A Godless Congregation

“I firmly believe that a good steak is a transcendent experience,” a woman in red lipstick declares.

“If you never knew steak, you wouldn’t crave it,” counters a woman in black-framed glasses, the lone vegetarian in the room.

“Well yeah, but then you’d just be spiritually deprived.”

This exchange is set in a sunny space on JFK St., the meeting room of Harvard Square’s Humanist Hub—a self-described “3200 sq. feet of Godless Congregation.” On Friday afternoons at 5 p.m., the space lends itself to the Harvard Community of Humanists, Atheists, and Agnostics (HCHAA, pronounced “ha-chaa”), a group of undergraduates who gather to discuss various topics as secular thinkers. This week’s conversation focuses on the secular ethics of vegetarianism.

HOWDY HEATHENS

“Howdy heathens,” begins an email detailing an upcoming HCHAA meeting.

Most messages sent over the HCHAA listserv start this way and are characterized by similarly playful irreverence. (The email announcing the discussion of vegetarianism ended with “Hail Seitan!”) Although HCHAA meetings often cover serious matters of the human condition, the group maintains a lighthearted air.

“We do have a tongue-in-cheek way of going about it,” Quinn Sluzenski ’18, HCHAA’s outreach director, says. “In a lot of places, there is a stigma against humanism and atheism, and it’s our way of reclaiming that and saying, ‘Okay, we’re heathens, but we’re also good people.’”

HCHAA president Darius Altman ’17 says that the group actively avoids the stereotypes of “militant atheism.” Instead, HCHAA focuses on building a social organization of like-minded people.

“It’s really about getting to know other people,” Altman says. “It’s a community for the sake of having a community.”

HCHAA’s membership includes undergraduates from a plethora of backgrounds. While some members come from atheist and agnostic households, many, according to Sluzenski, were raised in religious families and are not yet “out” of the atheistic closet.

“Our HCHAA camping trip fell on Easter weekend,” Sluzenski recalls. “There were some members that had to leave early to go to church with their families.”

The camping trip, nicknamed “HCHAAmping,” is one of the group’s many traditions. Other special events include a secular seder at the beginning of Passover, a ceremony for HCHAA’s cultural humanism award, and a December celebration of Festivus, the secular holiday created on “Seinfeld.” On a more regular basis, members meet for Friday discussions and enjoy more casual social events called “HCHAAppy Hours.”

THE HUMANIST RABBI

A bronze Gandhi bust peeks out curiously from a table on the other side of the couch. A pair of foam Hulk fists sits next to Gandhi, perhaps raised in an display of civil disobedience rather than superhuman strength. The shelves are lined with novelties—a balloon animal, a Martin Luther King bobblehead—and books with titles like “After Buddhism” and “A God That Could Be Real.” Tucked away in a small corner of the Humanist Hub, Greg M. Epstein’s office is something of a shrine to secular thought.

For the past decade, Epstein, an ordained Humanist Rabbi, has served as the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and as a faculty adviser to HCHAA. He also authored a bestselling book called “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe.” An influential voice in the national conversation about atheism, Epstein is attuned to developments in the greater humanist movement as well as the humanist presence at Harvard.

“It’s really important to me that students here use the space here to figure out what it means to live a good life and be a good human being,” Epstein says.

According to Epstein, HCHAA’s focus has changed since he first began advising the group. When conversations about secularism first gained national attention in the early 2000s, members of HCHAA were more concerned with activism and spreading secular ideas. Since then, community building has become more of a priority.

“The focus is now, ‘How can we provide a support network for them in the same way that a traditional church or congregation of any other kind might provide?’” Epstein says.

HCHAA boasts another high-profile faculty adviser: Steven A. Pinker, the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology, who first met Epstein when he received the Humanist of the Year award in 2006. Pinker often speaks at HCHAA events and welcomes students to chat with him in his office.

“The humanist community serves some of the functions of a religious community—camaraderie, shared purpose, even rituals and communal gatherings—without all of the theological baggage,” Pinker says.

Epstein and Pinker both identify a notable growth in the humanist presence at Harvard, especially since the establishment of a physical home for secular thought. However, as one could expect from an academic institution, humanist thought is prevalent, even if people do not necessarily self-identify as humanists or secularists. Pinker says that there is not a strong humanist presence among faculty, although many professors are “humanists by default.”

“They’re rationalist—most scientists are atheists, at least those at the top of their field,” Pinker says.

Pinker, who was raised as a Reform Jew but calls himself an atheist, did not identify as a humanist until he received an award from the American Humanist Association.

“It’s kind of like the character in the Molière play who is delighted to discover that he has been speaking prose all of his life,” Pinker recalls. “Even before I self-identified as a humanist, I guess I was one.”

THE SALAD PEOPLE

At 5 p.m. on Friday, the table is set with a small feast of Trader Joe’s snacks (HCHAA’s food is funded by the Humanist Hub), and four members sit in a circle, ready to talk about vegetarianism in the secular community.

The woman in red lipstick acts as a moderator of the discussion. She asks, “What is the ethical foundation of your diet?”

Although the members seem to agree that vegetarianism is disproportionately common among secular people, only one person in the room keeps a meat-free diet.

“I think a good meal can have as good an effect as a church service,” one member says, justifying his choice to eat meat.

“These salad people… I sympathize, and I wish them good work,” offers another carnivore.

The lone vegetarian cites unethical farming and environmental concerns as her reason for sticking to vegetables.

“I like people,” she says. “But we’re bad at having a planet.”

The conversation quickly shifts to the class implications of secularism and vegetarianism. One person says that secular and vegetarian populations are overwhelmingly college-educated, wealthy, and white. Another says that they “have the money to be ethical,” spending impressive amounts on environmentally-friendly food and travel. The discussion naturally moves to the closing of Clover, Harvard Square’s favorite purveyor of “fancy lettuce,” according to one member.

The small handful of attendees grows as the meeting goes on. The conversation becomes deeper after one member raises the issue of heart disease in association with consumption of red meat.

“I think a great part of the human condition is doing things that aren’t ‘productive,’” responds another member, making air quotes with a dramatic flourish of his hands. He denounces the common fixation on prolonging life. “What’s the point of living extra if you’re just eating soy beans and doing your job?”

The meeting ends with a question of the members’ duties as secular people.

“Because we lack cultural constraints that dictate our diets, do we have more responsibility to think about the ethics of what we eat?” the moderator asks. “Is there a higher standard for critical thought if you are secular?”

The participant who referred to vegetarians as “salad people” thinks that the absence of religion should not give atheists additional obligations.

“To be secular is a negative choice, not a positive one,” he says.

The moderator retorts, “Not if you’re sitting here.”