Felix Adler’s Revolution in Religion—Modernism and Humanism

 

                                         Young Felix Adler in 1876. 

Felix Adler, a man destined for the Rabbinate, took an unexpected left turn at Emanuel Kant and ended up founding a secular humanist religion.  The son of Rabbi Samuel Adler, a leading figure in the liberal 19th Century Reform movement among European Jews, Felix was born on August 13, 1851 in Alzey, Hesse, Germany.

When he was six years old his father moved the family to New York City to become the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, the cradle of Reform in America and the largest and most influential synagogue in New York.  The congregation then conducted its services in German, the language of its founders in 1847, and was the first in the nation to do away with sex segregation in worship allowing families to sit together, introduce music, and revise many Orthodox rituals.

Although his highly cultured father had some grave doubts about his son’s ability, he educated the boy grooming him as a successor.  He attended the prestigious private Columbia Grammar School and Preparatory Academy then went on to Columbia University where despite his father’s misgivings he graduated with Honors in 1870.

Then it was off to Europe for graduate education in preparation for the Rabbinate.  He was enrolled at Heidelberg University, the high temple of German culture.  There he fell in with bad influences—Neo-Kantian philosophers who posited that the existence or non-existence of God could never be proven either way and that morality could be developed independently of theology.  The experience shook him to his core and caused him to re-evaluate Judaism and all religion.

 

A post card of the handsome Temple Emanu-El erected in 1868 at the fashionable corner of 5th Avenue and 43rd Street in Manhattan.  It was served by Adler's father and he was the heir apparent as Rabbi until Felix gave his fateful lecture. 

Back in New York in 1873 he was invited to give a sermon at Temple Emanu-El, an obvious audition for being anointed his father’s successor.  His lecture electrified—and shocked—the congregation.  Judaism of the Future neglected to mention God even once.  It was not a rumination on the Torah, the Talmud, the wisdom of great teachers.  Instead it was a bold, forward looking manifesto presenting Judaism as a secular religion of morality for all humanity, not just the closely guarded privilege of a Chosen People.

The sermon destroyed any chances of succeeding his father.  In fact, he was never again even asked to speak before the entire congregation.  This must have been no surprise to him and may have even lifted a burden from his shoulders. 

But his speech did have its admirers and defenders in the congregation, including some of its wealthiest and most influential members.  Some of them endowed a non-residency Professorship of Hebrew and Oriental Literature at Cornell University in 1874.  There Adler thrived in his natural academic environment.  He was adored by his students with whom he was glad to engage in back-and-forth intellectual exploration.  More dangerously, he tied ethics and morality to contemporary issues, particularly the concentration of wealth by the Capitalist class, the subjugation of labor, and the emerging open class warfare of the era.  His lectures were widely attended and reported in the press.

But his ideas were far too radical for the Board of Trustees when faced by unhappy and powerful alumni who accused him of atheism.  They refused to extend tenure and turned down a renewal of the endowment that paid his salary in 1876.  Adler was out of his job.

He turned his attention to pursuing the religious ideas outlined in his old sermon, which continued to generate controversy due to the widespread distribution of printed copies. On May 16, 1876 Adler delivered a major lecture more fully outlining his philosophy.  He once again urged the creation of a religious movement that could not be divided by theology, creed, or ritual but that allowed theists, atheists, agnostics, and Deists to act cooperatively on a moral basis for the improvement and enrichment of the human condition.

The lecture was widely reported and stirred up both indignation and interest.  Within a few weeks with the aid of supporters from Temple Emanu-EL including its President Joseph Seligman, lent him support.  In February of 1877 he incorporated the Society of Ethical Culture.  Although he dreamed of a wider movement, Ethical Humanism remained mostly a movement of culturally sophisticated Ashkenazi Jews, but through his widespread lecturing and publication also had impact far beyond his religious society and the others that it spawned in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Chicago.

