I hope you’re having a great Winter Solstice.

What’s that? You say you don’t feel like celebrating a mundane natural event?

Well, here are a few others that I hope will have you jumping for joy:

Rutgers University Appoints Its First Humanist Chaplain (John Chadwick/Humanist Network News; Oct 21)

The 26 chaplains and ministries at Rutgers University cover a wide spectrum of believers: Quakers, Jews, Christian evangelicals, and Buddhists, to name a few. But even within that diverse group – Barry Klassel stands out.

Klassel, an atheist, is the university’s first humanist chaplain – and only the fourth on a college campus nationwide, he said.

“Secular humanists don’t look to gods or the afterlife or the spirit world for understanding, strength, or support,” Klassel said in a recent interview. “We look for understanding in the world itself. And we look for support from each other.”

The university’s Religious Life Council approved the new chaplaincy last spring after Gary Brill, an instructor in the Dept. of Psychology, expressed interest in starting a campus organization for humanists. Brill said he believes there are significant numbers of students who, while not necessarily card-carrying humanists, hold some of the key convictions of the movement.

“I didn’t find out about humanist groups until my 30s,” said Brill, who serves on the board of the New Jersey Humanist Network. “I was so thrilled to find out that there were groups of people who identified as humanists, who supported each other and exchanged ideas.”

Humanists believe that people can lead ethical lives and work for the greater good of society without God or other supernatural beliefs. Humanists typically respect science – there are a number of humanist events marking the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin – and place great value on nature, reason and personal integrity in human relationships….

Brill said he expressed his interest in a campus group to staffers at Rutgers University Student Life, who suggested a chaplaincy.

“Rutgers has been completely supportive,” he said.

He then asked Klassel, a certified humanist celebrant who performs weddings and other life cycle events, to serve as volunteer chaplain.

Klassel, who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Columbia University, and a master’s degree in theater from the University of Pittsburgh, grew up in a Jewish household and gravitated to humanism in college.

“It started with a sincere effort to try to understand what it is that human beings can know and cannot know,” he said. “My conclusion was that this world is something we can know while the spirit world is something we cannot really know.

“Why not pay attention to what we can know?” says Klassel.

Klassel, among other things, has acted and directed professionally, served handicapped adults as a rehabilitation counselor, and worked as a facilitator with (New Jersey’s) Teen and Child Assault Prevention Programs.

As a chaplain, Klassel said he would draw on humanist principles of compassion and respect rather than prayer and belief in God.

“What’s extremely important is compassion, the compassion of another human being who goes through issues, who has difficulties, Klassel said.”That kind of connection from one human being to another is just as powerful as any other type of connection.”

Klassel holds regular meetings on campus that are open to the public. The last one, on Oct. 13, explored the theme of “Journeys to Humanism: How did you arrive at what you believe or don’t believe?”…

For more information, check http://rutgershumanist.org

Coalition Of Reason Promotes Atheism In West Virginia (Ben Adducchio/West Virginia Public Broadcasting; Oct 22)

A West Virginia group of non-believers is encouraging atheists to speak their mind in Morgantown.

Electronic billboards are distracting no matter what they say, but one in particular is catching the eyes of drivers in Morgantown.

The words “Don’t Believe in God? You are not alone” are superimposed over an image of blue sky and clouds.

This billboard and others like it in several communities around the country are produced by the national group, United Coalition of Reason.

Neece Campione is coordinator of the Morgantown chapter.

“We are all non-believers, and we feel we need to come out of the closet, so to speak, and join forces and show that we are productive, healthy, normal people who are good members of society,” she said.

The local Coalition of Reason chapter consists of four organizations: the Morgantown Atheists, Morgantown Thomas Paine Society, the Freethinkers of Morgantown and the Morgantown Brights, an organization of atheists dedicated to being morally responsible.

Will Booth is Vice President of the Morgantown Brights.

“I’ve seen studies in peer-reviewed journals showing that atheists are the least trusted minority in the country, which is very surprising to me,” he said.

Campione and Booth say they are wary of openly discussing their atheism with others in West Virginia.

Campione thinks atheists are infringed upon in society.

“In my personal life, I’ve felt in different family situations, that I would never tell most of the people that I’m an atheist,” she said.

The coalition received both positive and negative feedback from the Morgantown billboard.

Campione says the group is not trying to criticize or insult religious people.

