The Clergy Letter - from American Humanist Clergy
– An Open Letter Concerning Religion and Science
As Humanists, we have adopted a lifestance that is guided by reason, inspired by compassion, and informed by experience. Humanism is not anti-religious. It embraces a progressive philosophy which affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity. Humanist clergy serve a growing number of individuals who variously identify as Humanists, agnostics, non-religious, and atheists, and their allies, by providing leadership, moral guidance, rites of passage, and life celebration services in a similar fashion to the clergies of other traditions.
Fundamentalists of various religions who perceive the science of evolution to be in conflict with their sectarian beliefs are seeking to influence public education authorities to require or authorize the teaching of creationism or to deprecate the teaching of evolution. We see this as a breach of the separation of church and state. Those who believe in a literal interpretation of the biblical or other religious accounts of creation are free to teach their perspectives in their homes, religious institutions, and private religious schools. But to teach creationism in its various forms, or to compromise the teaching of evolution to placate religious sensibilities, in the public schools would be to assert a particular religious perspective in an environment which is supposed to be free of such indoctrination.
We, the undersigned Humanist clergy, stand in agreement with the global scientific community that the evidence of cosmological, geological, and biological evolution is overwhelming. This consensus is in no way particular to Humanism, and we stand in solidarity with our colleagues of the Christian, Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Muslim, and Buddhist faiths who have also embraced evolution as a vital scientific concept essential to public science education curricula. Teaching evolution in a public science classroom is no more an endorsement of Humanism than it would be of any of these otherwise disparate religious orientations.
We believe that evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. Omitting evolution from science teaching, or treating it dismissively as “only a theory,” miscommunicates its centrality in modern biology and threatens students’ understanding of the very nature of science. Along with our religious allies of other traditions, we ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion. We urge public education authorities to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of evolutionary theory as a core component of human knowledge.
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