Fostering community in nontheism

At Longy School of Music in Cambridge, the congregation heard the music of glass harmonica player Vera Meyer. (John Bohn / Globe Staff)

The congregation musters a robust turnout on a spring Sunday, its members packing the rented room at Longy School of Music in Cambridge. Some come outfitted in their Sunday best, while others sport a casual look. Lacking an organist, they enjoy lovely music by glass harmonica player Vera Meyer, her instrument a conical invention of Benjamin Franklin's that makes music the way wet fingers rubbed on wineglass rims do. Today's eclectic program mixes Mozart with Simon and Garfunkel.

Martin R. Federman, a Jewish peace activist, gives the homily in open-collar street clothes, discussing the need for an Israeli-Palestinian peace accord that recognizes Palestinian sufferings. As with many other religious groups, these people gather every Sunday to hear talks like this.

It's just that few, if any, people in this room believe in God.

The Ethical Society of Boston is part of the Ethical Culture movement, founded in 1876. The society's website describes it as a "secular religious" fellowship. The oxymoron hints at its own explanation: The society and Ethical Culture apply a central benefit and salient trait of religion - community - to agnosticism, atheism, humanism, secularism, and whatever other "isms" huddle under the umbrella of nontheism.

"There are some people in here who are worth knowing. I get a chance to talk to them," said Jack Osgood, an 82-year-old former member, explaining why he still attends talks like Federman's on occasion. "There is a great sense of community. Look who showed up [today]. My God, we had 50 or 60 people here."

That's tiny compared with some churches, of course, and members are mulling how to expand the group.

"People who are secularists and humanists are great nonjoiners," said Margo Woods, a member of the society's board. Katrina Scott, another board member, recalled the days when the society offered a Sunday school. She's among those interested in reviving it, because that's "how congregations grow, by getting new members with young kids."

Most of those at Federman's talk are middle age or older, and "I would say our demographic is close to . . . 60-plus" years old, Scott said.

Woods, 65, teaches adult courses in conjunction with Harvard's humanist chaplaincy - the most recent have been on "Voluntary Simplicity" and "Compassionate Communication" - and she suggests those offers might be a lure to membership for younger people.

The society offers some of the same rituals that come with church membership, such as weddings. Scott, an oncology chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital, is empowered by the state to perform weddings.

Why wouldn't a secularist just seek a civil ceremony with a judge?

Scott chose that path herself, but said an "ethical" wedding has a more spiritual bent and the service can be tailored to the couple's particular desires.

Recent "sermon" topics have been as secular as the listeners: talk of change in the presidential campaign, the ethical issues posed by weaning ourselves from oil dependence, the moral questions involved in neurological medicine, and aging and death.

But disbelieving the divine doesn't mean the absence of any belief. Ethical Culture's founder, Felix Adler, was a German immigrant, academic, and social reformer who joined the late 19th-century surge among thinkers to construct a body of morals around the skeleton of God-less belief.

"[We] have a belief in nature," said Scott. "We have a belief in reason and that not all the mysteries of life will be realized or unfold."

A handful of society members are temple-attending Jews, she said, and while members are overwhelmingly agnostics or atheists, "we don't take a stance on God. . . . We basically say you can be a theist or a nontheist; that really doesn't matter. What matters most to us is ethics," and most members believe that "ethics derive from cultural norms."

As unusual as this religion may seem, some members have found a lifetime's fulfillment in it. Stan Wayne, 77, joined Ethical Culture when he was a 16-year-old in New York.

He moved to Brookline 43 years ago, but kept the faith, had an "ethical wedding," and raised his children in the society.

"What religion is about is looking for the good in people," he said. "A successful civilization is where people are looking for the good and creating the good."

Comments, questions and story ideas may be sent to spiritual@globe.com.

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