Humanist leaders in Chicago formed the Humanist Fellowship, an early institutional base for U.S. religious humanism that later fed into national humanist organizing and publishing.
The Humanist Fellowship began publishing New Humanist, helping circulate humanist ideas nationally and creating a media platform that later published the first Humanist Manifesto.
A Humanist Manifesto (later called Humanist Manifesto I) was published with 34 signers, including prominent intellectuals (e.g., John Dewey). It articulated a program for modern humanism and became a foundational text for organized U.S. humanism.
The Fellowship of Humanity was founded as a humanist congregation, representing an important strand of U.S. humanism organized in “church-like” community forms independent of theism.
Curtis W. Reese and John H. Dietrich reorganized the Humanist Press Association into the American Humanist Association (AHA), creating a durable national membership organization advancing humanist values in the United States.
The U.S. Supreme Court held that using public school facilities for religious instruction violated the Establishment Clause. The case became a landmark in church–state separation, a core cause for many U.S. secular humanists.
Humanist organizations—including the American Humanist Association—convened in Amsterdam to found the International Humanist and Ethical Union (now Humanists International), linking U.S. secular humanism to a formal global federation.
A federal appeals court held that the Washington Ethical Society qualified for a tax exemption as a “religious corporation or society” under D.C. law despite its nontheistic character—an influential precedent in U.S. legal recognition of nontheistic ethical communities.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states cannot require a declaration of belief in God as a condition for public office (here, a notary commission), strengthening constitutional protections central to U.S. secular humanist civic equality.
Humanist Manifesto II—associated with Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson—updated the 1933 manifesto, explicitly rejecting theism and advancing a more politically and ethically detailed secular humanist platform that drew wide international support.
The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) was launched to promote skeptical inquiry and critical investigation of paranormal claims—an institutional bridge between scientific skepticism and secular humanist advocacy in the U.S.
Paul Kurtz compiled and issued A Secular Humanist Declaration through the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism (later Council for Secular Humanism), helping define “secular humanism” as a distinct public identity and program in late-20th-century U.S. culture wars.
Paul Kurtz founded what became the Council for Secular Humanism (CSH), establishing a major U.S. organizational hub for explicitly secular (nonreligious) humanism and for publishing and policy engagement.
Free Inquiry began publication (Winter 1980/81), becoming a prominent U.S. periodical advocating secular humanism and providing an intellectual forum for debates over religion, ethics, science, and public policy.
Paul Kurtz founded the Center for Inquiry (CFI), bringing together CSICOP (scientific skepticism) and the Council for Secular Humanism, consolidating infrastructure for U.S. secular humanism and allied science-and-reason advocacy.
Development of Secular Humanism in the United States (1920–2000)
