Ethical Culture

Ethical Culture is a nontheistic religion established by Felix Adler in 1876. The Ethical Culture Movement is a non-sectarian, ethico-religious and educational movement. Individual chapter organizations are generically referred to as Ethical Societies, though their names may include "Ethical Society," "Ethical Culture Society," "Society for Ethical Culture," or other variations on the theme of "Ethical."

Ethical Culture is premised on the idea that honoring and living in accordance with ethical principles is central to what it takes to live meaningful and fulfilling lives, and to creating a world that is good for all. It is observed that ethics is at the heart of all religions. Practitioners of Ethical Culture focus on supporting one another in becoming better people, and on doing good in the world.

Ethical perspective
While Ethical Culturists generally share common beliefs about what constitutes ethical behavior and the good, individuals are encouraged to develop their own personal understanding of these ideas. This does not mean that Ethical Culturists condone moral relativism, which would relegate ethics to mere preferences or social conventions. Ethical principles are viewed as being related to deep truths about the way the world works, and hence not arbitrary. However, it is recognized that complexities render the understanding of ethical nuances subject to continued dialogue, exploration, and learning.

While the founder of Ethical Culture, Felix Adler, was a transcendentalist, Ethical Culturists may have a variety of understandings as to the theoretical origins of ethics. Key to the founding of Ethical Culture was the observation that too often disputes over religious or philosophical doctrines have distracted people from actually living ethically and doing good. Consequently, "Deed before creed" has long been a motto of the movement.

Religious aspect
Functionally, Ethical Societies are similar to churches or synagogues. Ethical Societies typically have Sunday morning meetings, offer moral instruction for children and teens, and do charitable work and social action. They may offer a variety of educational and other programs. They conduct weddings, commitment ceremonies, baby namings, and memorial services.

Individual Ethical Society members may or may not believe in a deity or regard Ethical Culture as their religion. In this regard, Ethical Culture is similar to traditional religions such as Buddhism and Taoism, about whose practitioners similar statements could be made. Felix Adler said “Ethical Culture is religious to those who are religiously minded, and merely ethical to those who are not so minded.” The movement does consider itself a religion in the sense that

Religion is that set of beliefs and/or institutions, behaviors and emotions which bind human beings to something beyond their individual selves and foster in its adherents a sense of humility and gratitude that, in turn, sets the tone of one's world-view and requires certain behavioral dispositions relative to that which transcends personal interests.
The Ethical Culture 2003 ethical identity statement states:

It is a chief belief of Ethical religion that if we relate to others in a way that brings out their best, we will at the same time elicit the best in ourselves. By the "best" in each person, we refer to his or her unique talents and abilities that affirm and nurture life. We use the term "spirit" to refer to a person's unique personality and to the love, hope, and empathy that exists in human beings. When we act to elicit the best in others, we encourage the growing edge of their ethical development, their perhaps as-yet untapped but inexhaustible worth.

Since around 1950 the Ethical Culture movement has been increasingly identified as part of the modern Humanist movement. Specifically, in 1952, the American Ethical Union, the national umbrella organization for Ethical Culture societies in the United States, became one of the founding member organizations of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. Ethical Culture can be described as a form of religious secular humanism, with secularism defined as "characteristic of or devoted to the temporal world as opposed to the supernatural world"

Advocates
Albert Einstein was a supporter of Ethical Culture. For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the New York Society for Ethical Culture he noted that the idea of Ethical Culture embodied his personal conception of what is most valuable and enduring in religious idealism. Humanity requires such a belief to survive, Einstein argued. "Without 'ethical culture' there is no salvation for humanity."

Early history
The movement was initiated in 1876 by Felix Adler in New York City with the founding of the New York Society for Ethical Culture.

The society adopted as the condition of membership a positive desire to uphold by example and precept the highest ideals of living and to aid the weaker to attain those ideals. The aims of the society were stated as follows:

"To teach the supremacy of the moral ends above all human ends and interests;
"To teach that the moral law has an immediate authority not contingent on the truth of religious beliefs or of philosophical theories;
"To advance the science and art of right living."
The members of the society were free to follow and profess whatever system of religion they choose, the society confining its attention to the moral problems of life. Adler did himself have an ethical philosophy that deeply influenced how this was approached. A central precept was "Always act so as to elicit the best in others, and thereby in yourself."