The principles of Ethical Culture were simple but profoundly revolutionary:

• The belief that morality is independent of theology;
• The affirmation that new moral problems have arisen in modern industrial society which have not been adequately dealt with by the world’s religions;
• The duty to engage in philanthropy in the advancement of morality;
• The belief that self-reform should go in lock step with social reform;
• The establishment of republican rather than monarchical governance of Ethical societies
• The agreement that educating the young is the most important aim.

It was, in Adler’s oft repeated maxim, to be a religion of “Deeds not Creeds.”  Living up to that standard the New York Society under Adler’s personal leadership was quickly involved in multiple projects including a kindergarten, district nursing service, and a hygienic tenement-house building company.  

 

 The Society for Ethical Culture in New York City before the turn of the 20th Century.  The building is still in use.

Most significant was the creation of the Workingman’s School, a Sunday school and a summer home for children which would eventually become the Ethical Culture School which Adler served as Rector until his death.  It became a school whose liberal curriculum inspired generations of leaders in the worlds of the arts, law and government, and science.  Among the graduates of the School and/or its high school prep division Fieldston School were photographer Diane Arbus, Red buster lawyer Roy Cohn (an anomaly), film maker Sophia Coppola, mogul/producer  Jeffrey Katzenberg, activist and sociologist Staughton Lynd, New York District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau, Poet Lauriat of the United States Howard Nemerov, Father of the Atomic Bomb J. Robert Oppenheimer, novelist Belva Plain, musician/poet Gil Scott-Herron, composer and lyricist  Stephen Sondheim, and journalist broadcaster Barbara Walters.

That is indicative of the wide influence of Ethical Culture and it founder far beyond the few thousand members belonging to societies at any one time.  In 1892 the existing societies formed a loose federation, The American Ethical Union, but each society remained sometimes fiercely independent.

Adler’s impact as a moral philosopher was wide.  There was a small, but voracious, Free Thought movement in the United States in the late 19th Century of which the Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll was the most prominent spokesman.  A movement of agnostics, Deists, and open atheists, it was characterized by open hostility to organized religion and often consumed in fruitless debate with its partisans.

Adler offered a new vision of humanism.  He took no position on the existence of God, salvation, or eternal life.  For him these were unknowable and best left to individual consciences.  In fact, he strove to overcome the bitter divisions of partisans of all religions and anti-religious philosophies by concentrating on moral service.  For that he and his movement were bitterly attacked by some, especially the take-no-prisoners atheists.  On the other hand, this vision greatly appealed to new generations of humanists.  By the way, the recent renaissance of the New Atheism has renewed this same debate.

Of course, Adler continued to be a great influence in the development of the American Reform movement among Jews despite his separation from them.  His ideas helped shape new generations of Rabbis and lay leaders which were reflected in Congregations.  Only since the end of World War II, has there been somewhat of a retreat from the Adler tradition to incorporating more traditional Jewish ritual.

 

                                        Adler collaborated with Unitarian Jenkin Lloyd Jones's Unity Movement.

Adler also appealed to liberal Protestants, especially those in the emerging Social Gospel movement.  But nowhere was his influence felt more deeply than among the most socially advanced Unitarians.  Adler became a collaborator with Jenkin Lloyd Jones, head of the quasi-independent Western Unitarian Conference and the denomination’s leading liberal voice.  He contributed regularly to Jones’s Unity Magazine and was a frequent speaker Unity Club meetings, mid-week educational lectures hosted by many Mid-Western congregations.  The vision of a post-creedal religion with an emphasis on social justice and action was shared by the two men.  Together they helped infuse sometimes stuffy 19th and early 20th Century Unitarianism with the genetic religious humanism that came to dominate the faith.

As Humanism rose to dominance in American Unitarianism there was talk of merger or consolidation with Ethical Culture in the 1930s and again in the 1950’s.  In the end the different cultural roots, not to say lingering anti-Semitism in some of the Unitarianism’s older New England congregations prevented further action.  However, the two movements remain close and ordained Unitarian Universalist ministers have sometimes been called to serve Ethical Culture Societies. 

