Humanist Library of Leeds

At the end of last year, and I do mean the end of last year (it was started over Christmas!) my charity embarked on a new project, to bring together a great collection of literature on humanism and the surrounding subjects.

The idea was to create a Humanist Library here in Leeds which could be a world class collection made available to researchers and in the long term the general public as well.

Similar collections already exist at places like Conway Hall and the Bishopsgate Institute, both of which have excellent collections, unfortunately these are relatively inaccessible to people based up north who don't have the time or money to travel to London on a regular basis.

While the project will no doubt take a long time to really build up a great collection, I'm happy to say that the initial building blocks for the project are in place and we have a good foundation to expand out from.

Humanist Chaplaincy Network

In recent years the demand for non-religious pastoral care has grown significantly. As more and more people lose their faith, the demand for occasionally needing "spiritual advice" or someone to talk to has continued as ever and as such as gap in the market has opened up if you will as non-believers search for the same service on their own world view.

As a consequence a number of chaplains have sprung up, most notably Greg Epstein at Harvard University who gained notoriety with his book Good Without God. Here in the UK, the universities in Glasgow are now supported by a humanist chaplain too, in the form of Mandy Evans Ewing.

To help this much welcome growth continue, CWF recently established the Humanist Chaplaincy Network to provide support, training, networking and resources for those volunteering and working as humanist chaplains.