Freethought Organizations

Secularist organizations promote the view that moral standards should be based solely on concern for the good of humanity in the present life, without reference to supernatural concepts, such as God or an afterlife. The term secularism, as coined and promulgated by George Jacob Holyoake, originally referred to such a view. Secularism may also refer to the belief that government should be neutral on matters of religion, and that church and state should be separate. The term is here used in the first sense, though most organizations listed here also support secularism in the second sense.

Secularists, and their organizations, identify themselves by a variety of terms, including agnostic, atheist, bright, freethinker, humanist, nontheist, naturalist, rationalist, or skeptic. Despite the use of these various terms, the organizations listed here have secularist goals in common. Note that, while most of these organizations and their members consider themselves irreligious, there are certain exceptions (Ethical Culture, for example).