• 129 Mount Auburn Street (map below)
• 2,740 square feet
• Event space, 2 conference/classrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, plenty of office/workspace
• Glass store-front with visible signage
• Located on the ground floor (5 steps down, plenty of natural light)
• Renovations to take place this summer of 2013
• Rent starts at $68,500 for 2013-14, increases slightly each additional year
• Grand opening target: Fall 2013

How We Will Use It:

• National headquarters for the Humanist Community Project
• Harvard Humanist/secular student meetings
• Humanist community meetings
• Humanist Learning Lab (kids/family programs, child care)
• Values in Action intercommunity community service projects
• Ethical Society of Boston weekly platforms
• Sunday Assembly meetings
• Boston Atheists brunches, lectures, discussions, etc.
• Greater Boston Humanists meetings
• Secular Coalition for MA lobbying planning meetings
• And more, TBD

Absolutely none of this is funded by Harvard University. Our board and existing donors have helped us get to the point where we can guarantee basic rent for the next few years. Any/all funds to renovate and turn the space into a functioning center must come from community members and supporters like you. We are a 501c3 non-profit; gifts are tax- deductible. Details about our specific needs and naming opportunities will be published soon. In the meantime, feel free to contact us (info@harvardhumanist.org) or make a donation now!

This morning, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard Greg Epstein and our Research and Education Fellow James Croft announced a deal to write a new book for publisher Simon and Schuster: home to Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Bertrand Russell…and since the book will be on the development of close, morally intense, inspiring, values-based communities without God, we might mention S&S is also home to some of the greatest theorists on religious community, such as Robert Putnam and Max Weber. Our new editorial team, headed by Thomas LeBien, (also works with Sam Harris, among others) absolutely blew us away with their passion to promote the idea of Humanist communities and nonreligious congregations around the world. BUT…

RT @jflcroft Announcing “The Godless Congregation”, upcoming book by @goodwithoutgod & I, published by @simonschuster ow.ly/kZBPY

— Simon & Schuster (@simonschuster) May 13, 2013

…THAT’S NOT ALL.

Also announcing: our brand new community space– a new center and headquarters for the Humanist Community at Harvard and the Humanist Community Project, in the heart of Harvard Square!

Basic information about the new space:

• We envision partnering with all local secular/Humanist/nontheist communities
• 2740 square feet, in the heart of Harvard Square
• There will be event space, 2 conference/classrooms, kitchen, 2 bathrooms, plenty of office/workspace
• There will be a glass store-front; we’ll have signs visible from the street
• Located on the ground floor (5 steps down, plenty of natural light)
• Renovations to take place this summer of 2013
• Rent starts at $68,500 for 2013-14, increases slightly each additional year
• Grand opening target: Fall 2013

What we intend to do with the space:

• National headquarters for the Humanist Community Project
• Harvard Humanist/secular student meetings
• Humanist community meetings
• Humanist Learning Lab (kids/family programs, child care)
• Values in Action intercommunity community service projects
• Ethical Society of Boston weekly platforms
• “Sunday Assembly” meetings?
• Boston Atheists brunches, lectures, discussions, etc.
• Greater Boston Humanists meetings
• Secular Coalition for MA lobbying planning meetings
• Much more to come: check back here for details!

What kind of help we need:

#1: Money! Cash, Moolah, Dough, Dinero, Scratch, Greenbacks, Legal Tender: Absolutely none of this is funded by Harvard University. Our board and existing donors have helped us get to the point where we can guarantee basic rent for the next few years. Any/all funds to renovate and turn the space into a functioning center must come from community members and supporters like you. We are a 501c3 non-profit; gifts are tax- deductible. Please donate today and/or watch for more details about giving opportunities.

What else we need:

We’re going to need lots more help, from professionals and volunteers, as this process moves forward: renovations, interior design, flooring and painting will all be professionally done. Then we’ll need furniture, technology, appliances, new volunteers to staff new and existing committees, and much more. Watch this space and of course join our mailing list and follow us on facebook for updates.

We can’t wait to share our next steps with you! There’s never been a better time to get excited about and involved in building Humanist/secular/”godless” community.

Our team’s fundraising goal is an ambitious $10,000. With your help, I think we can get there!

1. Join our team. Click here to get to our team page, then scroll down a bit to the team roster and click “Join Team” next to the title. Having trouble? Email our fearless team captain, Dan Harris of SSOMIT, at dmh [at] math.mit.edu.