In 1902 Adler was able to return to academia as the Chair of Political and Social Ethics at Columbia University, where he taught until his death in 1933.  The position elevated his public profile even more and he greatly influenced two generations of student.

After years of concentrating on domestic justice issues, the Spanish American War aroused a new interest in world affairs for Adler.  Initially he had supported the war as a way to liberate the peoples of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines.  But when it quickly became apparent the United States was actually more interested in acquiring its own empire, Adler became a voracious critic and leading anti-imperialist.  The “supreme worth of the person”—a construction that sounds familiar to Unitarian Universalist ears—was the basis of Ethical Culture and Adler’s overarching principle in world affairs, that no single country, faith, political or economic philosophy could lay claim to superior institutions and lifestyle choices of other peoples. 

When for similar reasons Adler opposed American entry into World War I his German birth was used to attack him as an agent of the Kaiser and he attracted the unwanted attention of Federal Authorities.  He may have only escaped prosecution for his anti-war writings and speeches because powerful friends in New York politics interceded on his behalf.  His opinions also caused rifts in Ethical Culture Societies, especially after the war when he surprised many by also speaking out against the League of Nations as an imperialist club of the winners of that war.  Instead, he proposed an international Parliament of Parliaments elected by the legislative bodies of all nations and representing various classes of people, rather than just the economic and social elite, so that common interests and not national differences would prevail.

 

                                Adler in 1926. 

Over his long career Adler published prodigiously, a seemingly endless stream of articles, pamphlets, published lectures and sermons, and academic papers.  Among his books which were deeply influential were Creed and Deed (1878), Moral Instruction of Children (1892), Life and Destiny (1905), The Religion of Duty (1906), Essentials of Spirituality (1908), An Ethical Philosophy of Life (1918), The Reconstruction of the Spiritual Ideal (1925), and Our Part in this World.  A collection of his The Ethics of Marriage for the Lowell Institute in 1896–97 was also widely read.

Adler acted on his belief by service to many worthy causes. He the founding chairman of the National Child Labor Committee in 1904 which hired his student Lewis Hine to record conditions many child laborers suffered in a series of searing documentary photographs. In 1917 Adler served on the Civil Liberties Bureau which was speaking out for war-time dissident.  The Bureau later became the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) with which he remained active. In 1928 he became President of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. He also served on the first Executive Board of the National Urban League.

After Adler died in New York City on April 24, 1933 at the age of 81, his Ethical Cultural movement struggled.  There was a post-war revival of sorts with new societies springing up in suburban enclaves and university towns, often focused around the Sunday schools for children.  Societies have tended to become somewhat more conventional in their religious practices so that many Sunday services closely parallel church services without the mention of God.

 

The logo used by many Ethical Culture societies evokes a man with out-stretched arms inscribed in a circle as in Leonardo Di Vinci's famous sketch, but also the ban-the-bomb peace symbol and even an earlier version of the UUA's flaming chalice in a circle. 

Today Ethical Humanism is a small, but influential voice for rational humanism with about 24 congregations and a few thousand members.  But as always, Felix Adler’s influence extends far beyond that to generations of humanists who may never have heard his name.

 

Parliament of the World’s Religions Reconvenes in Chicago to Little Notice

The 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions flew largely under the radar of local media when it opened a packed agenda for the week at Chicago’s McCormick Place on Monday despite being the largest and widest international assembly of religions from every continent and faith tradition.  It also has historic roots in one of the city’s seminal events—The World Columbian Exhibition of 1893.

