Irreverence is a hallmark of humanism. No writ is too holy, no image too divine to escape merciless critique, doubt, and even ridicule. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that even the most cohesive and organized humanist groups lack a defining cadre of sacred objects and ideas.
Yet sacredness is essential to spirituality for theists and non-theists alike. What we hold sacred forms the foundation for archtypes, traditions, mythology, rituals, and celebrations. It sets a context for the ethical and moral codes we use to guide our own behavior and to judge the behavior of others. It distinguishes doctrine from opinion and creates a living community out of a primordial soup of zealous individuality.
Humanists shy away from identifying anything as sacred because sacredness shapes behavior in a way that transcends rationality. If we refrain from murder, not because it is reasonable and evolutionarily adaptive to support a murder-free society but because life is sacred, does that defeat an essential humanist principle? Only if your goal is to have a religion of all bishops and no parishioners. And if humans are rational creatures, they are also social ones. Shared beliefs and traditions must be palatable by many, not only an elite few. If we deny our social selves by isolating ourselves into pockets of rationality, we deny our human natures and fall into the pits of hypocrisy. The compromise, then, is to use reason as the measure of sacredness rather than divinity.
There is precedent to guide us. In her novel The Fifth Sacred Thing, Starhawk (a neo-Pagan writer) envisions a future society whose inhabitants are religiously diverse but spiritually cohesive. The prologue to this book is the Declaration of the Four Sacred Things, which names earth, air, fire, and water as sacred. "Whether we see them as the breath, energy, blood, and body of the Mother, or as the blessed gifts of the Creator, or as symbols of the interconnected systems that sustain life, we know that nothing can live without them." Starhawk also names a fifth sacred thing -- spirit -- that requires freedom, justice, and equality to thrive.
Starhawk's Declaration wraps everything up in a neat little package, and I am not certain that I can improve on what she wrote. It is, of course, a western view of the spiritual elements. Wood and metal are not distinguished from earth, for example. It is also simplistic; carbon is given no more importance than nickel or einsteinium. But it provides a template for us to write the stories and traditions and mores of humanism.
In future posts, I intend to use the Five Sacred Things as a basis for recommending holidays, rituals, and codes of conduct for spiritual humanists.
