Are We A Religion Yet?

Dennis P. Geller, Ph.D.

The Winter, 2002 issue of this journal Humanistic Judaism asked the question "Is Humanistic Judaism a Religion?" The vote was apparently 5-to-1 in favor of our being a religion. However, a careful study of the articles suggests that the vote was more like 1-1-1-1-1-1. Each author began with a different definition or interpretation of religion. Not unlike the famous story of the blind men and the elephant, we naturally got six different view of how we do or do not fit into the model of a religion. Each of them was well-reasoned and well-supported, and each could be adopted by the Movement as its answer to the question.

The diversity of answers to the question "Is Humanistic Judaism a Religion?" suggests that, however intriguing, it may be the wrong question for us to ask. Put another way, what difference would it make if we had an answer that we all agreed on? Would our ethical beliefs change? Would we increase — or decrease — our feelings of connection to the historical Jewish people, or to the Hasidim across town? Would we, by answering this question, know how much Hebrew or Yiddish to teach in our Sunday Schools, how much Humanism we can legitimately find in Tanakh, or whether our resources are better spent on training rabbis or on training madrikhim? Clearly, the answer to these questions is "no."

Were we to decide that we are not a religion there is one possible consequence. Although Joseph Chuman[Humanistic Judaism XX,1, 2002, p. 11] points out that we meet the fairly inclusive definition of religion now used by the U.S. Courts, we might find, if we declare ourselves not to be a religion, that it is no longer ethically appropriate for us to accept the legal benefits of religious status, such as our tax status and our right to "ordain" people who are viewed as "clergy" by the various states and provinces. This issue will not be explored here.

Nobody — and certainly not Rabbi Chalom, who wrote the one argument that we are not a religion[ibid., p. 21] -- is arguing that we give up these advantages that normally accrue to religions. Thus it seems that our view of what it means to be, or not to be, a religion is, in operational terms, mostly about how we present ourselves –to others and to ourselves.

With two exceptions that will be addressed later, the six authors who wrote on the topic seem to have accepted this evaluation. Some write about the advantages that being considered a religion will provide for us, and others write about why we should be comfortable considering ourselves a religion on the basis of what we already do, without much arguing that we will do it better or more beautifully once we agree to don the mantle of "religion."

The two exceptions are both found in Karen Levy’s article[ibid., p. 14]. She suggests that "when we see ourselves as a religion, we will have greater expectations of ourselves." These expectations include that we will become "full-service congregations meeting regularly … professional clergy available to respond effectively and compassionately … when needed, not merely when resources allow" and other operational changes that would result from a changed and unified mindset. The comment of hers that stands as the other exception to the general observation made above is this: "Without the structure of religion it is not likely that Secular Humanistic Judaism will survive as a meaningful force in the Jewish people and in the world."

In this article we will explore a different dimension of what it might mean to us to identify ourselves as a religion. Our perception is quite consonant with Levy’s, that we need to evolve to have the kinds of structures and expectations and levels of professionalism and commitment that religions have. However, religions are not the only organizations with those qualities: many well-run businesses and governmental units offer similar models. Why choose to accept the model of religion?

That this model would have external political or fiscal advantages is not the point. As Chuman notes the law lets us reap those advantages based on the way we operate. And while calling ourselves a religion might have the beneficial results that Levy describes, we must bear in mind an anecdote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. In one version of the story Lincoln was questioning a witness whose grasp on the truth seemed to be a bit tenuous. Lincoln asked, "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?" The witness answered "Five," but Lincoln of course countered "No. Four. Calling it a leg doesn’t make it a leg."

Two of the articles previously mentioned looked at the dictionary for their starting point. Levy found that the second and third definitions in her dictionary made no reference to a deity, but instead defined a religion on behavioral and structural grounds. Chalom noted that whatever the dictionary might say, most people think of religion as involving god. Both approaches have validity, but neither addresses the question before us, which I would phrase as "Should we make a conscious choice to be a religion?"

Of course we need some sense of what "religion" means to answer this question, but any search in a general dictionary will find what Levy and Chalom did: the primary meaning involves a deity, and subsequent ones may refer to a cause, principle, or system of beliefs. Unfortunately, those later definitions are sometimes general enough to include vegetarianism, civil rights advocacy and laissez-faire economic theory.

Scholars of religion have their own plethora of definitions of course. In Early Judaism. Martin Jaffee offers:

Of course there are as many scholarly definitions as there are scholars, but most modern ones will have similar components, including these:

1. style of life
2. morally binding connections between the self, the human community, and the most essential structures of reality.
3. posit various orders of reality
4. comprehensive patters of behavior
5. beliefs
6. ritual
7. encourage human beings to interpret themselves as moral beings whose destiny is bound with others in a project that brings them into relationship with the fundamental reality of things.

Of these seven principles only the third is truly irrelevant to us; while our members may hold beliefs that posit different orders of reality (such as deism or alternate universe theories) Humanistic Judaism itself takes no position on these.