Officially the seventh gathering since a centennial revival in 1993—the 2021 gathering had to be held on-line due to the global coronavirus pandemic—the theme this year is “A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom & Human Rights.”  It attracts participants from more than 200 diverse religious, indigenous, and secular beliefs from more than 80 nations.  Among the dozens of important figures speaking or participating in panels are Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, Dharma Master Cheng Yen, Jane Goodall, Khaled Abu Awwad, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Rev. James Lawson, Ojibwe Grandmother Mary Lyons,   Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, Cardinal Blaise Cupich, Rabbi Hanan Schlesinger, Swami Yatidharmananda,  and United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres.  

Attendees at the Parliament of World's Religions in Salt Lake City, Utah in 2015.

The Parliament has been hosting a gathering of religious and spiritual leaders from all over the world and reflecting the vast diversity of beliefs and traditions practiced on this planet every roughly every five years since 1993.  Previous Parliaments have convened in Chicago, Cape Town (1999), Barcelona (2004), Melbourne (2009), Salt Lake City (2015), and Toronto (2018).  Each of these sessions has fostered inter-faith dialogue including finding common ground among communities often at violent odds with one another—Christianity/Islam/Judaism, Hindu/Islam.  They have also raised recognition and respect for traditional native religions and “pagan” traditions.  Co-operation on social justice, peacemaking, and climate change have been fostered.  So has respect for the role of women in religion.

Delegates and speakers often tend to represent the most progressive elements in their traditions and those who are most willing to reach out to and learn from other traditions, even those with whom their communities have had strained or even violent histories.  The fundamentalists of all traditions who assert that absolute truth and righteousness belongs to them only do not participate in the Parliament and despise those who do.  Many participants face the threat of violence from within their own faith traditions as well as persecution by governments for their stands on human rights, the environment, and peace.  Thus, some observers and much of the establishment press  dismiss the Parliament as peripheral and irrelevant.  Others see the seeds of mutual respect, understanding, and solidarity among the religious peoples of the world as essential for the survival of humanity and the planet we all share.

 The modern Parliaments had their roots in a gathering held in conjunction with the World Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893.  The original World’s Parliament of Religions is now regarded along with guarantees of Religious Liberty set in motion by Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom and secured in the Third Amendment to the Constitution, and the Great Awakening as one of the most significant events in American religious history.  It brought together for the first time world faith traditions, especially non-Christian ones on American soil, profoundly shaking an established consensus and opening a door to a whole new era.

A session of the 1893 World Parliament of Religion.

Believe me, it wasn’t easy.

The America of the late 19th Century was very different from the one we recognize today.  Protestant Christianity, especially its Evangelical strain, exercised more cultural and political dominance over society than ever before despite the recent arrivals of waves of Catholic, Orthodox, and Jewish immigrants partly in response to fear of the new arrivals.  The Deism and tolerance of many of the nation’s Founders and the hard fought-for rigid separation of church and state that had categorized the early years of the republic had crumbled.  The light of the New England Renaissance and Transcendentalism had been swamped in successive waves of revivalism and isolated to an educated elite who the public was increasingly taught to scorn and despise.  Dissenting sects or movements ranging from the Unitarians and Universalists to the Mormons and Spiritualists were increasingly isolated.  Evangelical style and substance were growing within non-Evangelical traditions—the Episcopal Church, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and even some Quakers.  It was influencing the immigrant waves of old Reformation Lutherans.  Except in the biggest cities where their numbers were overwhelming, Jews and Catholics were excluded from political power and integration into the wider community.

There were flickers of resistance, of course.  The revelations and implications of Darwin and other scientific advances sowed skepticism of traditional dogma among many.   There was a resurgence of Free Thought as expounded by the likes of Robert Ingersoll.  Every small town could be counted to have an iconoclast or two among its citizens.  In part of the West a majority of the highly mobile population was unchurched and not unhappy about it.  There may have been restlessness underneath the enforced consensus that was producing the morality mummery Anthony Comstock’s Society for the Suppression of Vice or the growing power and militancy of the prohibition movement, but few respectable people dared to speak up.

