Anna Hoagland

I am certain I am a humanist for the same reason Hindus are Hindus, Catholics are Catholics, Lutherans are Lutherans. I was born to humanists and raised humanist. My father was a Unitarian minister for thirty-nine years, and Editor of the Religious Humanist from 1972 to 1977. My mother was second generation Unitarian, and her influence on my belief system is strong and deep.

When we are little we believe everyone thinks as we do and believes as we do. My childhood beliefs did not include god, Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, heaven or hell. When Christmas came, I thought everyone was pretending there was a Santa Claus. Easter was a time to celebrate spring and take flowers to church, not to celebrate the rising of the dead.

But, along with an excellent religious education through the Unitarian church, and two best friends, Marilyn O'Sullivan, red-headed Irish Catholic, and Laura Weiss, dark-haired Jew, I soon learned that other people really did believe in: God or gods; reincarnation; heaven; hell; angels; sin, immaculate conception, and yes, even Santa. Wasn't life wondrous enough without all this paraphernalia?

Although I was open to discussions, it soon became apparent to me that many religious beliefs were stranger than fiction. Marilyn told me animals did not go to heaven. Animal lover that I am, I knew at the ripe age of 7 that there was surely no heaven if animals couldn't attend. Marilyn went to a bazaar at my church, and she was in terrible trouble with her priest. She had to confess to that awful sin of entering a place where others believed differently than she. Laura couldn't eat pork! And, how could the strange stories in the Old and New Testament be true? People carrying around rock tablets, wandering lost for 40 years, living hundreds of years, rising from the dead. It was too much!

My favorite childhood story was, and still is, "The Churkendoose. It was about a creature, part chicken, turkey, duck and goose. Every barnyard bird was afraid of him because he was different. I began to feel like the Churkendoose, quite different than the majority of people around me. And, no matter how loudly I might sing the Churkendoose song, different was not allowed.

Does the green grass ask the sky so blue,
I'm green why aren't you green too.
A rose smells sweet cause it's a flower,
An onion smells strong, a pickle is sour.
They're different yet they get along,
And no one seems to think it wrong.
Chicken, turkey, duck or goose,
Can't there be a churkendoose?

Quite often the answer is "no." Different is too scary.

In high school, in the early '60's, I lost, what I thought were friends, when I was the only one in a social studies class to respond "More Alike" to the question: "Are the Russians more like us or more different?" Friends told me to go live in Russia. The logic must have been: We must all be alike to get along; we don't get along with the Russians; therefore, they must be different; and different is bad.

For a year and one half I went to a Lutheran College in Minnesota. My boy friend told me I was the sweetest girl he had ever met, but he knew I was going to hell because I did not believe what he did. I checked out the church and was told men were better than women and we were all sinners. Hogwash. I finished my studies at the University of Wisconsin, where, because of the diversity, and encouragement of thinking just for thinkings' sake, I felt alive, safe, sane.

(How difficult it is to have minority beliefs. I couldn't imagine being a black humanist!) Yet with each obstacle I faced, I found my humanist beliefs becoming stronger. In order to rent an apartment in a small town in Kansas, I had to convince my landlord that I had a conscience even though I did not believe in God. I got the apartment.

When we moved to Salt Lake, my son was constantly asked, "Are you Mormon?", "Are you Republican?" He told me that after a while it was easier to lie than to face constant rejection. We moved into a new neighborhood. The lady across the street came over to welcome us. "Are you Mormon?" "No." "Well, that's all right." We went to a block party, "Let us pray before we eat." A mother does not know when to register her child for kindergarten because the information was distributed at the ward house. A Native American friend says he has no prejudices but requires that his children marry Mormons, have the ceremony in the Temple, and that they love each other because they will be together for eternity. The Boy Scouts have Mormon troops and non-Mormon troops. The message is always: different is bad. Different will be punished.

Well, I remain a humanist, despite all the obstacles, because nothing else makes much sense to me. Humans have brains. If we use our brains, we create religions, philosophies, art, languages, sciences. Humans, in my eyes, are no better than trees, animals, fish. We are different, just as the Churkendoose is different. I value differences. I treasure my life as a humanist.