American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association (AHA) is a non-profit organization in the United States that advances secular humanism.[2]
Abbreviation
AHA
1941
Advocate for equality for humanists, atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers.
34,000
Sunil Panikkath
(President)
Nicole Carr
(Interim Executive Director)[1]
The American Humanist Association was founded in 1941 and currently provides legal assistance to defend the constitutional rights of secular and religious minorities,[3] lobbies Congress on church-state separation and other issues,[4] and maintains a grassroots network of 250 local affiliates and chapters that engage in social activism and community-building events.[5] The AHA has several publications, including The Humanist, Free Mind, peer-reviewed semi-annual scholastic journal Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, and TheHumanist.com.[6] The organization states that it has over 34,000 members.[7]
History[edit]
In 1927, an organization called the "Humanist Fellowship" began at a gathering in Chicago. In 1928, the Fellowship started publishing the New Humanist magazine with H.G. Creel as first editor. The New Humanist was published from 1928 to 1936. The first Humanist Manifesto was issued by a conference held at the University of Chicago in 1933. Signatories included John Dewey, but the majority were ministers (chiefly Unitarian) and theologians. They identified humanism as an ideology that espouses reason, ethics, and social and economic justice.[8]
By 1935, the Humanist Fellowship had become the "Humanist Press Association", the first national association of humanism in the United States.[9]
In July 1939, a group of Quakers, inspired by the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, incorporated the Humanist Society of Friends as a religious, educational, charitable nonprofit organization authorized to issue charters and train & ordain its own ministry. Upon ordination these ministers were then accorded the same rights and privileges granted by law to priests, ministers, and rabbis of traditional theistic religions.[10]
In 1941, Curtis Reese led the reorganization and incorporation of the "Humanist Press Association" as the American Humanist Association. Along with its reorganization, the AHA began printing The Humanist magazine. The AHA was originally headquartered in Yellow Springs, Ohio, then San Francisco, California, and, in 1978, Amherst, New York.[9] Subsequently, the AHA moved to Washington, D.C.
In 1952, the AHA became a founding member of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) in Amsterdam, Netherlands.[11]
The AHA was the first national membership organization to support abortion rights. Around the same time, the AHA partnered with the American Ethical Union (AEU) to help establish the rights of non-theistic conscientious objectors to the Vietnam War. In the late 1960s, the AHA also secured a religious tax exemption in support of its celebrant program, allowing Humanist celebrants to legally officiate at weddings, perform chaplaincy functions, and in other ways enjoy the same rights as traditional clergy.
In 1991, the AHA took control of the Humanist Society, a religious Humanist organization that now runs the celebrant program.[12] After this transfer, the AHA commenced the process of jettisoning its religious tax exemption and resumed its exclusively educational status. Today the AHA is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a nonprofit, tax exempt, 501(c)(3), publicly supported educational organization.
Membership numbers are disputed, but Djupe and Olson place it as "definitely fewer than 50,000."[13] The AHA has over 575,000 followers on Facebook and over 42,000 followers on Twitter.[14][15]
National Day of Reason[edit]
The National Day of Reason was created by the American Humanist Association and the Washington Area Secular Humanists in 2003. In addition to serving as a holiday for secularists, the National Day of Reason was created in response to the unconstitutionality of the National Day of Prayer. According to the organizers of the event, the National Day of Prayer "violates the First Amendment of the United States Constitution because it asks federal, state, and local government entities to set aside tax dollar supported time and space to engage in religious ceremonies".[48] Several organizations associated with the National Day of Reason have organized food drives and blood donations, while other groups have called for an end to prayer invocations at city meetings.[49][50] Other organizations, such as the Oklahoma Atheists and the Minnesota Atheists, have organized local secular celebrations as alternatives to the National Day of Prayer.[51] Additionally, many individuals affiliated with these atheistic groups choose to protest the official National Day of Prayer.[52]
Reason Rally[edit]
In 2012, the American Humanist Association co-sponsored the Reason Rally, a national gathering of "humanists, atheists, freethinkers and nonbelievers from across the United States and abroad" in Washington, D.C.[53] The rally, held on the National Mall, had speakers such as Richard Dawkins, James Randi, Adam Savage, and student activist Jessica Ahlqvist. According to the Huffington Post, the event's attendance was between 8,000 and 10,000 while the Atlantic reported nearly 20,000.[54][55] The AHA also co-sponsored the 2016 Reason Rally at the Lincoln Memorial.[56]
Famous awardees[edit]
The American Humanist Association has named a "Humanist of the Year" annually since 1953. It has also granted other honors to numerous leading figures, including Salman Rushdie (Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism 2007), Oliver Stone (Humanist Arts Award, 1996), Katharine Hepburn (Humanist Arts Award 1985), John Dewey (Humanist Pioneer Award, 1954), Jack Kevorkian (Humanist Hero Award, 1996) and Vashti McCollum (Distinguished Service Award, 1991).
Controversy[edit]
In 2021, Richard Dawkins said on Twitter that "In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men. You will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as. Discuss." After receiving criticism for this tweet, Dawkins responded by saying that "I do not intend to disparage trans people. I see that my academic 'Discuss' question has been misconstrued as such and I deplore this. It was also not my intent to ally in any way with Republican bigots in US now exploiting this issue."[57]
In response to these comments, the American Humanist Association retracted Dawkins' 1996 Humanist of the Year Award.[58] Robby Soave of Reason magazine criticized the retraction, saying that "The drive to punish dissenters from various orthodoxies is itself illiberal."[59]