It was in this infertile time that an idea was hatched for a meeting of the world’s religions to be held during the World Columbian Exposition which was shaping up to be the largest and most spectacular of the international gatherings that were coming to be known as World’s Fairs.  It was the brainchild of the Swedenborgian layman Judge Charles Carroll Bonney.  The noted jurist had been appointed President of the World’s Congresses held during the Exposition.  Eventually more than two hundred of these gatherings were scheduled each bringing together leaders in their fields including Congresses or Parliaments for anthropology, labor, medicine, temperance, commerce and finance, literature, history, art, philosophy, and science.  Bonney thought that religion should also be included.

When he pitched the idea to leading Chicago churchmen he received an initial enthusiastic response until he made clear that the Parliament would include representatives on non-Christian faiths—heathens and pagans in many eyes.  Others balked when they were told that they would not be allowed to evangelize or convert the delegates but would be required to treat them with dignity and respect—even those from “inferior races.”

                                  Rev. John Henry Barrows.

The Rev. Dr. John Henry Barrows, Minister of the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago and the city’s most respected clergyman agreed to be chairman of the Parliament.   Barrows, the minister who claimed that Abraham Lincoln made a confession of faith to him in 1863—now regarded by most scholars with the greatest of skepticism—had subsequently become much more religiously liberal.  He was sympathetic to the emerging social gospel movement in support of economic and social justice and had toured India and Japan and had a respectful interest in Oriental religion.

In 1891Barrow sent out thousands of invitations to religious leaders across the globe outlining his vision for a conference that would:

Bring together representatives of religions from all around the world.

Bring forth the truths the various religions teach in common.

Promote the brotherhood among the religious men of diverse faith.

In addition to acceptances, the invitations unleashed a firestorm of bitter attacks.  Dwight Moody, Chicago’s fiery Evangelical leader led the local assault.  The Archbishop of Canterbury wrote a scathing public denunciation, the European hierarchy of the Catholic Church—American Catholic Bishops were, as was customary in those days, keeping their heads down to avoid getting caught in the crossfire—, and the Ottoman Sultan all attacked the proceedings.  Even Barrow’s own Presbyterian Church General Assembly, firmly in the hands of the denomination’s conservatives, denounced the project.  None-the-less Barrows persevered.

                                    Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones.

He enlisted as his top assistant and General Secretary the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones who was the day-to-day administrator of the Parliament and in many ways the shaper of the final conference.  Jones was a Civil War Veteran and a descendant of generations of Welsh Dissenters.  He was the charismatic minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Chicago and the long-time Secretary of the Western Unitarian Conference, the semi-independent Unitarian body which promoted a radical and non-doctrinal faith.  He was a strong supporter of the Social Gospel movement and through his Unity Clubs and Unity Magazine promoted dialogue with and respect for Freethinkers and emerging Humanism.  Jones’s theological and political radicalism further alienated conservatives.  But he had strong connections in the city and quiet support from many wealthy men who were prevailed upon to financially support the Parliament.

The Parliament finally convened at the Hall of Columbus, now the Art Institute building on Michigan Avenue, on September 11, 1893 with over 4,000 in attendance.  From the beginning the press was enchanted by the colorful pageantry of the assembled delegations.  Although Protestant Christians still dominated the attendees and slated speakers, it was the exotics that drew the most attention.

It was the first time most Americans were ever exposed to most non-western religions.  There were 12 Buddhist speakers including Soyen Shaku, the first Japanese Zen master to come to the U.S. whose translated speech was read to the delegates by Dr. Barrows and Anagarika Dharmapala, a leading Sri Lankan monk and representative of Southern or Theravāda Buddhism.  

                Swami Vivekananda, star of the 1893 Parliament.

