the brights (NY times op-ed)

[Geoffrey Nunberg]

This seems right to me -- and the caps on "Secular Humanism" are
instructive. In fact it's hard to see how this sense could have
emerged before the late 1950's, with the first stirrings of what were
to become the culture wars. I found an unambiguously polemical use in
a letter to the WSJ in 1970 from a professor of Biblical theology:

The radical transition in the public schools over the past couple of
generations has not been toward "neutrality." It has been rather a
shift from the value system of Protestant Christianity toward that of
an increasinly dominant secular humanism. .. Although in the public
school pro forma all religions are equal, in fact the religion of
secular humanism is more equal than others.

Geoff Nunberg


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>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: the brights (NY times op-ed)
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>
>On Sat, 12 Jul 2003, Geoffrey Nunberg wrote:
>
>>  JSTOR has instances of "secular humanism" from the 1938 and 1939, and
>>  one for "secular humanist" from 1935. But these citations all suggest
>>  a purely compositional reading of the phrase -- as, e.g., in "the
>>  love of man for God, foreign alike to Greek moral philososphy and the
>>  secular humanism of the present day." I feel sure that that David is
>>  right as regards the polemical use of the phrase to signify what MW
>>  defines as " humanistic philosophy viewed as a nontheistic religion
>>  antagonistic to traditional religion." That was a much later
>>  invention, though you'd need a lot of context to sort out just when
>
>The earliest citation that has been found, as far as I know, is from
>William G. Peck, The Social Implications of the Oxford Movement (1933),
>but this is what Geoffrey calls a "compositional" usage.  The term in its
>"polemical" usage traces to Justice Hugo Black's opinion in the U.S.
>Supreme Court case, Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), in which Black wrote:
>"Among religions in this country, however, which do not teach what
>would generally be considered belief in the existence of God are Buddhism,
>Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others."  Black picked this
>up from an amicus curiae brief in the case by Columbia religion professor
>Joseph L. Blau.
>
>Fred Shapiro
>
>
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