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.
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Speaker: Anne Klaeysen
An Ethical Culture Society Leader from NYC discusses exploring our ethical faith.
Dr. Klaeysen was the first Humanist Chaplain at Adelphi University in Garden City, NY and now serves as the Humanist Religious Life Advisor for Columbia University- Barnard College community. She holds a Doctor of Ministry degree from Hebrew Union College, an MBA from NYU and masters in German from SUNY Albany.
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.
by Tony Hileman, Senior Leader, New York Society for Ethical Culture
Any of you who have heard me speak before have likely heard me say that I believe Ethical Humanism resides at the growing tip of our culture, at the forward reach of human understanding and endeavor. Maybe not in those exact words, but certainly it’s a familiar theme of mine and of others in the Ethical Movement.
I became interested in Ethical Culture’s future when I began to study its past. About a year ago, Howard Radest, the author of Toward Common Ground,
the history of our movement, recommended that I bring his book up to
date. He had taken our story only to 1951, the seventy-fifth
anniversary of Ethical Culture. Much had occurred in the movement
since then, and it was my job to write it up. I did a cursory review
of our last five decades, with an eye toward the arc of my proposed
narrative. I immediately saw a problem. How, I asked myself, could I
keep the story of our last half-century from being a tale of decline,
if not failure? If that question sounds bald, consider the following.
Perhaps the most extraordinary news coming out of the Iowa caucuses last Thursday was the victory of Barack Obama over his Democratic rivals. It is far too early to speculate on what Obama’s achievements portend in the long range, not only about his presidential prospects, but even more importantly about the status of race in American society. Despite the fact that his mother is white, and Obama did not present himself as a so-called “race man,” I still think that his considerable win in the caucuses was an exhilarating accomplishment in what is one of the whitest of the 50 American states.
Platform Meetings