Ethical Humanist Society of Long Island

Ethical Publications

Leader Dr. Anne Klaeysen's Blog

Leader's Message - "Trusting Our Goodness" - April 2007

In February I became the first Humanist Chaplain at Adelphi University in Garden City. I am now one of a very small number of humanist university chaplains in the United States. (The others are located at Stanford; Columbia-Barnard, where I interned with Ethical Culture Leader Boe Meyerson; and Harvard, which is celebrating thirty years of its humanist chaplaincy this month. I plan to be there for the festivities and visit with one of our youth group alumni, Danielle Alexander.)

I owe my volunteer position at Adelphi to Dr. Michael Stepniak, Associate Dean of the Performing Arts, who, having studied at Harvard, couldn’t understand why every university didn’t have a humanist chaplaincy, and worked to secure that position at Adelphi. After I convinced the Associate Dean of Student Affairs that I am not a “hateful atheist,” as the other chaplains had feared, and have solid credentials in the interfaith community, I was warmly welcomed at a reception in the Interfaith Center.

Unlike the other chaplains at Adelphi, I do not have an established congregation of students seeking me out. Most people don’t know what a humanist is, much less identify as one. So I must create a new congregation. Actually, I see the entire university community as a humanist congregation, so I am reaching out to student clubs, the weekly newspaper, the counseling center, and professors, at the same time making myself available to give workshops, write articles and an ethics column, offer pastoral counseling, and teach classes. There is a world of people who are already Ethical Humanists; they just don’t know it yet.

In a World Religions class where I was invited to speak, I realized what I could offer students as a chaplain. I could remind them of their own inherent worth, no matter what they believe or what spiritual journey they are on, no matter what doubts they entertain about the faith tradition in which they were raised. I could encourage them to trust their own goodness. I told them a story about a man named Joe who called the New York Society when I interned there.

Joe told me that he had been visiting various houses of worship on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and voicing his opinion that “God is bullshit.” Understandably, the people with whom he shared his opinion were not thrilled and did not feel like entertaining any more of his opinions. I asked him why he thought that and why he felt it important to say so. Joe was frustrated by the demand of religion to believe in a supernatural deity. He didn’t know what he believed, but it wasn’t what the people he met had told him, and he didn’t understand why it mattered so much anyway.

“What do you know for sure?” I asked him.

“That I’m a good person.”

“So stick with what you know, and don’t get stuck on what you don’t know. Take a break from God. If she does exist, she’ll understand and still be there when you’re ready. In the meantime, just stick with what you know about yourself. Keep believing in your heart that you’re a good person and act accordingly.”

“I can do that?” he asked

“Yes, you can,” I assured him.

“What do you believe?” he wondered.

“I like what an early Ethical Culture Leader, John Lovejoy Elliott, said: ‘I have known good people who believed in God. I have known good people who didn’t believe in God. But I have never known good people who didn’t believe in people.’ I believe in people.”

I looked around the classroom and saw smiles and a few heads nodding. Some of the students believe in God, others don’t; some follow their parents’ faith traditions, others are exploring different religions. What can hold them as they take up and put down new ideas, as they learn and reshape their thinking, is the belief in their own goodness. It is not conferred upon them by someone else, divine or earthly; it lives and grows inside them. They must trust this goodness and elicit it from others.

Anne Klaeysen -- Mar 24 2007 07:21 pm |

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