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Humanists International 1952-2002 (book on our history)
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In August 1952, the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) was founded, now known today as Humanists International. At that moment, organized modern humanism already had a tradition of at least a hundred years, including other international federations that are reckoned among the humanist tradition. One can discern four ‘generations’ of modern humanism, originating around 1850, 1890, 1918, and 1945, three of which came together in IHEU in 1952.
Four generations of organized humanism
The oldest generation is formed by atheists, including freethinkers, rationalists, and secularists, who explicitly reject all religion. This movement originated in the mid-nineteenth century in Western Europe and America. The various organizations of freethinkers soon met at international congresses and in 1880 they founded the World Union of Freethinkers (WUFT), which still exists. The WUFT was quite active in the years around 1952, which explains why no outspoken freethinker organizations were among the IHEU founders.
However, from the 1980s they increasingly joined IHEU. The second generation is formed by the so-called free-religious or ‘ethical culture’ groups, which sprung up in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Historically, these groups have Jewish and Protestant roots but they became progressively more liberal, until at last they identified religious feelings with a sense of belonging to one great cosmic unity and no longer recognized a personal God. In 1896, at a Zürich congress, ethical societies from the USA, Great Britain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France united themselves in the International Ethical Union (IEU). From 1908 until 1932 this organization held a congress every four years. But, when the Second World War broke out the IEU ceased to exist. Representative of the ethical tradition among the founders of IHEU were the American Ethical Union (AEU, founded 1889, with forerunners from 1876), the British Ethical Union (BEU, founded 1896, forerunners from 1886), and the Gemeinschaft für Ethische Kultur or Ethische Gemeinde Wien (Vienna Ethical Society; founded 1902, forerunners from 1894). The important Bund Frei-Religiöser Gemeinden Deutschlands (BFGD, Association of Free-Religious Communities in Germany) joined IHEU in 1960.
“Man is, at last, becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.”
The third generation is that of the American humanists from the interbellum, a group sprouting from the Unitarian denomination who, in the graphic words of Nicolas Walter, “having discarded the second and third persons of the Trinity, […] discarded the first person too, replacing supernaturalism and theism with naturalism and humanism.”
From the late 1920s, they left the American Ethical Union. They considered themselves to be “religious humanists,” and founded the American Humanist Association (AHA, legally established 1941). In 1933, at the height of the economic crisis of the 1930s, a group of these humanists presented the religious and ethical views of their modern liberal humanism in a public declaration, A Humanist Manifesto (the first one). It declared that conventional religions, including “new thought” varieties, had been superseded, and that “to establish [a new] religion is a major necessity of the present.” This religion, emphatically called “religious humanism,” “maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life.” This meant “a heightened sense of personal life and a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.” The manifesto concluded:
‘Though we consider the religious forms and ideas of our fathers no longer adequate, the quest for the good life is still the central task for mankind. Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power for its achievement. He must set intelligence and will to the task.”
Participants of the IHEU Congress, 1952, at Oudemanhuispoort, University of Amsterdam
Here it should be noted that the combinations “religious humanism” or “humanist religion” in the past had another emotional value than they have today. Today we, as humanists, take humanism for granted and it is the adjective “religious” that makes us frown. In the 1930s it was just the other way around: religion was respectable, and it was the word ‘humanist’ in ‘humanist religion’ that made eyebrows rise. Yet, the word ‘humanism’ stuck, as is shown by another initiative from the interbellum, which anticipated future close connections between IHEU and United Nations organizations. In 1922 a forerunner of UNESCO was formed, the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation (IIIC), a subsidiary to the League of Nations. Humanist in spirit, it devoted its 1936 yearly convention to the theme Vers UN nouvel humanisme (Towards a new humanism), producing what has been described as “a program for an ‘ethical humanism'”. IIIC’s president was Julian S. Huxley, who in 1945 became Director-General of UNESCO and who in 1952 opened the first IHEU congress.
Finally, a fourth generation of humanism arose in the aftermath of the Second World War and gave the actual impetus to the founding of IHEU. It consists of two synchronous but fully distinct movements, one in the Low Countries and one in India. In the Netherlands Jaap van Praag, himself of Jewish descent, wondered why Western civilization had not put up more resistance against Nazism and fascism. As a major cause he pointed at widespread ‘nihilism’ (moral indifference) in spite of the fact that most people considered themselves to be ‘religious’, and he stressed the importance of a moral awareness based on human values. In addition, as a socialist Van Praag aimed at breaking through the rigid compartmentalization of Dutch society on the basis of religious denominations. Van Praag became the key force behind the founding of the Dutch Humanistisch Verbond (Humanist League, HV) in 1946, designed as a broad and pluriform humanist movement. In Belgium, a comparable Belgian Humanistisch Verbond (HV(b)) was founded in 1951.
