Felix Adler founds the New York Society for Ethical Culture in 1876 on the motto deed, not creed: ethical life and social reform without theological tests. Its schools and settlements become the institutional seed of organized humanism in America.
Tagged: Humanism Secular and Non-Theistic
The Event
- Date
- 1876 (exact)
- Era
- Secular Modernity; Standard periodization of secular and non-religious history
- Location
- New York; today United States
- Traditions
- Secular
- Streams
- Humanism
- Key figures
- Felix Adler
Primary Sources
- The tradition's own record of the event.
Secondary Sources
- Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. New York: Liveright, 2016.
- Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
- Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
- Zuckerman, Phil, ed. Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.
Provenance: HIST-1319; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.
Related on This Site
No image; the post explains why
Art Entry
AI-Generated Religious Art
Image generators now produce Christs, Buddhas, and temple scenes on demand. The traditions are answering; some with welcome, some with prohibitions that reach the new medium directly. This page shows no generated image, because any single example would misrepresent the argument.
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
Dictionary or Lexicon
Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains
Louw and Nida's lexicon arranges New Testament Greek by semantic domain; what a word does in its field of meaning; rather than by alphabet. Revolutionary in method and now standard in translation work; the domains, not the glosses, are the contribution.
History Event
American Humanist Association
1941
History Event
Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity
1841
History Event
Humanist Manifesto I
1933
Art Tradition
Non-Theistic and Secular
Art without transcendence: humanist meaning-making, museums as secular temples, and protest art.
Artist
Doris Salcedo
The Colombian sculptor of political violence's traces; her Fragmentos floor in Bogotá is a counter-monument hammered from surrendered weapons by women victims of the conflict.
Artist
Käthe Kollwitz
The German artist of grief: her Pietà, enlarged in Berlin's Neue Wache, is Germany's central memorial to the victims of war; a mother holding her dead son, made by a mother who lost hers.
Dictionary or Lexicon
Louw & Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains
Louw and Nida's lexicon arranges New Testament Greek by semantic domain; what a word does in its field of meaning; rather than by alphabet. Revolutionary in method and now standard in translation work; the domains, not the glosses, are the contribution.
History Event
American Humanist Association
1941
History Event
Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity
1841
History Event
Humanist Manifesto I
1933