The World Humanist Congress is the single largest assembly of worldwide humanists, atheists, and members of other secular organizations. It is generally held once every three years. This year was a conference year, and the conference was held in Ottawa Canada.1
The congress was held from August 7th to 9th, with theme of “Humanism As Resistance” and drew over 500 delegates from 41 countries. Other than the US and Canada, my guess is that Norway had the most attendees.
The Middle TN Humanists were represented by myself (Steven Phelps) and Georgia Phelps!
We saw a lot of people we already knew, like Darrel Ray, founder of Recovering from Religion, Anthony Magnabosco, the YouTube star of Street Epistemology, Nick Fish, President of American Atheists, Fish Stark, executive director of the American Humanist Association, Steve Ghikadis, author and humanist officiant, Robert Hamilton, one of Georgia’s SEI (Street Epistemology International) board members and President of Humanist Ottawa, James Croft, former chaplain of the Ethical Society of St. Louis and current chaplain of the University of Sussex, UK, and Evan Clark, president of Atheist United in California (the originator of the atheist “street pirates”).
We also made friends with folks from Canada, Norway and across the US!
Here are a few highlights of the conference:
- Sarah Wilkens-Laflamme, a statistics nerd, documented that all across the world, as each generation replaces the previous one, the world is becoming increasingly secular. As MLK stated, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.” Ya! We’re on the right track.
- A panel on “what are we resisting” informed us of, well, what we are resisting. For example, in Ghana, anti-LGBTQ laws are increasingly draconian. Additionally, female genital mutilation2 and polygamy3 are still widely practiced there. In both in Canada and the US, there has been a rise of fundamentalist nationalist political factions. In Peru, freedom of speech is met with the use of force. But it isn’t all doom and gloom. In Romania, where the school calendar notes some religious event on each day, the Romanian Secular Humanist Association created a science calendar that has been adopted for school use. It cerebrates a scientific breakthrough or discovery on each day.
- James Croft and Greg Epstein (Greg is a chaplain at both Harvard and M.I.T4) had a fireside chat about the need for humanist celebrants and chaplains in universities, the military and in other areas of society.
- A.C Grayling, a British philosopher, author, and former professor gave a humorous and inspirational talk about secular ethics, defending reason, and democratic values.
The schedule for the next World Humanist Congress has been moved up ahead of schedule to 2027 in an effort to harness momentum generated in 2026, boost support for South American countries, respond to the growing attacks from religious nationalism, and combat the worldwide rise of authoritarianism!
My personal biggest takeaway is that we all have a role in promoting humanism as
the best alternative to religion.
When we smile, when we help others, when we bear the countenance of happiness and contentment, then speak about humanism, we enrich and educate our world.
When we get the chance to use the word “humanism”, let’s do it. When we get the chance to tell people about the ten commitments, let’s speak up. Make a post on social media. Like, share, re-post, thumbs up, spread the good news, send us some videos for our website, support other organizations that align with humanist values. All these efforts, small as they may be individually, make a collective difference.
Live out your best humanist life.
OK! This is not directly a report on the World Humanist Congress, but it was so cool: On the way back home, Georgia and I stopped outside Pittsburgh to visit “Falling Water”, a famous home designed by architect Frank Lloyd Wright (Wowser! What a spectacle).
- The conference was originally scheduled to be held in D.C, but the blustering cheeto’s administration has made the US so hostile to anyone other than Christian Nationalists, it was decided to move it to Canada, where people are still nice 🙂 ↩︎
- Alhassan, A. R., & Anyinzaam-Adolipore, J. N. (2021). Female Genital Mutilation in Ghana: Prevalence and Socioeconomic Predictors. BioMed research international, 2021, 6675579. https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6675579 ↩︎
- While having multiple, consensual partners is not an issue per se, the practice of polygamy is regressive and rooted in inequality ↩︎
- Unrelated to Jeffrey ↩︎
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