Everyone is welcome to attend our Sunday morning platform meetings. From the first Sunday after Labor Day through mid-June, they are held at 11 AM. During the summer, our program is more varied, but we usually start at 10:30 AM. Our thought provoking platform addresses cover a wide range of subjects relating to ethics in modern life.
Our speakers offer thoughts related to the philosophy of humanism or share their experiences and commitments in the struggle to foster peace, justice, economic fairness and racial and religious harmony.
Our leader speaks on the first Sunday of each month occasionally on the differences between Ethical Culture and other religous movements. Sometimes our meetings take the form of interviews or group discussions. Three times a year, special celebrations are held in conjunction with the children of the Sunday School. Babysitting is available for infants and toddlers too young to sample our Sunday School.
Music, small discussions, coffee and socializing are also important elements of our Sunday morning experience.
The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County welcomes people of all races, ethnic origins, religious backgrounds, and sexual orientations. The Society has a barrier free front entrance.
Below are some of our Platform Addresses:
Free Will: The Last Great Lie
By Robert Gulack
There are three great comforting lies at the heart of the cruel and corrupt monstrosity we call “Western Civilization”
Ethical Culture's 1980 Statement of Purpose: Its Antecedents and How To Describe What We Are Today
At first it may seem odd to devote a platform discussion to Ethical Culture’s Statement of Purpose. Every week we find the four, pithy paragraphs on the back of our Sunday Meeting brochure. In addition, the Presider often reads them. I suspect that most of us accept these succinct statements and would find that they capture the essence of Ethical Culture.
A Place at the Table: How the Nation’s First Congressional Lobbyist for Nontheists is Enjoying the Feast
by Lori Lipman
Brown, Director of the Secular Coalition for America -- September 21, 2008
When I was hired to be the first
paid staff of the Secular Coalition for America in 2005, the five national
organizations which comprised the secular coalition at that time, really didn’t
know how the first Congressional lobbyist explicitly representing nontheistic Americans would be received in Congress, in the
media, and among theistic church/state separation groups. My first two
days on the job, September 19th and 20th, 2005, made it
clear that the Secular Coalition would be accepted and have an impact beyond
most optimistic predications of its founders.
Haiti 101: An historical perspective on the creation of the western hemisphere's poorest country
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An introduction to Haiti, the western hemisphere's poorest country, including an overview of its history (focusing on European domination/slavery), demographics, politics, religion, culture and economy. Jim Delia blends in his in-country observations during the past two Julys and offers a prognosis for the future.
Thank you so much for your kind introduction.
And thanks to the Bergen Society for inviting me back. By my calculation,
fifteen years have passed since I gave my first talk at Bergen. It’s an
understatement to say that I appreciate your invitations. Whenever you ask me
to give a talk, you provide me with an opportunity to arrange ideas in a way I
never can when in a classroom or when writing for publication. Both are
somewhat narrow experiences. I can sense my students’ impatience if I digress
to comment on larger issues than the ones they bargained for in signing up for
a course. I don’t even dare risk readers’ impatience in my publications; at
most, I include oblique references that suggest a wider frame of reference.
It’s in these talks, then, that I have a chance to think a bit more expansively
than I can elsewhere—to go beyond the confines of disciplinary specialization.
I can’t vouch for the success of my efforts. Perhaps, though, we can agree to
define success modestly and say that in this instance it consists of sorting
out, rather than solving, perplexing issues. Assuming agreement on this modest
aim, I hope you’ll be satisfied with the results of the talk.