2. Raise some money. Yes, asking people to donate sounds intimidating, but unless you take that leap, people don’t get treatment and scientists don’t get to research cures. Not sure where to start? The AIDS Action Committee provides a handy fundraising toolkit. Check out my fundraising crash course from back when we did the Light the Night walk for leukemia & lymphoma for some more tips to get you going.

3. Take a victory lap. The walk will take place on Sunday, June 2, and will start and finish at the Hatch Shell on the Esplanade. Details are available here.

I have read enough books about atheism and psychology to know that prayers do not have healing power, at least not to an extent that is statistically significant. Furthermore, the fact that I am an atheist kind of goes along with not believing in the power of prayer in general. In all of my years of sporadic church attendance, then, I’ve never asked for prayers for anyone I know. I’ve considered it multiple times, but if my skepticism weren’t enough, discomfort with asking congregations I’m not a consistent member of to pray for my sick or dying family members and music teachers would still hold me back.

In the past two years, I’ve seen more illness and death in my personal life than I’d experienced in all the years before. My maternal great-grandmother died when I was five and my maternal grandfather died when I was ten, but then everyone close to me was pretty much fine for a while. In the fall of my senior year, though, my oboe teacher was diagnosed with a frontal lobe disorder (the symptoms resemble Alzheimer’s), and since then both my paternal and maternal grandmothers, as well as my piano teacher, have passed away. So it’s not like there hasn’t been anything to pray for: my oboe teacher’s health is still going downhill. My maternal grandmother had had Alzheimer’s since shortly after I started high school, and my piano teacher had been diagnosed with cancer. There have been no truly sudden deaths.

Two weeks ago, I played piano in a service at the church I consider to be my church. It’s the church at which I sang in the choir when I was growing up, worked in the nursery when I was in middle school, and have always attended Christmas Eve services. I know many of the congregation members, and they know me. If I ever felt that I needed spiritual guidance, this church is where I would go. That said, my family is not the only one to refer to this church as a Unitarian church in disguise. I am not the only atheist who attends. The church is a religious community, but it’s the community part that’s important, not the religion.

At this point, my piano teacher had taken a sudden turn for the worse. She was in hospice care, and it was clear that the end would be soon. I had seen her a few weeks earlier, but I wasn’t really sure how to respond to the whole situation. I hadn’t taken lessons with her on a consistent schedule since my sophomore year of high school, and hadn’t studied with her at all since the spring of my junior year. Although I now respect her as a musician, I had a fair number of problems with her for most of the time I was her student. My mom was closer with my piano teacher than I was. Even so, I felt that if there was any time to ask for prayers from the congregation, this was it, particularly since my piano teacher would be leaving behind her husband and I thought that he, too, could use to be in people’s thoughts.

My mom came to the service, and after failing to read my lips during the ‘Concerns and Celebrations’ part of the service (I was sitting at the piano and she was in the third or fourth pew), finally made a reasonable guess as to what I was trying to say and stood up to ask for prayers for my piano teacher and her husband.

I do get chills sometimes during sentimental moments, and I do occasionally cry, or at least have tears in my eyes. I did not expect, though, to have the emotional reaction that I did in the moment after my mom finished her request. Nothing actually happened in that moment—it was followed just by a brief silence between my mom’s words and someone else’s concerns, unlike at another church I play at where the congregation gives a verbal affirmation after each joy or concern. Something about that moment, though, and something about knowing that at least some of the congregation members would be praying for my piano teacher and her husband, did get to me.

Even if I don’t believe in God or in the power of prayer, there is something truly powerful about knowing that there are people I know or people I don’t, people I’m close with or people I’ve never spoken to, who are thinking positive thoughts in the direction of someone I ultimately do care about. Maybe it’s the idea that positive energy is contagious and that if these people somehow try to send goodness out into the world, it will eventually reach the strangers they’re praying for. Or maybe it’s just the cliche that somebody out there cares, that in some abstract way, the people in the congregation are connected enough to each other—and to me—to take others’ concerns for their own.

Later that afternoon, we got a phone call saying that my piano teacher had passed away. I actually did cry about it for a few minutes, although it wasn’t until I was on my own and reflecting again on the church service. This is just something else religious communities offer that secular communities have trouble creating an alternative to: I feel comforted by the thoughts of the congregation members in a way I would not feel comforted by the thoughts of Harvard Secular Society members (if I even felt it was appropriate to ask for their thoughts on my piano teacher’s behalf). Somehow in that moment in church I felt the pervading love one is supposed to feel in the presence of God, and while at that point it was accompanied by sadness, it was still something beautiful.

