

The majority of societies which meet in person also have music interspersed throughout the program. Some people use the term "service" to refer to the program - typically, but not exclusively held on Sunday mornings. There is no great significance to Sunday mornings, other than it being a time when many people are available. Read more »

Perhaps you're new to Ethical Culture, or perhaps you've been a member for a long time -- and just enjoy exploring the conversation.

My current short answer is that Ethical Culture is a religious movement connecting people committed to exploring and living ethical lives based on human experience. In Ethical Culture we seek to use ethical concepts to guide our lives. We believe it is important to put our ethical ideals into action in all aspects of our lives. We come together to work and support each other. We seek to make the world a better place, to learn and practice having better relationships with ourselves and those around us. We celebrate together the joys of our lives and to observe, support and share in times of grief and sorrow.

Several Ethical Culture Sunday Schools use the following list of values: (I still need to find the proper attribution for this and will share it with you when I find it.)

The National Leaders Council recently developed a statement which has a more comprehensive view of Ethical Culture:

Ethical Culture

The following is a statement on where Ethical Culture/Ethical Humanism1 stands at the beginning of the 21st century. Its intent is to clarify our shared beliefs in language that resonates with the familiar and unfamiliar alike. Open to the possibilities of the future, it is part of a living canon -- an expression of those Ethical Culture Leaders who endorse it and are devoted to furthering Ethical Humanism within its context.

Dedicated to cultivating moral development in personal life and moral reform in society, Ethical Culture seeks to nurture relationships in which we act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in ourselves, to provide inspiration and guidance for moral living, and to transform the way humanity views the meaning of life. Read more »

Guest Platform by Richard Kiniry, on the installation of Leader Amanda Poppei:

Good afternoon,

I have been asked to speak on the role of an Ethical Society in the larger community, its presence in the community. That is of course unique for you folks: your larger community is Washington DC, the nation's capital. I can hear Jay Leno making fun of the idea of a Washington DC Ethical Society. But people like Jay Leno are paid to be smart alecs and as you know the Washington area is full of ethical, committed public servants and politics is an honorable profession.

Maybe that should be your role in this community – being the place that helps politicians stay ethical.

But first let me congratulate the Washington Society on your new leader. Amanda Poppei is a bright, talented woman but she is also a caring, sensitive leader who I believe will bring out the best in this community - and of course that is a two way street.

And as part of this celebration, I get to offer my take on what might be considered the impersonal side of an Ethical Society, its role as an organization in the community. To be honest, that probably depends on the personalities of the members of the group and I’m not offering a hands-on plan – that's up to you – but I am offering a few philosophical, theoretical ideas on the subject.

In the beginning when Felix Adler was working out his religious philosophy, partly with colleagues in the Free Religious Association, most of whom were Unitarians, he was within the spirit of the times, when searching for the essentials of religion was in the air.

Kierkegaard, the philosopher and religious thinker, offered an interesting take on those times. To quote him: Read more »

Randy Best, Leader, North Carolina Society for Ethical Culture 
(MP3 AUDIO attached)

In late June of this year I began questioning the meaning and purpose of life.

I revisited the idea of human consciousness, what it means to be me.

For, as many of you know, this summer, I had my closest brush with death.

I have described my accident to many of you, but I am going to do so again for the benefit of those who have not heard it and because the telling of it continues to be therapeutic for me.

Here's the short version:

This summer, while riding home on my regular bicycle commute, I was broadsided by a motorcycle.

Fleshing it out with a little bit more detail:

Wednesday, June 18th, was a beautiful sunny day.

At 5:40 I left work for my 25 minute ride home.

Part of my route includes traveling on Cornwallis Road, a busy two-lane road with no shoulder and intermittently heavy traffic.

As I approached my left turn off of this road, there was no oncoming traffic, I looked over my left shoulder and saw a motorcycle about a block behind me. I thought, there's plenty of time, I only need to move 12 feet and I will be out of this lane.

I took control of the lane, signaled for my left turn, and, turned.

Immediately after I turned, my peripheral vision alarm went off.

You know the experience. When something at the edge of your field of vision attracts your attention and your head snaps around to see what it is.

What I saw was an extreme close up of the motorcycle bearing down on me at high speed -- making no effort to stop or swerve. Read more »

I came across an article in the Detroit Free Press by Rochelle Riley in which she suggests that Black History Month should be ended. She wrote:

I propose that, for the first time in American history, this country has reached a point where we can stop celebrating separately, stop learning separately, stop being American separately. We have reached a point where most Americans want to gain a larger understanding of the people they have not known, customs they have not known, traditions they have not known.

