A Statement Rewritten by Design

Organised Humanism treats the Humanist Manifesto not as a fixed creed but as a statement of its current position, deliberately rewritten as understanding changes: the American Humanist Association, custodian of the tradition, has issued three versions, in 1933, 1973 and 2003, each replacing rather than merely supplementing the one before it. The primary texts themselves record the shift in content across the three: Humanist Manifesto I in 1933 spoke in a religious register, several of its signatories Unitarian ministers describing humanism as a new form of religious faith centred on human welfare rather than on God; Humanist Manifesto II in 1973 dropped that religious framing and broadened its scope to civil liberties, world community and opposition to what it called dogmatic and doctrinaire faiths; and Humanist Manifesto III in 2003, titled Humanism and Its Aspirations, is markedly shorter than either predecessor, stating core commitments in broad terms rather than itemising positions on specific contemporary issues. The Oxford Handbook of Atheism reads this pattern of revision as the point rather than as a defect, a document built to be corrected as the movement's own understanding develops standing in deliberate contrast to a creed, whose entire authority depends on staying fixed rather than being open to revision.