Historic Humanist Series

Since retiring from KSL Radio in 1986 Florien Wineriter's focus has been his philosophy. For decades Wineriter was a broadcast journalist and radio personality for KSL and KALL radio stations. He also served a year as a state legislator in 1957 for western Salt Lake County. "I think a highlight was when KSL asked me to work as their political specialist," Wineriter said. He was sent to cover the turbulent Democratic and Republican national conventions in 1968 and covered the Utah State Legislature Wineriter is fascinated by the American political system due to its capacity for public participation.

He was raised in the LDS Church but joined the Unitarian Church in 1952. In the 1930's several Unitarian clergymen in Chicago joined to form an organization that had a humanist philosophy. This subsidiary of the church has become the American Humanist Association. "Philosophically they're very close," Wineriter says of the church he attends and the thought that he lives by.

Humanism is a philosophy where human interests, values, and ethics predominate. Wineriter describes it as promoting "individual responsibility," outside of the dogma of a religious institution. The idea that humans should do the right thing because it is the right thing not to reach some kind of eternal salvation. "We take one life at a time," he quipped.

Wineriter is the president of the Humanists of Utah a local chapter of the American Humanists Association. The group holds lectures and discussions on the first and second Thursday's of each month at the First Unitarian Church, 569 S. 1300 East. He has attended the Humanist Institute in New York giving him the title of pastoral counselor, which carries much of the same duties and responsibilities of a religious leader. He is also on the ethics committee at St. Mark's Hospital as the Humanist representative and works with Hospice. Wineriter attributes his community interest to a combination of his LDS upbringing and his personal belief's as aided by humanist teachings.

"It's just my basic philosophy that every person has a responsibility to leave this world a better place than you came into," he said. He also feels that being raised in the LDS church taught him community involvement. "I gave up the theology but maintained the sociology of [the church]," he said.

--Debbie Hummell, Tribune Staff Writer
Published in The Salt Lake Tribune
October 4, 1998