Curtis W. Reese

From Philosopedia

Reese, Curtis Willford (3 September 1887 - 5 June 1961)

A Southern Baptist turned Unitarian minister, Reese served in Alton, Illinois, and Des Moines, Iowa. In his post as executive director of the Western Conference Office (Unitarian) located in Chicago, Reese encouraged the organization of Unitarian churches and the acceptance of Humanism. He was a key figure in relocating Meadville Theological School to Chicago. An editor of Unity, he was an early leader of the Humanist movement within Unitarianism and was the successor to Western radical leader Jenkin Lloyd Jones as dean from 1930 to 1957 of Chicago’s Abraham Lincoln Center.

In 1944, when Frederick M. Eliot, a humanist but not a doctrinaire one, according to Edwin H. Wilson, rejected Reese's candidacy for the presidency of Meadville Theological School, Eliot explained that his decision had not been a personal one but, rather, he did not want Meadville to be perceived as having fallen into humanist hands.

From 1949 to 1950, he was President of the American Humanist Association. Concerning Warren Allen Smith’s categorization of seven humanisms, Reese wrote:

• Category No. 7, naturalistic humanism, would come nearer indicating my position in the classification of humanist types. I have, however, at times in the past styled my position Organic Humanism, since I have made an effort to weave into my position strands from the various classifications of Humanism. I arrived at my original humanist position without any traceable influence from any other person, but I was very soon thereafter greatly influenced by the writings of F. S. C. Schiller, Roy Wood Sellars, William James, and John Dewey.
• I think that Classical Humanism properly belongs in the tradition of Modern Humanism, although it does not move out vigorously into the main stream of Humanism. Theistic Humanism, while better than Humanistic Theism, does not seem to me to be a very fruitful concept.
• Atheistic Humanism is more dogmatic about the nature of the universe than I care to be. Communistic Humanism I do not regard as a satisfactory designation because to me Humanism with its emphasis on freedom and the possibility of the intelligent control of natural processes is contradicted by the Communist ideology.

Reese, who signed Humanist Manifesto I, wrote Humanist Sermons (1927) and The Meaning of Humanism (1945). Describing Midwestern humanism, Warren R. Ross wrote in World (November-December 1997) of Reese’s importance:

• What was later to be called religious humanism first gained strength in the late 19th century in the Western Unitarian Conference. The Rev. Mary Safford preached what she called a “religion of morality on fire with love for humanity” from the pulpit of the Des Moines Unitarian Church, where she was followed by the Rev. Curtis Reese and his “religion of democracy.” It was the Rev. John Dietrich in Minneapolis who gave this reason- and ethics-based science-loving faith the name of humanism.”

Reese’s family, all devout Southern Baptists, declared they would rather see Reese burn in hell, as he surely would, if he left the Baptist Church at Tiffin, Ohio, and became minister of the Unitarian Church at Alton, Illinois, which he did. Edwin H. Wilson, learning this at a much later date, said even Reese’s sister, who previously had named her son for Curtis, legally changed the child’s name to that of a Baptist evangelist. Wilson observed, “I understood for the first time the painful pressure that had produced the terrific productivity and dynamic leadership of Curtis Reese.”

Correspondence

{CL; HM1; EU, Paul H. Beattie; EW; FUS; HNS; HNS2; U; U&U; WAS, 28 April 1956}