I used to feel it was disrespectful to ask for prayers from congregations I play for, almost subtly condescending—maybe taking advantage of their beliefs. Now, though, I don’t think I feel so negatively about it. In the same way that I don’t feel it’s disrespectful to sing hymns during services since I really do enjoy the group music-making, maybe it isn’t disrespectful to ask for prayers since they do ultimately provide some comfort. And even if there’s no scientific evidence that says it helps to think positive thoughts in the direction of people I love every once in a while, it certainly can’t hurt.

Melanie spent six years of her youth in a liberal Jewish suburb going to church and Hebrew school before she became an atheist. She tells people that she is studying education research and policy at Harvard because saying that she’s majoring in Social Studies makes her sound like she’s in middle school. In her spare time, Melanie finds something like God in running along the Charles River, playing Bach, and baking pies.

We would like to thank you for your continued support of the nontheistic community in the weeks following the Boston Marathon bombing. As a community we came together to work for the inclusion of nontheists in events—such as the Interfaith Healing Service held in Boston last month—that also included civic and broad community participation. Together we started an important national conversation that we hope will begin to effect change. Part of your support included signing and promoting a petition organized by Greg Epstein of the Harvard Humanist Community. We feel at this time that the petition has run its course and now request that you remove the petition from your websites and social media platforms. We will continue to work toward inclusion in other ways.

It has also come to our attention that some of the petition signers misunderstood the role of The White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Interfaith Service in Boston. We would like to clarify that while President Obama was a participant in the Interfaith Healing Service, neither the White House, nor Melissa Rogers, Special Assistant to the President and Executive Director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, was responsible for the planning of the event or the event guest list.

Sincerely,

Edwina Rogers, Executive Director, Secular Coalition for America

Greg Epstein, Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University

***

When the Boston Marathon bombings took place, many of us in the local Humanist/secular/nontheistic community realized almost immediately that our community would be affected profoundly. And indeed it was.

So by that same Monday April 15, in the early evening, we had already begun the exhausting but worthwhile process that any healthy community undertakes in such instances: calling around endlessly to check on members to see who needed what kind of help, and contacting officials at our local municipalities and universities and to offer our assistance in any way it was needed. Thus, when Harvard University and the City of Cambridge held candlelight vigils on April 16 and 17, respectively, we were there, grateful to be a part of those dignified memorials.

Having worked in a Humanist campus community leadership capacity since before September 11, 2001, I have all too much experience speaking at and organizing interfaith memorials and vigils. So as soon as I heard there would indeed be an “official” one with the Governor in attendance (the President’s involvement was announced later) I contacted the Secular Coalition for America (SCA) about it, and together we worked from Tuesday through Thursday morning to secure some inclusion for the secular community. To document and amplify that effort, I published this essay at CNN.com on Thursday morning. Even it was submitted to CNN’s religion editors that morning, the SCA’s senior staff and advisors were contacting officials at the Governor’s office for the umpteenth time, respectfully requesting that a single seat be officially reserved at Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross. I can’t express how honored I would have felt that morning to be able to simply sit in the same intercommunity congregation with you, representative of our entire broader nontheistic community.

A seat was not granted. The nonreligious community went entirely unmentioned at and excluded from the service.

This was despite the fact that President Obama has graciously mentioned us at numerous other important moments, including his first inaugural address. It happened despite the fact numerous thorough studies show America is now the least religious it has ever been in its history. According to Gallup, 46.5 percent of the Massachusetts population is now nonreligious; and Boston-Cambridge-Quincy is among the ten least religious of all the 189 metro areas studied by Gallup, as of 2013.

In short, we were shocked. We could only hope that it was ignorance that led the Governor’s office and the other event organizers to reject our pleas for inclusion, and so we began to tell our story publicly, as you can see, for example, here, and here.

We held our own spontaneous memorial, attended by many dozens; if you’re wondering what tone we struck, find a video here. As you can see 32 minutes into the video, the Reverend Scott Campbell, current President of the Harvard Chaplains, attended and apologized on behalf of the theistic community, stating,

“Friends, I would just like to extend a word of apology to the Humanist community, on behalf of my colleagues in the theistic–the religious community…for there not to be an inclusion of all those who wanted to express their sadness, their horror, their grief, and their compassion, reaching out in love to one another, is inexcusable.”

Also at our vigil, we stood in solidarity with Muslim, Sikh, Arab, South Asian and other communities that might be at a higher risk of being discriminated against at times like these. As you can see at the end of our video, we celebrated that Nuri Friedlander, Associate Chaplain for the Harvard Islamic Society, also attended.