In India, the process of decolonization that followed the end of the Second World War led Manabendra Nath Roy to found an Indian Radical Humanist Movement (IRHM). Originally this had been a political party striving for independence, but Roy arrived at the conclusion that politics was corruptible (you have to make concessions to win votes) and so in 1948 he decided to reconstruct his party into a social movement. Although contacts between India and Western Europe were difficult, his movement became one of the founders of IHEU.
Preparations for a new federation
Though the ieu had disappeared in the late 1930s, during the Second World War there remained informal contacts between American and English humanists. For example, Lloyd Morain, who was serving as a field representative of the AHA in the US Air Corps in England during the latter part of the war, had informal meetings with several British humanists. Among them were Harold J. Blackham, active in the beu and from 1945 its Secretary, as well as leaders of the Rationalist Press Association (rpa) and humanist scientists such as science sociologist John Desmond Bernal.
Morain later remembered how they all hoped for increased international contacts between humanists after the war. Blackham also pleaded vigorously, from 1944 on, for a new international humanist organization to provide a synthesis of all ‘constructive’ forms of humanism, that would absorb and transcend the existing freethinker organizations. Among those whom he convinced, were men like biologist Julian Huxley and philosopher and freethinker Bertrand Russell.
After the war Blackham at first kept trying to work via the World Union of Freethinkers (WUFT). He took the initiative in organizing its first post-war conference (April-May 1946), held in London in Conway Hall, home of the South Place Ethical Society. The theme of the conference was ‘The challenge of humanism’. According to Blackham, this challenge was to reach a ‘marriage’ between ‘scientific humanism’ and ‘literary humanism’. As the Cold War unfolded, Blackham presented this cooperation between Rationalists and Liberal Humanists as ‘a Third Force between the main developed alternatives of Christianity and Marxism’ (1948). In 1947 Blackham and J. Hutton Hynd, a leader of the AEU, visited the Netherlands to ‘identify’ the Dutch Humanist League, which had been founded a year before. To explore the possibilities of closer international co-operation, they met with its President Jaap van Praag.
The three distrusted the WUFT, partly because they were suspicious of its communist sympathies, but more specifically because of its vehement and negative atheism and anti-religionism, which they thought was too negative and counterproductive. What was needed, was a more positive alternative to religions. This idea had fallen on fertile ground in the Netherlands, for the Humanist Dutch League grew fast since 1946, while the refounded old style Dutch freethinker movement remained as small as ever. By the time IHEU was founded, in 1952, the Dutch HV had more members than any other of the founding organizations, perhaps excepting the Indian Radical Humanist Movement.
Tasting the freethinkers: Rome 1949
From 9-12 September, 1949, the freethinkers organized their first international World Congress after the war, in Rome. Delegations of the Dutch (Van Praag and international secretary Mrs. Henriàtte Polak-Schwarz) and British (Blackham) humanist organizations attended this congress, eager to experience the atmosphere within the WUFT at first hand. The two major American associations, the AEU and AHA, were absent from the congress, though the latter was a WUFT member. For Van Praag and Blackham the congress was a great disappointment. True, they got on well with freethinkers from Northern Europe such as M.C. Bradlaugh Bonner from the RPA, who was ‘the amiable president’ of the congress, or the Dutch freethinker Anton Constandse. But Van Praag and Blackham perceived a huge gap between the congress participants from Anglo-Saxon, Protestant countries on the one hand, and from Latin, Catholic countries on the other.
“It took another three years before a congress was convoked to discuss the principles of the proposed organization and to decide on its practical realization. The preparatory work was done by five humanist organizations…”
This became especially clear from a discussion on the relation between humanism and freethought, which was one of the three central themes at the congress. The northern freethinkers saw the battle against religion and church only as a means to be able to create a positive life stance that could inspire non-religious people. The southerners, however, saw this battle as an aim in itself. In fact, the door was virtually slammed in the face of the humanists as the congress decided that ‘there could be no weakening of Freethought policy to accommodate Humanist Societies’. Van Praag considered this to be a negative, sterile approach. ‘The Italians and the French did not understand a single letter of our stance’, he wrote in a report on the congress, though he admitted that for them ‘it was not easy to get an understanding of modern humanism in only a few discussions’. Yet his conclusion was that ‘the question arises whether facts do not impel us to accept the idea of an entirely different form of consciousness-awakening in Catholic and non-Catholic countries’. Though he did not exclude entirely the possibility that the ‘Latin’ WUFT members would eventually come to accept the modern humanist views, he suggested that presently it might be useful to establish a new close connection between the humanist organizations in the Anglo-Saxon countries and the Netherlands.
