Ethical Culture

Home » Platform Meetings » Ethical Culture

Ethical Culture

Our Statement of Purpose

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.

Can Ethical Culture Help You in a Time of Personal Crisis?

By Marc Bernstein

Few in this room believe in a God who answers our prayers. Probably no one believes in an afterlife that will redress our suffering here on earth. Yet Ethical Culturists suffer like everyone else. We bury our parents, our spouses, and sometimes our children. So, when life seems unbearable, what does our faith offer us? This is a question we do not often raise these days. But it was a question Felix Adler asked repeatedly. He believed Ethical Culture had an answer to the problem of suffering. I will draw on some of his ideas this morning.

Personal Responsibility - An Optimist's View

I want to start with two Disclaimers:

What you are about to hear is not the traditional viewpoint of most speakers at this platform. I will be attacking some strongly held beliefs. My wife warned me that I will be creamed for many of the points I make, but she hopes that some of the points will be sufficiently helpful that we will be allowed to stay on as members.
Despite what I am about to say, I am actually a moderate person in most respects. However, in order to make myself clear, I will be exaggerating the differences between various viewpoints. In practice, most people don't hold the extreme views I will be discussing.

Two Possible Futures for Ethical Culture

By Marc A. Bernstein, Ph.D. Sunday 27 April 2008

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.

The Frontier of Truth

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.

The Ethical Culture Society of Bergen County

Our Statement of Purpose

Ethical Culture's 1980 Statement of Purpose: Its Antecedents and How To Describe What We Are Today

Can Ethical Culture Help You in a Time of Personal Crisis?

By Marc Bernstein

Personal Responsibility - An Optimist's View

Two Possible Futures for Ethical Culture

By Marc A. Bernstein, Ph.D. Sunday 27 April 2008

The Frontier of Truth

Contact Us

Society Tweets