“It’s about saying what we’re all about,” she said, “we value reason more than anything, logic, scientific empirical evidence, as opposed to faith.”

The coalition hopes to bring both religious and non-religious speakers to their meetings to discuss religion, logic and philosophy.

Members think the billboard is a success. They’ve received feedback from other atheists who say they are speaking more openly about their beliefs.

Churches Go Up For Sale As Costs To Maintain Them Increase (Craig Smith/The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; Dec 6)

Johanna Yoho knew the North Side church she attended since childhood couldn’t hang on much longer.

With membership and collections dwindling, Mt. Zion Lutheran Church merged with another congregation in 2006. Afterward, a consultant recommended conducting services in the newer and larger Brighton Heights Lutheran Church and putting Mt. Zion up for sale.

“When we hand the keys over to the (buyer), that will be bittersweet,” said Yoho, 48, of Observatory Hill, who was treasurer of Mt. Zion.

About 70 churches have changed hands in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Lawrence, Mercer, Washington and Westmoreland counties since 2007, according to RealSTATs, a South Side-based real estate information company. Dozens more across Western Pennsylvania have posted “for sale” signs.

“Selling churches is not an easy thing,” said Tom Conroy, a sales representative with Howard Hanna Commercial, who is handling the sale of the Mt. Zion church building to another congregation and expects the sale to close soon.

But it’s a sign of the times.

The former St. Nicholas Church on Route 28 may be sold to Lamar Advertising, parish officials said last week. The parish said it reached an “agreement in principle” to sell the 108-year-old church, which closed in 2004.

Restoring buildings that were constructed 100 or 200 years ago can be costly. A roof could cost $50,000; one stained-glass window could cost $20,000, according to preservationists.

“Smaller churches have a difficult time surviving the aging process,” said Danny Muzyka, president and founder of Service Realty, which handled the sale of hundreds of churches in Texas, Colorado, California, Washington, and Arizona.

Many church buildings are sold to other churches, but sometimes they’re converted to schools, day care centers, art galleries, private residences. One notable example is the former St. John the Baptist Church in Lawrenceville, which reopened in 1996 as a pub and restaurant called the Church Brew Works. That deal touched off a controversy and resulted in new policies at the Diocese of Pittsburgh.

“We were assured that all religious items were removed before the sale. They weren’t,” said the Rev. Ron Lengwin, diocesan spokesman.

In addition to increased inspections and inventorying of the contents of church buildings, sales agreements now give the diocese a right of first refusal if a parish sells a property to a nonfaith group, he said. Twelve churches in the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh have sold since 2007.

Most churches prefer to sell buildings to other churches or for compatible uses, but at some point, it becomes a matter of dollars and cents.

“There’s often a sentimental attraction. A lot of people have been baptized there, married there,” said Ned Doran, executive vice president of GVA Oxford, a Pittsburgh-based commercial real estate company. “But the upkeep on older properties is phenomenal.”

Maintaining Mt. Zion doubled the Brighton Heights budget, said the Rev. Brian Shirey, its pastor.

“Last year it cost us $22,000 to heat and light a vacant building,” he said.

The church, built in 1900, once served as headquarters for the Southwestern Pennsylvania Synod of the Lutheran Church, Shirey said.

“If I had the money, I’d turn it into a museum. It’s a historical site for Lutheranism in Pittsburgh,” he said….

The Urban League of Greater Pittsburgh opened a charter school in a former B’nai Israel synagogue in Highland Park after buying the building for $670,000 at auction. The congregation first offered the building for sale at $3 million, said Vince Lepera, Urban League vice president.

The 17,000-square-foot former Our Savior Lutheran Church, built in the 1950s, is for sale for $995,000 following the merger of Our Savior and Hope Lutheran Church in McMurray this year.

“We have lots of traffic, but no offers,” said the Rev. Jamison Hardy, pastor of the Peace Lutheran Church in McMurray, the church resulting from the merger….

New York Atheists Reach Out To Spanish Speakers (Daniel E. Slotnick/The New York Times; Dec 14)

¿Cómo se dice “atheism” en español?

New York City Atheists, New York’s chapter of American Atheists, wants to pose that question (the answer is ateísmo) in meetings aimed at the city’s Spanish-speaking population.

