Mary Schultz

When Flo asked if I would be on this panel---give a feminist perspective on humanism, I was very reluctant; I didn't want to open a "Pandora's Box" or revisit old "battles and war-wounds." However, for what it may be worth....

I was born five years after women could finally vote in this country and seven years before scientists unlocked the secret of the timing of human ovulation. I was the fifth child of immigrant parents, and by the time of that last discovery, my mother already had 10 of her 11 children. By then we were also experiencing the effects of the deepening depression. (My father built houses and specialized as a plasterer. More than once he was given property in lieu of money and, in turn, also lost the property when he couldn't both feed us and pay property taxes.)

In my formative years, before Congress adopted the Pledge of Allegiance, the school day began with "Good Morning, Miss ______." We attended Sunday School at the neighborhood "wardhouse," but aside from "grace" at dinner, we were not expected to say prayers, with one notable exception when my youngest sister had pneumonia and might not live. My father decided that we'd better say a prayer, just in case it might help (and it could do no harm). We gathered around a chair, on our knees, with clasped hands resting on the chair while he asked god to intervene.

A few years later, I heard a sister ask him whether a belief in god might not be just superstition and Pop answered that it probably was but "who could be sure?" Well, I never needed to ask that question so I knew one person who was sure: myself.

In the context of the time in which I grew up, how could anyone become other than a feminist and a humanist? We learned early that men and even boys had more freedom and independence than girls did, and mothers were practically slaves to their families; most had no identities apart from their families and men ruled the roost in every walk of life.

Fifty-five years ago, being Unitarian in Salt Lake City was all but synonymous with being a humanist. That was the time when the Sunday Evening Forum was the only place in town where one could hear well-informed people address challenging subjects and match wits with their audiences after the talk.

Later, when I began attending morning services, Ed Wilson was minister and his services were not theistic. If god existed, he was almost certainly deistic, although some regarded "him" as a life-force only, comparable to Spinoza's "life-force" that was "in all and through all." Madalyn Murray's lawsuit against Maryland re prayers in school was frequently reported on and collections were taken to assist her. She communicated via a newsletter and spoke here several times. Unitarians wanted to believe that mankind (including females) should and would aspire to high standards of interaction. The negative public view of humanism was a reaction to the fight to separate church and state and to the second Humanist Manifesto.

On the subject of Feminism, we have not yet achieved equality even though many laws have been changed "on the books", and are even being observed some of the time; it feels light years beyond where we were 30 years ago until an O. J. Simpson-type problem percolates to the surface reminding us that many in society still think of us as the property of our spouses or fathers or brothers. Recently we've heard of women in India and elsewhere who were burned so that the husband could be rid of his wife if she hadn't pleased well enough. In our own country, women won greater independence and freedom after wars because they had been needed and served well in industry and the military, and spouses were elsewhere jumping to someone else's tune.

I was pleased to be reminded that Betty Friedan was acclaimed "Humanist of the Year" in 1975 by the American Humanist Association for her "Feminine Mystique," published in 1963, it presaged the firestorm of our collective anger and our determination to improve the lot of women.

Today I celebrate being a Humanist. I am grateful to Anna Zielstra (who began this Chapter), and the many of you, along with Ed Wilson, who have cast Humanism in positive, enlightening terms in this valley and around the world. You are the leaven in life's loaf.