Theodore Curtis Abell
From Philosopedia
Abell, Theodore Curtis (1891—1960)
According to Sherman Wakefield, Abell in 1929 founded the first Humanist society independent of any church, the second being that of Charles Francis Potter in New York City. Abell’s was the Hollywood (California) Humanist Society, which he led until 1934. In the 1950s, he was minister of the Sacramento Unitarian Church.
Edwin H. Wilson has described Abell as “a creative innovator and organizational guide of early religious humanism,” founder of the oldest affiliate of the American Humanist Association. Wilson and Raymond Bragg had not asked Abell to be a signer of the Humanist Manifesto because they thought it not improbable “that Theodore Abell adopted an attitude that one often encounters among the ‘prima donnas’ of any movement: in this case L’humanisme c’est moi! (roughly translated, this means, ‘Humanism is mine’ or ‘I am humanism.’).”
Wilson said Abell also was not happy that The New Humanist had purloined the name of his publication, The Humanist, adding that relations with Abell “were not improved in 1941 when our publication changed its name from The New Humanist to The Humanist. However, Wilson considered Abell “a real humanist pioneer.”
