Our Twenty-Fifth Anniversary
A Personal Interpretation
(This essay was first published in Spring, 2001.)
by Harold Wood
The year 2000 was the 25th anniversary of the Universal Pantheist Society, and 2001 was the 25th anniversary of this newsletter, now titled Pantheist Vision. Although you can find books, websites, periodicals, and articles galore about Pantheism today, back in 1975 the world seemed a lonely place for Pantheists. Our views seemed rare and unusual in a religious environment that seemed dominated by either traditional Judeo-Christian institutions or strange counter-culture-inspired alternative religions like Eckankar and the Church of All Worlds based largely on science fiction and fantasy.
To properly trace the history of the forming of the Universal Pantheist Society, from my perspective I must go back to my own childhood. Some of our other founding members may have different interpretations, but here's my story about how the Universal Pantheist Society was formed.
Like most Pantheists, I knew at a young age that I couldn't embrace any approach to religion that I'd heard of in either conventional society or even in the so-called counter-culture. I grew up in an ordinary Christian Protestant home. We attended church regularly. Ever since I can remember, I was "religious." In fifth grade, one of my peers asked me if I was "saved" and told me that I could only be saved if I "gave myself to Jesus." I thought about this, but took a different approach. That night I made a prayer - and I didn't address it to Jesus. I addressed it to That Which Created Me, and I said in my prayer I didn't care what you called it, whether God or Evolution. But I said that my life was from now on entirely and forever dedicated to That Which Created Me. And I had a pretty good idea even then that That Which Created Me wasn't some theological mumbo-jumbo written by some ignorant nomadic tribes in the Middle East. I had a good inkling it probably had more to do with the laws of Nature, which at that time I only had a rudimentary understanding, but of which I considered held a lot more interesting information about the nature of "Creator" than anything I had learned about in Sunday School.
This approach was confirmed years later when I decided to read the New Testament from beginning to end. What I read appalled me, and I decided I didn't believe a word of it. I began a study of comparative religion, but nothing there satisfied me either. I always felt that when people identified the word "God" with people and events in the Bible or the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita or whatever, they were making a huge mistake and missing the main point. If God is the Creator (ie., That Which Created Me and everything else), obviously the Creator is Nature itself, not some imaginary anthropomorphic supposedly omnipotent gaseous being, but rather a fascinating interaction of matter and energy which is ultimately mysterious but which can best be explored, known, and appreciated through the scientific method. I found "theology" to me didn't mean reading the Bible or dusty philosophical treatises, but rather involved "keying" out a wildflower, identifying a bird or a rock or an insect, or learning about ecological and evolutionary interactions in ecosystems. Moses and the Apostle Paul weren't my prophets, but rather Darwin and Muir and Krutch!
Like many, I probably first ran across the term "Pantheism" in an English class with reference to the Romantic poets, and it didn't take long for me to recognize that word seemed to sum up pretty well what I already believed and lived. I began to hold "worship services" for myself in which I experimented with adapting conventional worship services to a Pantheist format., since the conventional churches didn't do it for me any more but I felt a need to set aside some time for religious study and inspiration.
I started thinking about the need to have a Pantheist church. I wrote essays imagining what a Pantheist church might be like. I met with some friends in college in 1970 about the possibility of forming a Pantheist church, but I didn't find anyone who was very interested until 1974 when I met Derham Giuliani. We went on camping trips together in the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains of California during that summer. It was during one of those trips that Derham mentioned that he thought Pantheists ought to have a church of their own. I immediately agreed, and told him that I had long held such an idea. There, in Silver Canyon of the White Mountains of California, high above the little town of Big Pine, we resolved we would not wait for someone else to do it, but would immediately commit ourselves to founding such a group. I enlisted another friend, Nancy Lowe, to sign on so we could have the three people required by the state of California to be incorporated. It took nearly a year to get incorporated, which we received in October of 1975, and, after some exchange of letters with the Internal Revenue Service, to get our federal tax-exempt status as a church, which we ultimately obtained in April of 1976.
