Answering the critics who find humanism lacking the power to inspire, Murry brings a new vision of religious humanism?one that evokes compassion, spirituality and a language of reverence while grounded in reason, community, social responsibility, science and ethics. Along with an accessible account of humanism's historical development, theological challenges and future directions, on these pages readers will discover a more open and inclusive humanism, one that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.
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About the Author
William R. Murry served as president and academic dean of Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago from 1997 to 2003, was minister of River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland from 1981 to 1997 and has been a college professor and a college chaplain. He holds a doctorate in theology and culture from Drew University and a master of divinity degree from Yale University. He is the author of A Faith for All Seasons: Liberal Religion and the Crises of Life (Rover Road Press). He and his wife, Barbara, have three children and four grandchildren.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a little trite, but all true,
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This review is from: Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century (Paperback)
This is a fine statement of the principles of religious humanism. If you wonder what religious humanism is, the answer is here. There is a history of humanism, a discussion of "the epic of evolution," and several chapters essentially on ethics and well-being.Nothing especially revolutionary or inspiring here, just the solid truth, simply stated. Here're an excerpt, sort of the thesis statement of the book, to give you an example of the writing style: "To be religious does not require that one accept the existence of a supernatural being. To be religious is a matter of one's attitude toward all of life. The religious aspect of humanism consists of an appreciation of the dignity and worth of every person; reverence and wonder at the world of nature, at human creativity, and at life itself; a sense of the unity of all things; joy in human community; and a commitment to a cause that transcends the self (p. 11)."
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Emboldening a new old vision,
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This review is from: Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century (Paperback)
REASON AND REVERENCE by the Rev. William R. Murry was written with the express intent of revitalizing humanism within Unitarian Universalism by grounding it in religious naturalism. The book is getting mixed reviews among 'old-school' humanists, apparently, as I've read comments to the effect that there's nothing that needs revitalizing, that Murry is succumbing to the rage for spirituality by diluting classical humanism with a touchy-feely naturalism, and so on. I've also read comments by theists chiding Murry for his unabashed nontheism.Murry feels that classical humanism, the humanism of 1933 Manifesto, was overly optimistic about social progress and unmindful of the human capacity for evil. Additionally, he feels that its anthropocentrism and disregard for the intrinsic value of nature have been complicit in nature's despoliation. Further, he feels that by neglecting the affective component of human religiosity, particularly its capacity for awe and reverence, humanism has become dessicated and unresponsive. Murry insists that not only does humanism need religious naturalism, naturalism needs religious humanism to add an ethical dimension not immediately derivable from amoral nature. He feels that peace, justice, and particularly reverence for life are properly humanistic values which, when added to a religious response to nature, complete a stance he calls humanistic religious naturalism. I have not done justice to the book in these paragraphs. I would hope people in addition to UUs would read it. In my very humble opinion this book is a milestone in nontheistic liberal religion and I heartily recommend it.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a neat and timely little book,
By noeton (Pennsylvania) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Reason and Reverence: Religious Humanism for the 21st Century (Paperback)
"Naturalism" of the early modern period meant that matter was in some sense alive - contained in itself a vital power that was the source of its motion, rather than that matter as such is inert and subject to force (Newton). However, that sense of naturalism has little to do with the movement called Naturalism today, which merely claims that nature is all that is, there is no "super-nature" or divine either in matter or beyond this life, and to which we must appeal for meaning or to secure an ethics (theology is superfluous: myth-making at best, ideological manipulation at worst) nor simply to explain the natural world (metaphysics is unnecessary given the success of natural sciences).The book makes a very reasonable claim that we should seek to restore our sense of awe and wonder at the universe. Philosophy (the break from mythological explanation to rational) begins with wonder, Plato noted so long ago, when we had only the naked eye to stoke our fascination. The contemporary scientific account of the cosmos is like a fountain of awe and wonder, heretofore not fully tapped by humankind as a whole, and which can sustain and elevate our childhood awe at the night sky throughout adult life. Consider that with the naked eye, on a good night away from the city, we can see about 6000 celestial objects. But we now know there are billions upon billions of stars in the universe and innumerable galaxies lying at unimaginable distances beyond our own. The naked eye and the Hubble telescope are not in competition for our wonder. They are two roads to the same thing. The book and its proposed Humanistic Religious Naturalism is precisely a response to the problem of the theoretical science of nature itself being, in a strict sense, non-moral or a-moral; this does not mean anti-moral (against morality), but that it concerns itself with nothing either moral nor immoral: that is, pure science is interested in "just the facts," not what we ought to do about them. Practical and applied science takes facts and creates machines of all sorts, including biological and medicinal technology, to ease life; so that doctors can produce health, etc. Here the fields of ethics and certainly bioethics need to be brought in to regulate how we transition from facts to morals - not something one can do in a simple logical maneuvre (David Hume's insight; can't derive an "ought" from an "is"). So Science gives us the Truth of Nature & there is no God in any traditional sense ("God" at best a metaphor for stuff like love, goodness, etc. - so if it's a metaphor, why do we need the theology language? Why not just talk about love and goodness? is one nice idea in the book); hence we need a system of morals. The book attempts to demonstrate that aspects of the legacy of religious and atheistic Humanism can coherently be woven into the current of contemporary Naturalism at the level of the big political issues of our time as well as at the personal level, and thus we can avoid the problem of nihilism without regressing to "clinging to guns and religion." I don't agree with every detail but think the author makes an excellent case and the book is an inspiring and pleasant read. It is certainly good to know that there are people out there talking about this stuff in a serious way, in contrast to being aggressive polemical snoots about it and with inflammatory geo-strategic, not to mention personal, agendas (to draw an example from thin air, for instance... Chris Hitchens). At the same time, the book offers a solid worldview for the informed layperson who might be dissatisfied with certain out-of-date humanisms, and nicely threads the needle between anti-monotheistic obscurantism and hard-core Naturalism, which is a bit stale and sometimes a tad crazy - like it's only the privileged domain of biological specialists who are the only ones truly "in the know." Definitely worth checking out. From this book I also discovered the author's previous book, which is pretty good too: "A Faith for All Seasons" (not to be confused with another book of the same title). It's a fine supplement to this volume, as it deals with more personal crisis-of-life and life-purpose matters in pragmatic and sensitive but non-classically religious terms. (I had no idea Unitarians were so interesting until I read this guy!) A faith for all seasons: Liberal religion and the crises of life
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