How to help each other flourish
(8/28/2026) – “The pathos of man is that he hungers for personal fulfillment and for a sense of community with others.” – J. Saunders Redding
I’m excited to share some really exciting news about how we’re building a stronger sense of community for humanists, and I couldn’t find better words to open with than Redding’s.
Redding – a humanist and a scholar of literature – knew a thing or two about personal fulfillment and belonging. He was the first African American faculty member at an Ivy League university, working as a visiting professor at Brown in 1949, and eventually receiving a tenured position at Cornell.
He believed in books as tools to help people know themselves, and believed that it matters to pay attention to our sense of identity, because it shapes our actions in the world. “This sense of identity is the root by which all honest creative effort is fed,” he wrote.
Personal fulfillment, self-knowledge, a sense of community with others – all deeply human needs. All of them clearly correlated with wellness, personal agency, and a life well-lived. (The humanistic psychologists produced reams of research proving it.)
Which is why we’ve been spending so much time, at the AHA, investing in our chapters and affiliates. Local groups are where people deepen their connection to humanism, make friends and learn from other humanists, and turn their humanism into action by participating in shared service or advocacy projects. They’re where humanism takes shape from a vague idea into something we do in real life, something that enriches us and pushes us to be better.
We’ve spent the last year and half trying to map out what makes a local group successful. Is it more movie nights? More hikes? More service projects? Is it better to serve cookies or brussels sprouts at the first meeting? (You laugh, but I have actually been offered brussels sprouts before, from a group that later asked me why I thought they were having trouble attracting younger members.)
Our Community Organizing team has taken all of our learnings on what the most successful groups are doing and turned it into a 20-week training program for humanist group leaders who want to significantly grow their membership. We’re calling it the Grow Cohort.
It’s a hefty program. You have to commit to ten 2-hour trainings, with homework in between. Groups pay a $250 deposit to take part in the program. (If they complete the program, they get it back, plus an extra $250 to help implement the plans they worked on.)
We agreed that it would be a big success if 12 of our chapters signed up to take part in the program.
Earlier this week, I learned that thirty-two groups had signed up. (There’s still time to RSVP – email [email protected] if you want your local group to take part.)
People are hungry for a sense of community with others – Redding hit the nail on the head decades ago, and it’s as true now as it was then.
For the people who were never going to find their community in a church, synagogue, or mosque, humanism offers something to belong to and believe in. And our local humanist groups seem more fired up than ever before to welcome in their neighbors.
We’re doing more than training existing groups in best practices:
We’re also giving out more grants for service projects than ever before (and we’re getting ready to premiere an amazing mini-documentary about our massive nationwide service project, The American Empathy Project, from the spring).
And we’re helping launch new groups specifically for humanists under 35.
Community is hard work. It’s messy. It requires giving up some independence and embracing the reality that there’s no group identity that perfectly meshes with all the contours of our individual identities.
But it’s worth it – because we’re not meant to go through this world alone, and nothing of consequence was ever achieved by a truly lone wolf.
Humanism recognizes that if we are to be saved, it’s going to be because we figured out how to save each other. If we’re going to flourish, it’s going to be because we figured out how to help each other flourish. If we’re going to be fulfilled, it’s going to be through community.
For humanity,
Fish
The American Humanist Association
The American Humanist Association (AHA) works to protect the rights of Humanists, atheists, and other nontheistic Americans. The AHA advances the ethical and life-affirming worldview of Humanism, which—without beliefs in gods or other supernatural forces—encourages individuals to live informed and meaningful lives that aspire to the greater good of humanity.
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