We chose the name "Universal Pantheist Society" to emphasize that we are an organization for Pantheists that is "universal," not tied to any single view of Pantheism, but which recognizes the diversity of viewpoints within it. This inclusive approach to Pantheism contrasts with virtually all other Pantheist organizations which have formed since our origin 25 years ago. It seemed to us then, and it still seems to me, that attempting to identify members on the basis of mere "belief" is a poor way of doing things, because every single person in the world has their own personal views and beliefs, which are ultimately unique to each individual. More importantly, if we live with free minds and hearts, our beliefs can (or should) mutate over time as we grow and learn. What unites us is not mere belief, but something much stronger: a burning desire to seek renewed reverence for the Earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence.
We established in our Articles of Incorporation these purposes: "to unite Pantheists everywhere into a common fellowship, to undertake the conveyance of information about Pantheism to the interested public, to encourage discussion and communication among Pantheist, and to provide for the mutual aid and defense of Pantheists everywhere." The three of us held our first annual meeting in Davis, California, in October, 1975. By that time we had published "Pantheism and Earthkeeping" and "Creator and Context: the Pantheist World-View." Through the next winter, we recruited more members, fought for our tax exemption, adopted stationery, and developed a bibliography.
In the summer of 1976, I edited and distributed Volume 1, Number 1 of the Universal Pantheist Society Newsletter. Only two pages, we explained the purpose of the Society, listed literature available, proposed a definition of Pantheism, described our debate with the Internal Revenue Service prior to their awarding our tax exemption status, reprinted a brief essay from Joseph Wood Krutch on "Trust in Wildness," and began our first series of quotations of Pantheist viewpoints, quoting from Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Joseph Wood Krutch. We published the Newsletter regularly until January, 1980, when we enlarged the format. My wife Janet suggested a better name, and so we re-named the newsletter Pantheist Vision.
From these humble beginnings, the Universal Pantheist Society has played a prominent role in spreading Pantheism. Pantheist Vision has been published as 12 half-size pages (now 8 full-size pages) for many years, representing a variety of authors; we have a number of special publications on various topics, an extensive annotated bibliography, and an extensive website containing huge amounts of reading material and an interactive forum for the discussion of Pantheist ideas, philosophy, and action. Others have created mew organizations, too, which celebrate Pantheist ideals, and while most of them do not take the "universal" approach we have tried to take, it is good to see the growth of Pantheist ideas and information in the world. We hope we can continue to "unite Pantheists everywhere into a common fellowship" for many years to come.
Reprinted from Pantheist Vision, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring, 2001.
To properly trace the history of the forming of the Universal Pantheist Society, from my perspective I must go back to my own childhood. Some of our other founding members may have different interpretations, but here's my story about how the Universal Pantheist Society was formed.
Like most Pantheists, I knew at a young age that I couldn't embrace any approach to religion that I'd heard of in either conventional society or even in the so-called counter-culture. I grew up in an ordinary Christian Protestant home. We attended church regularly. Ever since I can remember, I was "religious." In fifth grade, one of my peers asked me if I was "saved" and told me that I could only be saved if I "gave myself to Jesus." I thought about this, but took a different approach. That night I made a prayer - and I didn't address it to Jesus. I addressed it to That Which Created Me, and I said in my prayer I didn't care what you called it, whether God or Evolution. But I said that my life was from now on entirely and forever dedicated to That Which Created Me. And I had a pretty good idea even then that That Which Created Me wasn't some theological mumbo-jumbo written by some ignorant nomadic tribes in the Middle East. I had a good inkling it probably had more to do with the laws of Nature, which at that time I only had a rudimentary understanding, but of which I considered held a lot more interesting information about the nature of "Creator" than anything I had learned about in Sunday School.
This approach was confirmed years later when I decided to read the New Testament from beginning to end. What I read appalled me, and I decided I didn't believe a word of it. I began a study of comparative religion, but nothing there satisfied me either. I always felt that when people identified the word "God" with people and events in the Bible or the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita or whatever, they were making a huge mistake and missing the main point. If God is the Creator (ie., That Which Created Me and everything else), obviously the Creator is Nature itself, not some imaginary anthropomorphic supposedly omnipotent gaseous being, but rather a fascinating interaction of matter and energy which is ultimately mysterious but which can best be explored, known, and appreciated through the scientific method. I found "theology" to me didn't mean reading the Bible or dusty philosophical treatises, but rather involved "keying" out a wildflower, identifying a bird or a rock or an insect, or learning about ecological and evolutionary interactions in ecosystems. Moses and the Apostle Paul weren't my prophets, but rather Darwin and Muir and Krutch!