The IHEU founding congress: Amsterdam 1952
It took another three years before a congress was convoked to discuss the principles of the proposed organization and to decide on its practical realization. The preparatory work was done by five humanist organizations: American Ethical Union, American Humanist Association, British Ethical Union, Vienna Ethical Society, and Dutch Humanist League who also hosted the congress. Various kindred organizations had been invited to attend the congress; several sent delegations and during the congress two of them, the Belgian HV and the Indian IRHM, decided to become co-founders. Incidentally, the timing of the congress was remarkable, for it coincided almost exactly with a rival congress: from 22 to 27 August the freethinkers’ WUFT held its congress at Brussels. Whether this was accidental is not known.
A problem that arose immediately was a confusion of tongues. Words such as ‘humanism’, ‘ethicism’, ‘secularism’, or ‘religion’ did not mean the same to everyone. This problem became acute when a name for the new federation had to be found. The Americans preferred to call it ‘Ethical’, the Europeans ‘Humanist’. To the Americans, especially the AEU, ‘humanism’ smacked of pragmatism, positivism and rationalism, which ill-fitted their own idealistic background. Conversely, to the Europeans the word ‘ethical’ had become a neutral synonym of the word ‘moral’ and had nothing specifically humanist about it. It may sound incredible, but it took fourteen hours of deliberation before a brilliantly simple solution was reached: the organization was to be called International Humanist and Ethical Union.
IHEU member organizations, 1952
The Amsterdam congress was attended by more than two hundred participants. It was truly international: half of the participants were Dutch, but no less than thirty-five visitors came from the United Kingdom and thirty from the United States. There were considerable delegations from France, Germany and Belgium as well, and visitors from Japan, Australia, Finland and Austria. The largest delegations came from organizations that had been co-organizing the congress, or at least had been invited beforehand to join the prospective federation. For example, from France a delegation from Les Amis de la Liberté was present, though in the end they decided not to become a member. They did favor the general basic assumptions, such as defense of individual liberty and promotion of social justice and of mutual understanding, contact and communication, but would not narrow this down to the ‘more precise, and more exclusive, principles and aims’ of an explicitly ‘humanist’ organization. They accepted, in other words, humanism, but kept clear of Humanism.
‘One must have a hand before one can make a fist’
The congress began Thursday evening, August 21, and lasted until Tuesday afternoon, August 26. The prospective chairman was biologist, self-proclaimed ‘scientific humanist’ and first Director General of UNESCO Julian Huxley. Blackham, a staunch supporter of cooperation between IHEU and the United Nations, had persuaded him to preside. Blackham’s commitment to UN ideals may be seen as an expression of hope in a dark era. It is chilling to realize that most participants of the Amsterdam congress had been witness to the First World War, the Great Depression, the Second World War, and then the Cold War. When that last one broke out in the late 1940s, prospects of a better, more peaceful, democratic and human world seemed crushed again, as George Orwell’s Nineteen eighty-four (1949) testifies. At the time of the congress, the Korean War was in full course; in America McCarthy’s witch-hunt against cryptocommunists was at its height. Against this background, the bright spots during the last decade seemed very few: mainly the institution of the United Nations in 1945 and its adoption of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. It was no coincidence that the Amsterdam congress explicitly emphasized its support to both. As Huxley had fallen ill, the Congress was opened by Jaap van Praag, chairman of the Organizing Committee, who summed up the aims of calling the congress: ‘First to draft a conception of humanism on an international level, and second to establish permanent relations between humanist and ethical groups all over the world’. Van Praag explicitly warned that founding a new international organization when there exists the WUFT should not be interpreted as an act of enmity. Implicitly, however, he worded his criticism of the freethinkers in the sequel.
‘If we are convinced of the necessity to shape humanism and ethical culture as a positive and constructive philosophy of life [italics added-ed.], we cannot do without an international institution that answers this conviction.’
Yet, Van Praag carefully added that there were good personal relations between humanists and freethinkers. Some freethinkers did indeed take part in the congress, and ultimately some organizations of freethinkers would join IHEU, though not many from WUFT core areas such as Mediterranean Europe. Van Praag stressed the need for self-organization before intervening in practical world-problems.
‘One must first have a hand before making a fist. Our first task is to give international humanism hands now. […] So our first duty is to develop our national movements and to gather the scattered sparks of humanism all over the world.’