The NPR show “Speaking of Faith” this week explores religious humanism, and it includes a brief mention of Ethical Culture and our recent platform speaker Ursula Goodenough. See speakingoffaith.publicradio.org for a synopsis of the program and local airtimes. (Last year on this blog I complained that “Speaking of Faith” didn’t seem to understand religious [...]

I just heard about “Earth Hour”–when homes and cities across the world turn out their lights for an hour to “symbolize their commitment to finding climate change solutions.” Earth Hour, sponsored by the World Wildlife Federation, this year is Saturday, March 29, 8-9 p.m.
I like the idea of taking an hour to sit in [...]

This past Sunday I gave Part II of my talk on Moving from Vengeance to Mercy (Part I is up on our podcasts page, and Part II will be up soon). Related to that topic, the NY Society for Ethical Culture recently had Robert Gangi of the Correctional Association of New York talk on [...]

From an email I received from Ethical Society member Gene B.: “I’ve decided that from now on, I’m going to have to read all your talks again after you give them and post any responses I have to my blog so that when I run for President, I have a trail for the media to [...]

The Spring ‘08 issue of the American Ethical Union’s Dialogue newsletter is available online at aeu.org. Check it out for information about Ethical Culture’s national assembly in Austin in April, the college-age F.E.S. [Future of Ethical Societies] group meeting here in St. Louis in June, and words of wisdom from around the country on [...]

My partner, Bill, donated his old bike and bought a really nice refurbished one last night, from a really great place: St. Louis Bicycle Works. This unique non-profit bike shop recycles bikes in a program called Earn-a-Bike, in which local kids are taught bicycle mechanics and safety, and a whole lot more, and build [...]

Cheers for the Southern Baptist leaders who are urging positive action to fight global warming, as described in today’s cnn.com article. And cheers for the Evangelical leaders who also seem to understand that if you believe nature is God’s creation, you ought to take really good care of it.
Boos to the backward-looking religious [...]

One of my favorite personal-finance blogs just reprinted an article by a woman who details how she “inoculated” her children against advertising. Check it out at getrichslowly.org. Have you noticed your kids affected by the power of advertising? How have you handled it?

The word “spirituality” and its meaning came up again yesterday, and I was reminded of these two quotes by Felix Adler:
“The word spiritual becomes a synonym of muddy thought and misty emotionalism. If there were another word in the language to take its place, it would be well to use it. But there is not. [...]

They’re up! The podcasts of the two recent popular Sunday platform addresses by Ursula Goodenough and, well, me, are now up at ethicalstl.org/libraryaudio.html. Many have asked for written versions as well; Dr. Goodenough was kind enough to provide us with one, and I’m working on mine, so we should have those up on the podcasts [...]