Two Faces of “Humanism” – Brad Jersak

HUMANISM: As a child of faith raised in a fundamentalist tradition, I regularly heard preachers decrying the evils of "humanism." They were profoundly disturbed by the secularizing forces of the Enlightenment (longer term) and, more recently, at that stage, the 1960s. The biggest concerns at that time were the evils of Darwinism in the classroom, pushback against prayer in school, and society's descent into "sex, drugs and rock n roll." Humanism was shorthand for what the revivalists often condemned in full as "secular humanism." SECULAR HUMANISM: These itinerant doomsayers peddled in fear, condemnation, Armageddon and hellfire, but that's not to ...