Among several Hindus in attendance was the breakout star of the whole conference, Swami Vivekananda who spoke briefly on the opening day of the sessions.  His opening words, “Sisters and brothers of America!” caused the assembly to break into a wild two minute long standing ovation.  He made two more formal addresses to the Parliament and spoke dozens of other times at smaller sessions, private gatherings, and even in the parlors of wealthy Chicagoans.  Although Ralph Waldo Emerson had been heavily influenced by a translation of the Bhagavad Gita in his essay The Over-Soul, Americans at the time were almost entirely ignorant of Hinduism.  But they were greatly taken by Vivekanada’s repeated messages of religious universality and toleration which summed up the aspirations of the whole Parliament.  His first short address referenced two quotes from the Shiva Mahimna Stotram:

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take, through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee!.. Whosoever comes to Me, through whatsoever form, I reach him; all men are struggling through paths that in the end lead to Me.

Swami Vivekananda remained in North America for two more years touring and speaking extensively.  A collection of his writings became a best seller.  He established the Vedanta Society as a ministry to the West which adapted traditional Hindu teaching to Western culture and needs and which helped introduce the practice of yoga.

Eleven speakers represented Judaism including traditional rabbis and more secularized Jews.  Opposition from the Sultan hindered a major participation by Muslims.  There were just two representatives, and the main speaker was the American convert Mohammed Alexander Russell Webb.  There were also Parsi, Confucian, Shinto, Tao, and Jain representatives.

The Parliament also recognized and presented the views of new religious movements of the time, including Spiritualism and Christian Science.  Newly emerging Baha’i was referenced in an address by the Rev. Henry Jessup, a Presbyterian minister who was a leading orientalist and founder of the Syrian Protestant College, now known as the American University of Beirut.

Eleven women including ordained ministers spoke at the Parliament, something that shocked the sensibilities of even some of its supporters.  So did African-American Christians, but no spokesmen for the traditional religions of Africa.  Neither Native American nor any other aboriginal people were invited due to the Parliament’s express aims of seeking commonality among the “10 Great World Religions.”

When the Parliament ended after seventeen days, it was widely hailed as a success.  Religious toleration, an appreciation for certain common threads that were seen to run through all of the represented religions, and the need to promote study of comparative religion in American colleges and seminaries all got a boost.  So did the more liberal strands of Protestantism, although it also pushed conservatives to the creation of modern Christian Fundamentalism in the early 20th Century in reaction.  Interest in Eastern religion was sparked and in coming years a parade of yogis, gurus, and Buddhist masters would follow in Swami Vivekananda’s footsteps and establish American followings.

Jews and even Catholics, who had largely boycotted the Parliament benefited from the encouragement for toleration that the Parliament promoted and the brotherhood of man movement in the coming years.

Jenkin Lloyd Jones spent the rest of his life processing his experiences at the Parliament and writing about them in his books A Chorus of Faith, Seven Great Religious Teachers, and A Seven Years Course in Religion.  American Unitarianism was profoundly shaken.  The Eastern leadership of the American Unitarian Association and the General Conference of Unitarian Churches had both been drifting toward bringing Unitarianism back into the fold of respectable Christian Denominations, but the Parliament strengthened the independent streak represented by the Western Conference and encouraged the hand of non-creedalists everywhere.

The Universalists, who were marginally involved, were even more profoundly moved.  The idea that if God redeemed all souls, it was not necessary to do so through the agency of Christ or any particular set of religious beliefs took root.  Within a couple of generations Universalism would be even more post-Christian than the Unitarians.  They would come to view all religions as a path to union with God or something Greater. 

Pope Francis has expressed a kind of small u universalism as have other world religious leaders including the Dalai Lama, the late Archbishop Tutu, and Buddhist Monk Thích Nhất Hạnh. 

Liberal, or mainstream protestants would on take a more modified and limited universalism with a small u.  And recently Pope Francis has echoed similar sentiments and has been charged with deserting Catholic doctrine for reckless universalism.

And so it goes…thanks to the first World Parliament of Religion.