William Schulz
From Philosopedia
Schulz, William F. (1949– )
When he signed Humanist Manifesto II, Schulz was a Ph. D. candidate at Meadville/Lombard, the University of Chicago. For his 1954 doctoral dissertation, he wrote Making the Manifesto: A History of Early Religious Humanism, published as a hardcover book in 1975. He interviewed many of those who had written Humanist Manifesto I and observed about the John Dewey philosophy [[1]] that, coming as it did
- . . . on the explosive heels of the technological revolution, it quite readily reinforced the “rumor” already spreading for several decades (since Huxley’s time and before) that science could transform Being. Man was flexing his muscles in Nature’s face; intelligence, judgment, and the scientific input could regulate and direct her. Lacking the obstacles which a deity might provide, and confident that the universe (matter) was just waiting to be exploited for man’s benefit, humanity stood in awe before the possibilities with which its new Weltanschauung presented it. Religious humanism institutionalized that awe.
An ordained Unitarian minister, Schulz married the Reverend Beth Graham, also a Unitarian University minister, and they live on Long Island, New York. He has two children from a previous marriage.
At the Tenth International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) World Congress held in Buffalo (1988), addressed the group.
In 1985, he was elected the fifth President of the American Unitarian Universalist Association, a position he held from 1985 to 1993.
He then was named executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., the human rights organization which received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1977, serving from 1994 to 2005.
