The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a Wisconsin-based nontheist activist group, is fighting to allow an atheist to serve as a guest chaplain and deliver the opening invocation on the House floor.
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"The very existence of this congressional caucus for freethinkers and humanists is a marker of how far the movement for secular and nontheist equality has come," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association.
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"Handbook for Conscientious Objectors." Philadelphia, PA: Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. In 1976, a Friends General Conference Gathering hosted a well-attended Workshop for Nontheistic Friends (Quakers). Current resources include a nontheist Friends' website and there are nontheist Quaker study groups.
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Nontheist Quakers (also known as nontheist Friends or NtFs) are those who engage in Quaker practices and processes, but who do not necessarily believe in a theistic God or Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like traditional Quakers, also known as Friends, nontheist Friends are interested in realizing peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, love, joy, and social justice in the Society of Friends and beyond.
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Logo of the Society of Nontheist Friends A nontheist Friend or an atheist Quaker is someone who affiliates with, identifies with, engages in and/or affirms Quaker practices and processes, but who does not accept a belief in a theistic understanding of God, a Supreme Being, the divine, the soul or the supernatural. Like theistic Friends, nontheist Friends are actively interested in realizing centered peace, simplicity, integrity, community, equality, love, happiness and social justice in the Society of Friends and beyond.
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Downey has been active in a variety of causes including feminism and anti-smoking campaigns before becoming a public representative of atheism. Margaret Downey is known for her activities in this area. Her first major involvement as a publicly active nontheist was when her son Matthew was not allowed to renew his membership in the Boy Scouts of America since he was raised in a nontheist household. This led to Margaret Downey v.
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Some even refer to themselves as agnostic, atheist, or simply nontheist (see Christian atheism). SoF possesses no religious writings or ceremonies of its own; many members remain active in their own religion (mainly but not exclusively Christian) while others have no religious affiliation at all.
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Os Cresson began a recent consideration of this issue from behaviorist, natural history, materialist and environmentalist perspectives. Roots and Flowers of Quaker Nontheism is one history. Nontheist Friends draw on Quaker humanist and universalist traditions. The book Godless for God's Sake: Nontheism in Contemporary Quakerism offers recent, critical contributions by Quakers.
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There are also Nontheist Quakers whose spiritual practice is not reliant on the existence of God. To differing extents, the movements making up the Religious Society of Friends/Friends avoid creeds and hierarchical structures. In 2007, there were about 359,000 adult Quakers worldwide. In 2017, there were 377,557 adult Quakers, 49 per cent of them being in Africa.
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Eisgruber was raised Catholic and married his wife in an Episcopal church. While helping his son, then in the fourth grade, with a school project, he discovered that his Berlin-born mother, who had arrived in New York as an eight-year-old refugee, was Jewish. Today, Eisgruber identifies as a nontheist Jew.Princeton president uncovers family secret - that he is Jewish His wife is Episcopalian.
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Nontheist Friends are attempting sympathetically to generate conversation with others who are more comfortable with the traditional and often reiterated language of Quakerism. Some nontheistic Friends see significance in this lower-case / upper-case distinction in terms of inclusiveness and friendliness, welcoming both to the ongoing NTF email list conversations. Questioning theism, they wish to examine whether the experience of direct and ongoing inspiration from God ("waiting in the Light") – "So wait upon God in that which is pure. ..."Royce, Josiah. 1913.
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Some liberal Jewish congregations, nontheist Friends, and Unitariansuurn (org). have similar orientations in their adoption of religious naturalist beliefs. Although the overall movement toward these attitudes remains relatively small and loosely organized, various forms of spiritual naturalism have existed since time immemorial, with the pantheistic philosophies of Taoism and similar Eastern nature-mysticisms being perhaps the most notable example. At present, there is a growing interest in adopting a spiritual naturalism rational alternative for the modern world because many are losing their belief in more traditional spiritual avenues.
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Scott was brought up in Christian Science by her mother and grandmother but later switched to a congregational church under the influence of her sister; she describes her background as liberal Protestant.A Conversation with Eugenie Scott Science and Theology News Scott is now a secular humanist and describes herself as a nontheist. In 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that, "Scott describes herself as atheist but does not discount the importance of spirituality." In 2003 she was one of the signatories to the third humanist manifesto, Humanism and Its Aspirations.
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Its people still use the term and certain traditions as a base for their cultural identity rather than as a religious identity, and the vast majority of the Catholic population is now largely irreligious in practice. Research among Catholics in the Netherlands in 2007 showed that only 27% of the Dutch Catholics could be regarded as theist, while 55% were ietsist or nontheist and 17% were agnostic.God in Nederland (1996–2006), by Ronald Meester, G. Dekker, In 2010, about 6% of the population of North Brabant claimed adherence to Protestantism, while 4.5% of the population was Muslim; the latter mainly live in the larger and medium- sized municipalities.
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More recently, interest in non-theism resurfaced, particularly under the British Friend David Boulton, who founded the 40-member Nontheist Friends Network in 2011. Non-theism is controversial, leading some Christian Quakers from within Britain Yearly Meeting to call for non-theists to be denied membership. In one study of Friends in the Britain Yearly Meeting, some 30 per cent of Quakers had views described as non-theistic, agnostic, or atheist. Another study found that 75.1 per cent of the 727 members of the Religious Society of Friends who completed the survey said that they consider themselves to be Christian and 17.6 per cent that they did not, while 7.3 per cent either did not answer or circled both answers.
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