In adhering to its social and moral imperatives, the Society quickly initiated two major projects in 1877. First was the establishment of the District Nursing Service, a precursor of the Visiting Nurse Service, which is still active today.

The second project was the founding of a free kindergarten for the children of working people (the first free kindergarten in America), and in 1880 the Workingman's School was chartered, a model institution for general and technical education in which the use of the kindergarten method in the higher branches of study was a distinctive feature. Each of its teachers was a specialist as well as an enthusiast in his subject; the Socratic method was followed. Pupils over seven were instructed in the use of tools. In 1895, the School was reorganized, becoming The Ethical Culture Schools. An upper school, The Fieldston School, was added in 1928.

Ironically, what began as a free school for the benefit of the poor has become, according to a 2007 Forbes article, one of the most expensive and exclusive preschools in the United States, with tuition currently at $30,440 USD per year [1]. Despite sharing a building on Central Park West in New York City, the school is no longer affiliated with the Ethical Culture Society.

Under Dr. Adler's direction, the Society worked to improve conditions in tenement houses, created the Mothers' Society to Study Child Nature (later the Child Study Association), and helped to found the Visiting and Teaching Guild for Crippled Children in 1889. The Society was also instrumental in the formation of the National Child Labor Committee and in calling for the formation of the NAACP. The Chicago Society organized The Bureau of Justice, the organization that preceded the Legal Aid Society.

According to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor the pro bono tradition among lawyers started with a speech by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis at an Ethical Society in 1905.

While originally agnostic in feeling, the society gradually developed into a simple, human brotherhood, united by ethical purpose and a humanistic outlook, and to some degree acquired an influence in distinctively Christian circles in some parts of Europe. But the only approach to a religious service was a Sunday address on topics of the day, preceded and followed by music. Its chief supporters in New York and Philadelphia were Jews, as was its founder and leader, though the society did not in any degree bear the stamp of Judaism.

A similar movement was started in Berlin and today a society exists at Frankfurt am Main.

Societies were established in Cambridge and London, United Kingdom but the only remaining society in that country is the South Place Ethical Society, based at Conway Hall, London.

Locations
Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture building on Prospect Park West, originally designed by architect William Tubby as a home for William H. Childs (inventor of Bon Ami Cleaning Powder).The largest concentration of Ethical Societies is in the New York metropolitan area, including a dozen or so Societies in New York and New Jersey. Ethical Societies exist in a score or so U.S. cities and counties, including Austin, Texas; Baltimore; Boston; Chapel Hill and Asheville, North Carolina; Chicago; Los Angeles; Philadelphia; St. Louis and St. Peters, Missouri; Bergen and Essex Counties, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., and Vienna, Virginia. There is a new Ethical Society located in cyberspace, the Ethical Society Without Walls

Legal challenges
The tax status of Ethical Societies as religious organizations has been upheld in court cases in Washington, D.C. (1957), and in Austin, Texas (2003). The Texas State Appeals Court said of the challenge by the state comptroller, "the Comptroller's test [requiring a group to demonstrate its belief in a A Supreme Being] fails to include the whole range of belief systems that may, in our diverse and pluralistic society, merit the First Amendment's protection."The D.C. Federal court declared, with regard to status as a religious institution, "if it looks, walks and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck."

References
Ethical Culture as Religion
Four Types of Religious Humanism
"Are we religious?" by Algernon D. Black
The Humanist Way: An Introduction to Ethical Humanist Religion by Edward L. Ericson - includes Einstein's remarks
[2] - history
Jewish Encyclopedia by Edward William Bennett
[3] - Chronology of Ethical Culture
Comptroller of Public Accounts v. Ethical Society of Austin[4][5], 2003.
Washington Ethical Society v. District of Columbia, 101 U.S. App. D.C. 371, 249 F.2d 127, 1957.
This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain.