Doubting students can join peer groups

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 21, 1999 | by Larry Witham

Secular humanists, hoping to revise their image as coldly rational, graying skeptics, are helping students organize at universities and high schools. "We have transformed ourselves into an activist-membership movement," says Paul Kurtz, founder of the Council for Secular Humanism. "We're refocusing our efforts on young people."

In 1996, the council flew eight university students to its headquarters in Amherst, Mass., to create the Campus Freethought Alliance. Since then, it has held events or launched chapters on some 80 campuses. The university clubs lend support and resources to high-school organizations. Under the Equal Access Act of 1984, high-school students can organize atheist clubs just as their counterparts do Bible clubs.

"The No. 1 thing that humanism teaches is that ethics and religion are not necessarily connected," says Chris Mooney, a recent Yale graduate who joined the alliance in 1998. In February, he and fellow students organized a debate titled, "Does God Exist?" pitting Free-Thought members against Campus Crusade for Christ members. The event drew an audience of 400. The alliance hopes to promote similar debates monthly on different North American campuses.

Humanist efforts to organize a student movement are not new. The American Humanist Association, or AHA, tried it with campus Jefferson Societies. "The problem with colleges is that students graduate," says Ed Doerr, AHA president.

Mooney agrees that freethinkers need to build a community. "We ask ourselves, `What can be the humanist song?'" he says. "Is it `Imagine'?" as in the John Lennon composition. "It's tough."