Paul Raynault: 1940 - 2008

It is with great sadness that this blog mourns the passing of Paul Raynault, Ethical Culture member of 35 years, who passed away on Monday. Read his obituaries in both the Bergen Record and his beloved Student World Assembly, of which he was the founder.

Paul was a frequent attendee at Ethical Culture events, often hosted by he and wife Shelley in their home. Many is the hors doeuvre that Paul saved from obscurity by grabbing an abandoned tray and offering them to party guests. Paul would do this both at his own parties and those of his friends; wherever, it seemed, hors doeuvres were languishing. This was but one way, if perhaps the humblest, in which Paul served those both near and far to him.

You are missed.

Time Magazine 1966: Ethical Culture's Maturity

Thirty-two years ago today, on May 20, 1966, an article titled Ethical Culture's Maturity appeared in Time Magazine. It makes for interesting reading in a historical context.

Donate to Myanmar Relief via AHA

The following appeared in my inbox:

As the full extent of the devastation from Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (Burma) is revealed to the outside world, we have seen an outpouring of desire from members of humanist communities around the nation and the globe, to provide financial assistance to support the victims of the cyclone.

The American Humanist Association's relief arm, Humanist Charities, is working to identify secular, grassroots organizations that are in Myanmar (Burma), or have been operating from nearby countries. We have not finalized which organization we will be supporting, because of the scarce number of non-governmental, civil society and relief organizations that are currently operating in Myanmar (Burma).

Even with organizations that have had a history in Myanmar (Burma)---such as the Mae Tao Clinic, which provides free health care for refugees, migrant workers, and other individuals who cross the border from Burma to Thailand---their actions may currently be blocked or significantly reduced by the military junta in Myanmar (Burma).

Humanist Charities is now accepting donations for the relief efforts in Myanmar (Burma). Money donated will temporarily be held by Humanist Charities until we have located an appropriate relief agency that can make the largest impact among the survivors of Cyclone Nargis.

Donating to Humanist Charities is fast, secure and allows humanists the comfort of knowing that your money will be an unambiguous humanist means of supporting relief efforts during this current crisis.

Please make a donation to this important cause: https://www.americanhumanist.org/secure/hc_donate.php

Paver Dedication

The sun emerged from its early morning stupor to shine on the dedication of the Bergen Ethical Society's recently installed paver walkway. Paving stones are inscribed with remembrances of the past and hopes for the future.

The following photos were taken prior to the event, which was attended by NJ State Senator Loretta Weinberg, Teaneck mayor Elie Katz and American Ethical Union Executive Director Katharine Archibald, plus over 100 friends and members.

Give me the lesson without the spin

An op ed piece from the Los Angeles Times by Kearny High School student and Humanist Matthew LaClair:

Throughout my life, my teachers have told me that school is a neutral environment where my classmates and I can count on teachers and textbooks to provide us with the factual and unbiased information that will equip us for life. Lately, though, I’ve begun to wonder whether they really mean it.

In my junior year of high school in New Jersey, my U.S. history teacher used the first week of class to preach his religious beliefs. He told students, among other things, that they “belong in hell” if they reject Jesus as their savior, that evolution and the Big Bang are ridiculous and unscientific theories, and that there were dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark.

When I confronted him in the principal’s office, he denied making the remarks. What he didn’t realize was that I had recorded the classes. But even after I informed school officials what had happened, they ignored my concerns. So after more than a month, my parents and I took the news to the media.

At first, I was harassed and intimidated by other students. School officials ignored the harassment and even a death threat I received.

Only after the story became national news did the school district begin to take us seriously. After lengthy negotiations (and against continuing opposition from the school board), we finally persuaded the district to address the teacher’s false and inappropriate remarks. The Anti-Defamation League was brought in to teach the faculty about the separation of church and state, and experts in the fields of church-state separation, evolution and cosmology came to our school to conduct assemblies.

After that, I thought I was done with controversy for a while. But now, in my senior year, I am back in the midst of it. In one of my classes, we use the 10th edition of “American Government” by James Q. Wilson, a well-known conservative academic, and John J. DiIulio, a political scientist and former head of President Bush’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. (2005).

The text contains a statement, repeated three times, that students may not pray in public schools. In this edition of the text, the authors drive the point home with a photograph of students holding hands and praying outside a school. The caption reads: “The Supreme Court will not let this happen inside a public school.”

I knew this was false. In fact, students are allowed to pray in schools; courts have ruled many times that a student’s right to pray may not be abridged. What’s generally impermissible is state-sponsored prayer, in which school officials lead prayer or students are called on or required to pray. It seemed clear to me that the purpose of the discussion in the textbook was to indoctrinate, not to educate.

Continued reading revealed numerous other instances of bias, as well as erroneous and misleading statements. For example, the section on global warming begins with a few well-chosen words to set the tone: “It is a foolish politician who today opposes environmentalism. And that creates a problem because not all environmental issues are equally deserving of support. Take the case of global warming.”

The authors neglect to mention the growing scientific consensus on this subject. They dismiss those who are concerned about global warming — that is, the overwhelming majority of scientists — as “activists” motivated not by data but by “entrepreneurial politics.” Those who deny or downplay it are described as “skeptical scientists.”

Pointing out dissent within the scientific community is appropriate. Suggesting that the majority, but not the minority, is politically motivated is not appropriate. If a controversy truly exists, then the authors should not instruct students which side to “support.”

I contacted a not-for-profit group called the Center for Inquiry. It enlisted support from scientists, including James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, and organizations, including Friends of the Earth and People for the American Way, to address concerns about the textbook.