And so, because this exclusion added confusion and pain to the grief of many– the SCA has already gathered letters from at over 1000 people expressing as much– we will continue to tell our story so that this needless pain need never be caused again. We will do so as the wide range of communities that make up the SCA, representing– at the very least– hundreds of thousands of Americans. And we will do so alongside admired and respected religious allies, like Dr. Eboo Patel, founder of the Interfaith Youth Core and member of the White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; or Rev. Brian McLaren, New York Times bestselling author; Princeton scholar Diana Butler Bass; or Groundswell founder Valarie Kaur. We will tell our story for the first responders among our community, like Humanist leader Jennifer Brauer, an EMT for the FDNY on 9-11, or like the atheists and Humanist veterans who have served in our nation’s armed forces with distinction in every conflict and inter-conflict period dating back to World War II.

This issue is too important to too many of us to let drop. It affects too many Americans, too many Bostonians. True unity is what will bring true healing. And we cannot fully heal until we are heard. After all, what message do we want to send to the confused and heartbroken students of the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, the diverse high school next door to Harvard from which the two Marathon attackers emerged? That they must be religious in order to count, and that only some religions count? Or that everyone counts, everyone matters, all communities are celebrated, and that we live in one Boston, one USA, one world?

Governor Patrick, Ms. Rodgers, you have enormous power to bring about positive healing and unity by simply educating yourselves and your colleagues that we are a community of positive values and that we count too. We would never ask you to change your beliefs. We would never want you to change who you are. Including the nonreligious in interfaith ceremonies doesn’t have any negative impact on religious communities, any more than allowing gay marriage has a negative impact on straight marriage. It’s not about anything other than inclusion in America. Let’s make that happen for the good of all.

On behalf of the Secular Coalition for America and our diverse and beloved allies in Boston and beyond, please meet with us by June 15, or within two months of the attacks that affected us all.

Sincerely,

Greg M. Epstein

Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University

Participants gathered at the Harvard Community at Harvard’s offices in Harvard Square, then walked down to the John F. Kennedy Park in Cambridge, MA.

If you found this video meaningful, please help us create more programs like it. Type this shortcut into your browser to donate and help us build a secular community center for the Greater Boston community:

Out of respect for the victims, please consider donating directly to one of the various causes associated with the tragedy along with your donation to our community.

Watch the full video below.

Beyond Words: A Community Memorial Service in Remembrance of the Boston Marathon Attacks from SecularCoalitionMA on Vimeo.

4/16/13
Greg M. Epstein
Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University

***

Members of the Harvard Chaplains are moved and honored to be with you tonight. We particularly want to lift up the fact that this is an interfaith gathering.

To us, that means we wish to honor and celebrate all of the many religious traditions and communities that give each of us resilience and inspiration to run life’s marathon well together.

It also means we honor and celebrate the many Humanist, atheist, agnostic, and seeking members of our community, who draw strength and hope from secular sources.

Like so many of us here tonight, at moments of crisis and fear, I feel I am a part of two worlds.

With one hand, I reach out to the world of my particular community—those most like me, those who draw faith from the same sources I do.

With the other hand, I reach out to all of you. To all of humanity. To that, whatever it might be, which we all share in common.

Tonight, and tomorrow, we can all hold on tight together, with both hands.

Let us hold on to our families and our congregations, and also have the courage to hold on to each other. With both hands.

We are also very fortunate to be supported by political leaders here in Boston, including:

Brian Corr, Executive Director, Peace Commission/Executive Secretary, Police Review & Advisory Board for the the City of Cambridge. He worked hard to make sure many local officials and communities spoke of inclusion in their public addresses.

Carl Sciortino, State Representative, Massachusetts House of Representatives, and staffer Raffi Freedman-Gurspan. They are always focused on inclusion and they worked hard to try to get us included in interfaith events, including Thursday’s vigil with the President.

Mayor Henrietta Davis and Bishop Brian Greene of Pentecostal Tabernacle have offered their full support and we could not be more grateful.

We will continue to work for Humanist and secular inclusion and we are grateful to everyone who supports us. We are not funded by Harvard, so all of the work we do is made possible by people who support our work and our quest for inclusion.

By Greg M. Epstein, Special to CNN

Cambridge, Massachusetts (CNN) — After two days of holding back my own feelings to focus on the needs of a community in mourning, what finally split my heart in two was scrolling through the list of donations to the fund-raising page for Celeste and Sydney Corcoran, a mother and daughter among the tragically injured at the Boston Marathon.