Conducting meetings in Spanish is the organization’s latest attempt to expand and garner publicity. The new meetings follow a campaign of advertising on city buses last July and television shows that run four times a week on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, a public-access cable network. (The well-publicized atheist advertisements that appeared in subway stations in October were the work of an unrelated coalition of local groups that called itself the Big Apple Coalition of Reason in the advertisements.)

Ken Bronstein, the president of New York City Atheists, said he started the meetings because Spanish-speaking atheists asked for them.

Mr. Bronstein said he believed that Spanish speakers were receptive to an atheistic message despite their roots in Roman Catholicism and the growing hold of evangelical Protestantism. He said many of the people who attended the first two meetings, on Oct. 27 and Nov. 24, became disillusioned when their prayers did not help their home countries.

“Their prayers weren’t answered – they didn’t like organized religion,” Mr. Bronstein said. “A lot of them were turned off because the lack of progress, the lack of economic progress in their countries, the combination of the church and the state holding them back.”

Mr. Bronstein said that the meetings were still relatively small, with about 15 members attending, but that there were around 50 people on an e-mail list. “We’re going to bust out pretty quickly in attendance,” Mr. Bronstein said. “We think there’s a major group of nonbelievers, atheists, in this community.”

Mr. Bronstein, who does not speak Spanish, said the meetings were directed by Juan Castro, an atheist from the Dominican Republic and the author of “Una Cruzada por la Humanidad,” or “A Crusade for Humanity,” a book that critically examines the world’s religions in Spanish.

Mr. Castro said he became an outspoken atheist about seven years ago. Although he was raised Catholic, he has never been observant. “But I was from a family like everyone in my country who was Christian,” he said. “I always have my own thing, but I was quiet about it.”

Mr. Castro plans to expand the group through advertising in Spanish-language publications and television….

Mr. Castro just wants to make sure that Spanish speakers in New York consider his point of view. “I’m trying to open the eyes,” Mr. Castro said.

Ohio School To Drop “Belief In God” From Mission Statement (FoxNews.com/The Associated Press; Dec 17)

UNIONTOWN: An Ohio school district facing a possible lawsuit from an atheist group plans to drop belief in God from its mission statement of values.

The Lake Local school board near Canton has voted to delete the reference to belief in God. A final vote is planned next month.

Board members say they’re acting out of concern about a possible lawsuit over the issue.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation says the values statement violates the separation of church and state.

A Dec 18 press release from FFRF added these details:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation initially complained last August on behalf of its members about the Godly inclusion in district publications. For example, the cover of the district’s August 2009 Blue Streak News said:

“WE VALUE: Responsibility, honesty, respect, integrity, commitment, belief in God and religious freedom, our community, our partnerships, and every person as a unique individual with the ability to acquire and apply knowledge.”

An earlier district mailer, sent to all postal customers, had the same language. The Ohio complainant also told the Foundation that Lake Local had the same words on the home page of the district’s Web site but had removed it.

The School Board unanimously approved a revised “mission statement” Dec. 14….

As Rebecca Kratz, FFRF staff attorney, pointed out in the Foundation’s August letter, “Listing ‘belief in God’ as an important value violates the First Amendment because it imposes religious sentiments upon students and their parents within the school district.”…

Annie Laurie Gaylor, Foundation co-president, called the violation “one of the most egregious we have encountered in the more than 30 years that the Foundation has been operating.”

The Foundation received requests for help not only from several area taxpayers but from two families with young children in the schools, Gaylor said.

“They were willing, despite the conservative area, to sue if the godly endorsement was not removed. The Foundation held back from its lawsuit only because a district official phoned to say the issue would be addressed in December,” she said….

Gaylor said it’s ironic that media reports are spinning the issue as a big national group bullying a small local community. “The bully is the school district, which has no right to promote belief in a god to a captive audience of schoolchildren. Under our secular and godless Constitution, our government and its schools can have no religion, no position on whether there is a god, much less tell children and their parents that it values such a belief.”

FFRF Co-President Dan Barker added, “God is not something everyone believes in, and for a public school district to say to its patrons that ‘We Value Belief in God’ is beyond the pale. It’s pandering to believers and unbelievably insulting to nonbelievers. Yes, we have freedom of religion, but we also have freedom from religion. People have to wake up to the fact that it’s not 1950 anymore.”

Do YOU know of other reasons to celebrate today?

Please share!