The Sacred Humanists is a new platform as of July 2020. We’re actively looking for regular, occasional, semi-annual, annual, and one-time contributors who believe in the vision of this site and want to be part of this ongoing conversation. One day we hope to have contributors who are various kinds of Christians, Reformed Jews, Sufi Muslims, Zen Buddhists, people who self-describe as “spiritual but not religious,” etc. We value a diversity of perspectives.
Potential contributors need only meet the following criteria:
- Affirms the “Sacred” in Sacred Humanism, which is a belief in the existence of some sort of metaphysical spirituality.
- Affirms the “Humanism” in Sacred Humanism, which is a belief in the immense human potential to love deeply, think critically, enjoy the beauty and wonder of the natural world, and so forth.
- Commits to being a thoughtful person who strives to treat all people with dignity amid any important disagreements that might exist.
- Has gone through at least one spiritual crisis (broadly defined) that led to a period of significant deconstruction and reconstruction.
In terms of the scope of the content, there are only three firm boundaries:
- Everything produced for The Sacred Humanists needs to be about sacred rather than secular matters. Contributors have a significant degree of latitude on this, but all articles and podcasts need to heavily lean into a religious, spiritual, or theological perspective. For example, a contributor is welcome to write a thoughtful piece explaining a new cultural movement or offer a strong critique of a certain politician during a podcast, but the overarching conversational ethos needs to come from an overt faith-based or faith-informed perspective.
- We’re not going to get lost in the weeds of the political bureaucracy and melodrama within institutional religion. It’s fair game for someone to write thoughtful pieces exploring the differences in beliefs and practice between Reformed Judaism and Orthodox Judaism, Sunni Islam and Shia Islam, or Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. However, we’re not going to get into the minutia of a heated article about a local church split or an irate podcast about a controversial amendment to a denomination’s ecclesiastical canons. We steer clear of such dumpster fires.
- We have no pious scruples with a little colorful language. There is a time and a place to employ the linguistic emphasis that only profanity can provide. Yet this is not a platform for shock jocks who habitually spew curse words for no other reason than an attempt to get a rise out of people. We feel that falls within the category of “Oh, get over yourself.” The policy here is to only use profanity when you truly mean it so that it still carries weight when you actually need it.
If you wish to become a Contributor, please use our Contact form.
