Looking Back to Look Forward: Organised Humanism in the World. Belgium, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States of America: 1945 – 2005

The number of secular people has increased substantially over the past several decades, and research on secularism and nonreligion has been on the rise in past years. Until today no publication has examined the evolution of organised freethought and subsequent secular humanism as it emerged in different Western countries in a comparative perspective. In this book, a team of historians brings together the histories of secular humanism of some pioneer countries. They examine how organised freethought evolved in the aftermath of World War II in the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and the United States. As secular humanist organisations in these countries are some of the cofounders and long-lasting members of Humanists International (formerly International Humanist and Ethical Union) this book reveals how Western humanism developed in different circumstances.