Like many, I probably first ran across the term "Pantheism" in an English class with reference to the Romantic poets, and it didn't take long for me to recognize that word seemed to sum up pretty well what I already believed and lived. I began to hold "worship services" for myself in which I experimented with adapting conventional worship services to a Pantheist format., since the conventional churches didn't do it for me any more but I felt a need to set aside some time for religious study and inspiration.
I started thinking about the need to have a Pantheist church. I wrote essays imagining what a Pantheist church might be like. I met with some friends in college in 1970 about the possibility of forming a Pantheist church, but I didn't find anyone who was very interested until 1974 when I met Derham Giuliani. We went on camping trips together in the White Mountains and Inyo Mountains of California during that summer. It was during one of those trips that Derham mentioned that he thought Pantheists ought to have a church of their own. I immediately agreed, and told him that I had long held such an idea. There, in Silver Canyon of the White Mountains of California, high above the little town of Big Pine, we resolved we would not wait for someone else to do it, but would immediately commit ourselves to founding such a group. I enlisted another friend, Nancy Lowe, to sign on so we could have the three people required by the state of California to be incorporated. It took nearly a year to get incorporated, which we received in October of 1975, and, after some exchange of letters with the Internal Revenue Service, to get our federal tax-exempt status as a church, which we ultimately obtained in April of 1976.
We chose the name "Universal Pantheist Society" to emphasize that we are an organization for Pantheists that is "universal," not tied to any single view of Pantheism, but which recognizes the diversity of viewpoints within it. This inclusive approach to Pantheism contrasts with virtually all other Pantheist organizations which have formed since our origin 25 years ago. It seemed to us then, and it still seems to me, that attempting to identify members on the basis of mere "belief" is a poor way of doing things, because every single person in the world has their own personal views and beliefs, which are ultimately unique to each individual. More importantly, if we live with free minds and hearts, our beliefs can (or should) mutate over time as we grow and learn. What unites us is not mere belief, but something much stronger: a burning desire to seek renewed reverence for the Earth and a vision of Nature as the ultimate context for human existence.
We established in our Articles of Incorporation these purposes: "to unite Pantheists everywhere into a common fellowship, to undertake the conveyance of information about Pantheism to the interested public, to encourage discussion and communication among Pantheist, and to provide for the mutual aid and defense of Pantheists everywhere." The three of us held our first annual meeting in Davis, California, in October, 1975. By that time we had published "Pantheism and Earthkeeping" and "Creator and Context: the Pantheist World-View." Through the next winter, we recruited more members, fought for our tax exemption, adopted stationery, and developed a bibliography.
In the summer of 1976, I edited and distributed Volume 1, Number 1 of the Universal Pantheist Society Newsletter. Only two pages, we explained the purpose of the Society, listed literature available, proposed a definition of Pantheism, described our debate with the Internal Revenue Service prior to their awarding our tax exemption status, reprinted a brief essay from Joseph Wood Krutch on "Trust in Wildness," and began our first series of quotations of Pantheist viewpoints, quoting from Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Joseph Wood Krutch. We published the Newsletter regularly until January, 1980, when we enlarged the format. My wife Janet suggested a better name, and so we re-named the newsletter Pantheist Vision.
From these humble beginnings, the Universal Pantheist Society has played a prominent role in spreading Pantheism. Pantheist Vision has been published as 12 half-size pages (now 8 full-size pages) for many years, representing a variety of authors; we have a number of special publications on various topics, an extensive annotated bibliography, and an extensive website containing huge amounts of reading material and an interactive forum for the discussion of Pantheist ideas, philosophy, and action. Others have created mew organizations, too, which celebrate Pantheist ideals, and while most of them do not take the "universal" approach we have tried to take, it is good to see the growth of Pantheist ideas and information in the world. We hope we can continue to "unite Pantheists everywhere into a common fellowship" for many years to come.
Reprinted from Pantheist Vision, Vol. 22, No. 1, Spring, 2001.