As for the other six, they can be matched against a dichotomy proposed by Hershl Hartman. Hartman speaks of the Secularist/Humanist alliance as being founded upon two principles:

• personal ethics, morality and rejection of the supernatural (items 2,5,7)
• discovering and nurturing our roots as individuals in the collective history and culture of our peoplehood (items 1, 6)

As indicates, Hartman’s principles touch on five of the six remaining components of Jaffee’s definition. The one that is not easily subsumed is 4, comprehensive patterns of behavior. Had the phrase been only "patterns of behavior" it would easily fit within Hartman’s second principle. There are many behaviors that are unique to our roots. But, largely because of our rejection of belief in supernatural authority and control, these behaviors are not comprehensive in the way they would be in the lives of the religious. Even so, we can profitably consider the weaker statement "patters of behavior" to be a match to Hartman’s second principle.

Looking more closely, we see that others of the numbered components of a religion are also, for us, not nearly as central and compelling as is generally the case in religions. Although we take numbers 2 and 7 for granted, issues of moral behavior are not, in general, at the forefront of our discussions at the National level. One might argue that this is a good thing — that it indicates that we share a common ethical and moral underpinning, while at the same time recognizing that these issues do not lend themselves to simple doctrinal answers. On the other hand, it also reflects our lack of attention, as a Movement, to the fundamental principles of Humanism as expressed in the two Humanist Manifestos, and to our lack of official engagement with difficult issues of moral behavior; as an organization we take principled stands, and many individuals and communities have admirable engagement in social issues, but we do not have a high level dialogue about the sources and implications of our ethical principles.

It is also true that "rituals" for us are fairly sparse. Many of our members see ritual as necessarily implying either loss of control or loss of critical thought And, while we have some sense of sharing beliefs, what we share is mostly negative — not believing in God — and not a few of our members had expressed frustration at not having a more positive foundational message to offer as an explanation to outsiders.

Arguably, therefore, in some key characteristics we are not at all like a religion. And those are areas, for the most part, that we tend to associate with the negatives of religion — dogmatic beliefs, imposed rituals and behaviors, authoritarianly decreed morals. Why would we ever want to become more like a religion?

Why indeed? Here’s the nub of the matter. First, religions in general, and the Jewish religions in particular, have shown their ability to persist as stable organizations for long periods of time. In that sentence, "stable" does not mean "rigid." Judaism has constantly evolved and reinvented itself to meet changing needs and circumstances. Much the same can be said for Christianity, and although we in the West may not see it much, Islam also has built-in mechanisms that allow for diversity and change. Second, religions at their best, have the capability to meet some real needs. True, we tend to focus more on the needs which were met by ancient religions but are of little interest to us. Among these are the need to be reassured that there’s a sky-Daddy who is watching over us, and the need to believe there’s a reason for the pain and suffering in the world.

Religions provide a very special community, in which the members share those things that they value highest. This is already what our communities succeed at best: we come together around traditions, ethnicity (= family), moral behavior (= social action), learning, and transmission of values to the next generation. This doesn’t make us a religion of course — communities that consider themselves part of the Secularist tradition exhibit these qualities without the angst that SHJ communities feel about the issue of being a religion.

There are two differences between these Secularist communities, largely CSJO affiliates, and others, largely SHJ affiliates, that seem important here. First, the Secular communities are not typically Humanist in expressed philosophy. Their reasons for existing, based on their history, have much more to do with the choice to be secular than with the choice to affirm a particular Humanistic philosophy. In a public e-mail on the HJ list Judith Seid puts this well:

Here we have communities of people who have a significant recent shared experience that encompasses many of the advantages of a religion. By contrast, many SHJ communities cannot find such a degree of commonality among their members — only a common desire to find a way to "be" Jewish without compromising their beliefs. For many of them Humanism is a relatively new idea — perhaps not fully understood as yet — that has the potential to connect their ethics and beliefs (numbers 2,5, and 7 above) with the traditions and cultural history they wish to remain connected with. For these communities Humanism takes the place — or does so potentially — of the religious content they associate with those traditions.

To sum up this line of reasoning, the stability and function of a community is enhanced by a common bond, and for many of the communities in this movement, religious Humanism has the potential to serve that function.

Why "religious" and not "secular" Humanism? In part because of the list of functions of religions extracted from Jaffee’s definition, In part, too because of Levy’s observations. The religious model brings with it trappings of structure that can be quite helpful in helping these communities build. It helps define them to the outside world, and gives them models of growth and change. These models, incidentally, do not require a religious hierarchy. In the early Rabbinic religion (through the 17^th century, in fact) the Rabbi was not analogous to the Priest or Minister as head of the Synagogue — that role evolved only with the growth of Reform. Even today there are Chavurot of all flavors that are self-led.

However, recall Lincoln’s dictum. Just calling ourselves a religion does not make us one. We have shown tendencies of growing fruitfully toward that self-image, and it has been argued here that there are some good reasons to continue in that direction. But to do so we would have to come to grips with what we would do differently to make of ourselves a religion that enhances our potential without interfering with what we do well and how we see ourselves. But that’s a different topic…