What is most distressing is not that some public school teachers preach their religion, or that some authors put politics ahead of education. It is that it is so rare for anyone to call them on it. This text is widely used. Yet to my knowledge, no one has challenged these incorrect and misleading statements.

As Americans, we should stand up for our common values. We should champion education and settle for nothing less than the best. Our teachers should do the same and should not misuse their positions to promote their personal agendas.

Hat Tip to Zev Mo.

Dr. Chuman Participates in Human Rights Symposium

Dr. Joseph Chuman, Leader of the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County, helped organize a human rights symposium, which was sponsored and hosted by FDU's Office of Global Learning in Teaneck on April 23. Read about the event and see Joe's picture here.

Charlton Heston - With You Part of Me Has Passed Away

Sometimes our psychic conflicts come unbidden. I am embarrassed to say it, but I have a Charlton Heston problem. As a kid, I loved Charlton Heston. Having sat before the big screen, I saw the Ten Commandments (the acting was so wooden it amazes me now that adults could have seen anything worthy in it. It confirms the speculations of sociologist, Theodore Roszak, that the 50s was the matrix from which the craziness of the 60s was spawned. The fifties really was a strange decade indeed!) and Ben-Hur so many times that the chiseled countenance and chiseled acting of Heston have been chiseled in my brain. He was an iconic figure bigger than life, and my early movie going has come back to haunt me.

Now that I am grown up, and Heston morphed into a far-right wing figure, whose politics represents everything anathema to me, I am left with two Charlton Hestons duking it out in my psyche.

Maybe it's just an exotic type of mourning.

Time will cure it, as it does - even if not completely - everything else.

A "Sunday School for Atheists" and Other Initiatives

Check out this Time Magazine article on the Sunday school of The Children's Program at the Humanist Community of Palo Alto, California. Here are a couple of other interesting humanist efforts in early education:

-The Ethical Community Charter Schools: charter elementary schools planning to open their doors in New York City and Jersey City in September, 2008 ("Every child will acquire the intellectual and ethical habits of mind that will foster success in education and society and the core values of ethical behavior");
-The Carl Sagan Academy: a middle school "profoundly committed to the belief that all people can, and do learn";

All of these programs had financial help from the Institute for Humanist Studies, which is the same organization that provided a grant to the Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County for our very popular television commercial.

PVHS Biology Text Book: True Science!

Ever wonder what type of science is taught in Bergen County high school biology classrooms? It was reassuring for this parent to find only science in Pearson Prentice Hall's online text book Biology: Exploring Life, which is used in the Pascack Valley Regional High School District (Montvale, Old Tappan, River Vale and Woodcliff Lake). My favorite is Unit 4: Exploring the History of Life. Check it out, if you're an evolution fan.

Obama's Race Speech

It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Barack Obama was compelled to give what will go down as an historic speech on race in America as a result of the exposure of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright's, bombasts from the pulpit excoriating the racist character of American society. Political fortunes in America are lamentably made or broken by the power of sound bites, often repeated over and over again, like Big Brother's mantras chiseling into shape the consciousness of citizens who have access to no other conflicting truths.

What is clear is that Obama has attempted to soar over the issue of race in his elevating discourse of national reconciliation and striving for the common good. It is fascinating how little we have heard from the reverends Jackson and Sharpton, and we can only imagine that it is not an accident. We can suspect that the Obama camp has worked hard to ensure that they don't wax vociferous out of fear that turning Obama into a "race candidate" will frighten white voters and ditch what has been an historic and noble effort to transform the presidency and American politics.

Whether in the absence of the Wright imbroglio, Obama would have addressed the issue of racism in America, remains, for the moment, unknown. What is certain is that having done so, Obama has furthered his reputation as a grandiloquent orator, as politically astute, indeed, as brilliant, and if this ethicist can go out on a limb, morally authentic.

As a speech, Obama's address on race was a piece of soaring rhetoric which reaches the highest circles of American political oratory. Its dialectical oscillations from the personal to the political, from the microcosmic (the finale invoking the anecdote of the 23 year-old white woman, Ashley, inspiring an elderly black man to be politically involved, could bring the most battle hardened political veteran to tears) to the macrocosmic concerns about the economy, framed the immediate and far reaching issues which have made Obama's campaign so inspiring to so many.

But Obama's speech was also an act of unmasking, and therefore approached a level of candor that politicians flee from as from poison. Not only did he condemn Jeremiah Wright's Malcolm-X style rants (he referred to him twice as his "former pastor") but he gave a long overdue frontal assault on right-wing media clowns who "built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism." Obama made explicit what everyone knows, viz., that blacks and whites when not in the company of the other will let fly racial sentiments that they would not publicly utter.

But Obama did something else which may well determine whether a great and intelligent speech (Could one imagine George W. Bush giving it?) will be politically persuasive, or remain compelling to only an elite corner of the voting public. He denounced Reverend Wright's views as being "divisive" and "distorted," while proclaiming him a beloved individual in his life. He asked his auditors to recall their loyalty to their own minister, priest or rabbi, even while dissenting from their occasional utterances. He invoked his love for his white grandmother, as he said he cringed at her occasional racist remarks. And he acknowledged the persistence of racism, while bidding his audience not to conclude that American society is static (as Wright's sermon's often implied).

In other words, Barack Obama has asked Americans to hold two contradictory ideas in their minds at the same time. Is this something that the American public, whose political sophistication has fallen beneath the bottom of the charts, can rise to entertain? If so, Barack Obama's speech may do more than nudge us beyond the "stalemate" of racial discourse to which he alludes. He may have pushed our nation ahead to a position of political seriousness.