Were I to ask a typical American to tell me the name of that social institution where people who live near one another come together for the purposes of enjoying mutual aid, of developing a sense of shared interests and identity, and of professing their common commitment to certain shared values (or of exploring their understanding of certain core values), the answer I'd expect to get is "church." (Which answer might or might not be expanded to include the peer institutions of synagogue, temple, mosque, and so on.)
However, if I were to ask for the name of an institution that could be described just as I've done above, but whose congregants are additionally characterized by a common commitment to materialism (or naturalism, or secularism, or atheism), the word "church" seems no longer to apply. There really isn't any word in our vocabulary for a community institution that fills the role of a church for people of the secular persuasion.
Over the past decade, as I've done a lot of thinking and reading about congregational models of secular community, I've thought a lot about this vocabulary problem we secularists face in trying to put a name to the organized form of our coming together. Any time I came across a term in my research, I wrote it down. That list now runs to several hundred terms, many of which are quite weird but some of which seem quite workable. (For example, "congregation", "longhouse", and "assembly" -- as in the
Sunday Assembly which this past weekend opened for business in the UK). I'll see about posting that list here sometime soon, to see what others think about this or that possibility, and to invite additions to the list.
An abridged and annotated list of terms will also appear in a future issue of
Secular World magazine.
Look: we're here, and there's a lot of us, and we're working together, and though we're certainly not faith-based, we represent, in our shared commitment to reason and compassion, something which transcends the meaning of "
neighborhood." It's time we had a name.
*
This isn't the only vocabulary problem we have. At a Winter Solstice brunch gathering yesterday organized by the Greater Boston Humanists, one
Zach Alexander delivered a talk about the usefulness and limitations of "interfaith" engagement, and the limitations of the word "interfaith" itself (note the scare quotes). As has been noted by any number of commentators, and as was emphasized by Zach during his talk, the word "interfaith" is problematic. It would seem to exclude secular philosophies, lifestances, and worldviews, since adherents to these systems of thought tend to consider "faith" incompatible with their other ethical commitments. (NB: Conversely, the word "
eupraxsophy" -- coined by Paul Kurtz -- by definition excludes theistic, faith-based, and supernaturalistic worldviews.)
When an audience member put Zach on the spot to ask if he could suggest a word to replace "interfaith", he observed that -- just as with "atheist church" -- there just doesn't seem to be a word that works. I think we should be able to come up with one. This isn't just semantics; if our ethical commitments prohibit us from celebrating or promoting "faith" as a virtue (which is a matter quite separate from our criticism of and engagement with "religion"), then it stands to reason that we're voluntarily giving up our seat at any table where "interfaith" work is being done. Are students involved with the
Humanist Community at Harvard or eligible to participate in the White House-sponsored
Interfaith and Community Services Campus Challenge? When the State Department organized the
US-Indonesia Interfaith Conference in Jakarta, were representatives of secular community organizations welcome to participate? This semantic quibble represents an actual impediment to these and other venues were nonbelievers would otherwise have a chance to play a positive role in community and government.
To get the ball rolling, I've gone through some notes and typed up this list of alternatives to the word "interfaith". Some of these seem pretty feasible (I already use the words "intermural" and "pluralistic" where others might use "interfaith"), while others are a little out there, e.g. "intercistal" (not from
cyst, but from
cis-, as in cisgendered and cisatlantic) and "mondkonceptobla" (from the Esperanto words
mond,
koncept, and -
obla, meaning "world", "concept", and "many").
Feel free to add your own suggestions in the comments! And please share the URL for this post, and invite others to submit their suggestions below, or
by sending me an email. As submissions come in, I'll add them to the numbered list, along with the name of the contributor, and any notes he or she wants to provide about the source or inspiration for their suggestion.
Don't be afraid to suggest really wonky words! Brainstorming is an open-ended process, and it can be useful to see all sorts of untenable suggestions as well as ones that stand a chance of being pressed into usage.
Candidates to Replace the Word "Interfaith"
- heteroethical
- intercistal
- intersocial
- interistic
- interoutlook
- mondkonceptobla
- intermural
- interbelief
- intertribal
- multicongregational
- interideological
- interlateral
- interfacial
- interliturgical
- interassembly
- interfactional
- interpositional
- intercreed
- intersystem
- crosscommunity
- crossperspective
- multistance
- crossconviction
- interweltanschauung
- transdoctrinal
- multinotional
- interdenominational
- pluralistic
- multiphilosophical
- ecumenical
- interminable (not a serious suggestion, but worth the laugh)
- interthought (suggested by Hemaht Mehta)
- rerumstitional (a play of superstition/institution, and De Rerum Nature; suggested by Alex Vera)
- interatheist (Since no theist believes in all the deities humans have created, everyone is an atheist with respect to most of the deities. Suggested by Scott Romanowski.)
- intersecularist (suggested by Andrew Wilke)
- interhumanist or interhuman (suggested by Andrew Wilke)
- metatheistic (suggested by Rick Mueller)
- intercommunal (suggested by Josiah Van Vliet)
- intergroup (suggested by Maria G.)
- transfaith (proposed by Ed Clint at the 2010 SSA Conference, cited by Evan Clark)
- interworldview (suggested by Evan Clark)
- religiously diverse (suggested by Evan Clark)
- metadiversity (suggested by Evan Clark)
- existential pluralism (suggested by Evan Clark)
- JIP (Justice, Interfaith, Pluralism; suggested by Evan Clark)
- interconfessional (suggested by yours truly, following from the German use of the words konfession and konfessionlos)
- interpath (suggested by Derek Lewis Knox, theology student at Andover Newton)