Celeste, the mother, has volunteered for my congregation. She’s basically an aunt to a senior member of our staff. So I cried for the two-sidedness: A member of our community lost her legs below the knees, and nearly lost her daughter. And, in one day, nearly 4,000 people donated more than $250,000 to support them. They seemed to be saying, through their gifts, “Please do this for me too if anything should ever happen to me or my family.”

AC360: Mother lost legs, daughter nearly died in bombing

As a chaplain, I’m struggling to make sense of this tragedy just like any other member of the clergy. And like faith communities across the country, the thousands of people I work with are doing what needs to be done when tragedy strikes close to home. We’re offering one another comfort. We’re calling around to the point of exhaustion, trying to figure out who needs help and how we can provide it.

The only difference is, we are a community of atheists — a congregation of Humanists.

You’ve probably read the statistics: With 18% of the nation’s population now nonreligious, America is less religious today than ever before. This especially applies to young Americans, up to a third of whom now have no religion. That number may be closer to half on many of the college campuses throughout Boston, like the one where I work.

What you may not have noticed, however, is that in addition to the religiously unaffiliated, or “nones” as sociologists have taken to calling them, a new and very significant group of Americans has been emerging — the nonreligiously affiliated. Relatively quietly, many thousands of mostly young Americans who identify as atheists and agnostics have been coming together to form civically active, thoughtful secular community groups that now dot nearly our whole nation.

Sometimes you hear about the debates these groups hold with religious leaders. But while Richard Dawkins and the like are eloquent and controversial speakers on behalf of atheism, most such debates are actually organized by religious organizations. The vast majority of what Humanist and secular communities do is positive, uncontroversial and entirely American. We serve. We meet throughout the year. We help one another raise good kids. We celebrate life, and we grieve death.

So I don’t relish the opportunity — or the need — to say that right now, our community is grieving too, just like any other Boston-area congregation. Boston, in fact, is home to one of the biggest secular/Humanist/atheist/nonreligious communities in the world. (Sure, we don’t know what to call ourselves. But then again neither does the LGBT — or is it GLBT? — or LGBTQ? — community, and that hasn’t stopped them from thriving.) We meet every week. We’re getting ready to open up a large community center. We sponsor service programs where we invite interfaith groups to help us package thousands of meals for hungry kids. You can even join us this Sunday: We’ll be marking our losses together in a memorial gathering.

What is so disappointing to see people do, then, is blame the horrific and traumatizing events of this Monday on the godless, or on godlessness, as way too many on Twitter and elsewhere have been doing. As one young woman in our community said to me, “It’s hard enough to deal with senseless grief, but when people write things like ‘Why do people have to be so godless to want to kill innocent people?’ it makes me feel like I’m not safe either, like we’re being singled out for prejudice.”

Obviously when people say “I’ll pray for you” or “May God grant you strength,” they’re only expressing their own sincere convictions. But while not everyone holds those same beliefs, we all want to be acknowledged in a way that feels right to us.

And when political leaders like Gov. Deval Patrick or President Obama try to make sense of these moments by assembling interfaith services, it is admirable — far better for a politician to bring different religions together than to only recognize one religion’s view of loss as valid. But for goodness’ sake, must the nonreligious continue to be excluded from such gatherings? I’ve seen Humanists knock on the door recently at the interfaith celebrations of political conventions, or after tragedies like Hurricane Sandy or Newtown. We wanted to help and were turned away. I hope this is where people realize: We are part of the community too. We care and want to offer our support just as much as anyone. We, too, are in shock and grief.

Secular people place our faith in the human ability to value life over death. We believe in committing ourselves to love and care and help as indiscriminately as possible, because that is what makes our lives worthwhile. We try our best, despite our doubt, to ensure that the good will that comes from tragedy will ultimately exceed the bad.

All that said, I don’t have a clue what Celeste’s beliefs are, and I don’t care. I just hope she and Sydney and everyone else injured get well. After all, would you believe for a second that every Christian pastor knows whether or not every visitor to his or her congregation truly believes in the Ascension? Nor should they. The point of a congregation, to me, is just to care about the people in it, and better yet, to help bring people together to care about one another. Our community is including everyone, religious or not, in our thoughts and hopes at this tough time. It would mean a lot to us if others do the same.

What I didn’t anticipate was the phone call I got from  my dearest friend, whose family I consider my own, telling me that Celeste and Sydney Corcoran,  a mother and daughter I have known my entire life, were in the heart of the explosions and among the critically injured that afternoon. After hours of surgery, I learned that Sydney barely survived (thanks greatly to the help of two nameless volunteers on the street) and that Celeste had lost both of her legs from the knee down.