I propose that this month, 142 years after Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 that allowed for the Southern states to be readmitted to the Union, we adopt our own personal reconstruction goals to admit into our lives people who are different, people whose origins differ from ours, people who can teach us so much if we listen.

I propose that this month, we become not the America of Rush Limbaugh or the America of Al Franken, but to become an America where all opinions matter and hope trumps hate.

I propose that this February, we become not an America of black or white or Hispanic or Asian, but an America of black and white and Hispanic and Asian, an America where each of those heritages is a mandatory part of school curriculums. We don't need more amendments to the U.S. Constitution; we need more amendments to our own personal behaviors, beginning with changing how we treat one another. Read more »

Guest Platform by Hugh Taft-Morales

Originally for the St. Louis Ethical Society, October, 2008
(audio MP3 courtesy of St. Louis Ethical Society)

Good morning.

When I was young, I wanted to grow up to be a hero. A super hero! We had a club. The Kryptonite Club. Kevin, Silas, Michael, and me. We collected comic books, dressed as Superman and Batman for Halloween, and debated endlessly about the superiority of various super powers.

As a teenager, molded by the currents of civil rights and the peace movement, a new heroism called me. I was eleven when Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot. In processing this, King became my hero. And soon I had many new heroes, such as study Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. I admired them in my head and heart – I wanted to be like them.

So why have I not more like them? Why am I not such a hero?

Am I not confident enough? Not brave enough? Maybe.

But there are also cultural currents that pull us away from heroism. Society tends to criticize heroes. Some say that they're not perfect – that they can act improperly and unethically. Some say that moral heroes are too perfect – that they can be so stridently ethical that they verge on intolerant and inhuman. Other times we accuse moral heroes of being driven by a desire to be moral heroes, and their self-interest demeans their ethical pretensions.

These are damning allegations to make against paragons of virtue such as King, Gandhi and Mother Teresa. My project today is to examine moral heroism more closely from an Ethical Culture perspective so that we might bring out our best, so that we might be heroes. Read more »

Ethical action is one of the most important components of Ethical Culture. While thinking about our values, examining them and educating ourselves are all important to us in Ethical Culture, how we put our values into practice is most important.

Some describe Ethical Culture as a religion of relationships. Those relationships include our relationship to our self, our relationships to others who are close to us, others to whom we have a less intense relationship, and then, there is the whole set of people to whom we do not have a direct connection or interaction with, but to whom we are nevertheless, connected.

Growing out of our belief that each and every human is born deserving to be treated with worth and dignity, is seeing that not everyone is treated well, and then seeing the need to work to change that. That is basic to our commitment to ethical action, working for social justice and doing our part to make the world and more just and a more humane place for everybody.

There are so many ways in which the world needs our help to become more humane and more just. While many of us in the United States are feeling more hopeful about the political outlook, there still remains much to be concerned about. Some of that is on a personal level, how our lives are affected by the current economic situation for example, some on a community level, knowing that there may be people in our neighborhood whose needs are not being met, people in our country who do not have access to adequate health care or perhaps any health care at all. And then there are larger issues, our country at war, and a world whose climate is changing in ways which could have many negative effects on many, many people. Read more »

Guest Platform by Amanda Poppei, Acting Senior Leader of the Washington Ethical Society, September 2008

Some of you know that I've been drawn to religious leadership since I was a young teenager - that I've been thinking about it and preparing for it since then, really, studying and experiencing as much as I can to be able to serve to the best of my ability. As part of that preparation - and out of personal interest, too - I've done a fair amount of reading about different religious traditions. My interest in that subject, I think, started even before my teenage years, as I grew up in a Unitarian Universalist congregation and participating in a Sunday School curriculum that's now called Neighboring Faiths. My Sunday School class visited a mosque, a Baptist church, a Hindu temple, a Greek Orthodox church, a Mormon church…it was a busy year. In high school, my friends were Muslim, Buddhist, and Jain…along with Christian and Jewish, both significantly more common in upstate New York! In college, my Religious Studies major included a requirement to take classes in at least three religious traditions; I chose Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Since then, I've read a good deal more about Eastern traditions, although I'm by no means an expert…but still, I think I have some sense of the most important principles, the basic tenets, the ethical requirements. Read more »