The Ethical movement (also the Ethical Culture movement, Ethical Humanism, and Ethical Culture) is an ethical, educational, and religious movement established in 1877, by the academic Felix Adler (1851–1933). In effort to develop humanist codes of behavior, the Ethical movement emerged from the moral traditions of the secular societies of Europe and the secular society of the United States of the 19th century. In practice, the Ethical movement organized themselves as two types of organization: (i) a secular humanist movement and (ii) a moral movement, with a religious approach.
In the U.S., ethical movements became organizations for the advancement of education (e.g. the American Humanist Association and the American Ethical Union), whereas in the U.K., the ethical movements became the South Place Ethical Society and the British Ethical Union, organizations which consciously transcended the congregational model of organization, as the Conway Hall Ethical Society, the Humanists UK, and the Sunday Assembly.
Internationally, Ethical Culture and secular humanist organizations organized jointly; the American Ethical Union and the British Ethical Union were the founders of Humanists International, whose original name, the "International Humanist and Ethical Union", reflected the philosophical unity of the Ethical Culture movement. The premise of Ethical Culture is that honoring and living in accordance with a code of ethics is required to live a meaningful life, and for making the world a better place for all people.
History
Background
The Ethical movement was an outgrowth of the general loss of faith among the intellectuals of the Victorian era. A precursor to the doctrines of the Ethical movement can be found in the South Place Ethical Society, founded in 1793 as the South Place Chapel on Finsbury Square, on the edge of the City of London.
In the early nineteenth century, the chapel became known as "a radical gathering-place". At that point it was a Unitarian chapel, and that movement, like Quakers, supported female equality. Under the leadership of Reverend William Johnson Fox (who became minister of the congregation in 1817), it lent its pulpit to activists such as Anna Wheeler, one of the first women to campaign for feminism at public meetings in England, who spoke in 1829 on "Rights of Women." In later decades, the chapel moved away from Unitarianism, changing its name first to the South Place Religious Society, then the South Place Ethical Society (a name it held formally, though it was better known as Conway Hall from 1929) and is now Conway Hall Ethical Society.
The Fellowship of the New Life was established in 1883 by the Scottish intellectual Thomas Davidson. Fellowship members included poets Edward Carpenter and John Davidson, animal rights activist Henry Stephens Salt, sexologist Havelock Ellis, feminist Edith Lees (who later married Ellis), novelist Olive Schreiner and Edward R. Pease.
Its objective was "The cultivation of a perfect character in each and all." They wanted to transform society by setting an example of clean simplified living for others to follow. Davidson was a major proponent of a structured philosophy about religion, ethics, and social reform.
At a meeting on 16 November 1883, a summary of the society's goals was drawn up by Maurice Adams:
Although the Fellowship was a short-lived organization, it spawned the Fabian Society, which split in 1884 from the Fellowship of the New Life.
In the United States
In his youth, Felix Adler was being trained to be a rabbi like his father, Samuel Adler, the rabbi of the Reform Jewish Temple Emanu-El in New York. As part of his education, he enrolled at the University of Heidelberg, where he was influenced by neo-Kantian philosophy. He was especially drawn to the Kantian ideas that one could not prove the existence or non-existence of deities or immortality and that morality could be established independently of theology.
During this time he was also exposed to the moral problems caused by the exploitation of women and labor. These experiences laid the intellectual groundwork for the Ethical movement. Upon his return from Germany, in 1873, he shared his ethical vision with his father's congregation in the form of a sermon. Due to the negative reaction he elicited it became his first and last sermon as a rabbi in training. Instead he took up a professorship at Cornell University and in 1876 gave a follow-up sermon that led to the 1877 founding of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, which was the first of its kind. By 1886, similar societies had sprouted up in Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis.