The Conway Hall Ethical Society, formerly the South Place Ethical Society, based in London at Conway Hall, is thought to be the oldest surviving freethought organisation in the world and is the only remaining ethical society in the United Kingdom. It now advocates secular humanism and is a member of Humanists International.
The Society's origins trace back to 1787, as a nonconformist congregation, led by Elhanan Winchester, rebelling against the doctrine of eternal damnation.[2] The congregation, known as the Philadelphians or Universalists, secured their first home at Parliament Court Chapel on the eastern edge of London on 14 February 1793.[3]
William Johnson Fox became minister of the congregation in 1817. By 1821 Fox's congregation had decided to build a new place of worship, and issued a call for "subscriptions for a new Unitarian chapel, South Place, Finsbury".
Postcard of South Place Chapel
Front of interior of South Place Chapel.
Rear of interior of South Place Chapel.
Commemorative plaque describing the South Place Chapel.
Subscribers (donors) included businessman and patron of the arts Elhanan Bicknell.[4] In 1824 the congregation built a chapel at South Place, in the Finsbury district of central London.[5] The chapel was repaired by John Wallen, of a family of London architects and builders. This chapel later became the home of South Place Ethical Society. The chapel stood on the site of what is now the office building known as 8 Finsbury Circus; the building has an entrance in South Place which bears a plaque commemorating the chapel.
In 1929 they built new premises, Conway Hall, at 37 (now numbered 25) Red Lion Square, in nearby Bloomsbury, on the site of a tenement, previously a factory belonging to James Perry, a pen and ink maker. Conway Hall is named after an American, Moncure D. Conway, who led the Society from 1864 to 1885 and from 1892 to 1897, during which time it moved further away from Unitarianism. Conway spent the break in his tenure in the United States, writing a biography of Thomas Paine. In 1888 the name of the Society was changed from South Place Religious Society to South Place Ethical Society (SPES) under Stanton Coit's leadership. In 1950 the SPES joined the Ethical Union. In 1969 another name change was mooted, to The South Place Humanist Society, a discussion that sociologist Colin Campbell suggests symbolized the death of the ethical movement in England.[6]
The original name, South Place Ethical Society, was retained until 2012, when it changed to Conway Hall Ethical Society. In November 2013 Elizabeth Lutgendorff was elected Chair of the Conway Hall General Committee, becoming the youngest Chair in the society's history. On 1 August 2014 the society became a Charitable Incorporated Organisation with a new charitable object: "The advancement of study, research and education in humanist ethical principles". This replaced the previous object: "The study and dissemination of ethical principles and the cultivation of a rational religious sentiment."
Conway Hall was designed by Frederick Mansford, being built on an L-shaped strip of land which the Society had acquired between Theobald's Road and Lamb's Conduit Passage. It is a Grade II listed building[7][8] built in 1929 and was Mansford's largest project. The main entrance is located on an angle with a narrow arch rising to the top of the upper floor. The arch is flanked by two columns in silver-grey brick while the rest of the building is varied with red-brick detailing. There is a lot of glass in the façade, with wide windows to the Library on the upper level and in and above the entrance doors. The glazing bars form a distinctive tiny criss-cross pattern reflected in Conway Hall's logo. The general feel is that of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon, the old Shakespeare Memorial Theatre.[9] Mansford was aware that his design could appear incoherent and tried to make the elevation hang together by placing six stone urns, bought from a City bank, along roof level, two of them on top of the entrance columns.[9]
The main auditorium can hold 300 plus 180 in a gallery, and in recent years has been used as a corporate events space for conferences and product launches. The use of wooden panelling nailed directly to the brickwork and of acoustic plaster gives the hall excellent acoustic qualities; this makes it very suitable for the performance of music, and there have been regular recordings and concerts there. The ceiling of the auditorium was glazed, and this made it very light and airy for the time. It opened in 1929 and has continued in use since.[10]
Above the proscenium arch the words "To Thine Own Self Be True" (quoting Polonius in Shakespeare's Hamlet) can be seen. These words were originally inscribed on the back wall of the red mahogany panel at the original South Place Chapel.[9]
Film location
The hall has been used as a location for various film and television productions. The building has appeared in Mr Holmes, Bodyguard and Hereafter.
Humanist ceremonies
In 1935 twenty members of the Society signed a document stating that Conway Hall was their regular place of worship. It was therefore certified for marriages by the Registrar-General until 1977 when the Deputy Registrar-General ruled that the Hall could not be used for weddings under the terms of the Places of Worship Registration Act. This followed the report in the winter of 1975 of a marriage solemnised at Conway Hall. He was probably influenced by the 1970 ruling of Lord Denning, that marriages could only be solemnised in places whose principal use is for the "worship of God or [to do] reverence to a deity.[9] Until the ruling the Society had an established tradition of performing secular funerals, memorial ceremonies and namings of children at Conway Hall.[9]
Sunday Concerts
The Sunday Concerts at Conway Hall can be traced back to 1878 when the Peoples Concert Society was formed for the purpose of "increasing the popularity of good music by means of cheap concerts". Many of these concerts were held at the South Place Institute, but in 1887 the Peoples Concert Society had to cut short its season through lack of funds. At that point the South Place Ethical Society undertook the task of organising concerts under the first Honorary Secretary Alfred J. Clements and Assistant Secretary George Hutchinson who continued to run them under the name 'South Place Sunday Concerts'.[11] The thousandth concert was played on 20 February 1927,[12] and the two-thousandth concert was held at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 9 March 1969.[13] Clements was the Honorary Secretary for over 50 years, from 1887 to 1938. The Clements Memorial Prize for chamber music was set up in his name in 1938. Composer Richard Henry Walthew also had a long association with the Sunday Concerts, from the early 1900s until his death in 1951.
In 1929 the South Place Ethical Society had the Conway Hall purpose built for it, and with the exception of the war years the concert seasons have continued. The concerts have now been organised by the Artistic Director, Simon Callaghan.
Hawkins Catalogue
Frank A. Hawkins served as Treasurer of the Sunday Concerts for 24 years from 1905 until his death in June 1929. He collected nearly 2,000 pieces of sheet music of principally classical and romantic chamber music, which were bequeathed to the Society. The collection has been catalogued by composer and instrument combination and is held on the Conway Hall premises.[16]
Conway Memorial Lecture
The Conway Memorial Lecture was inaugurated by the Society in 1910 to honour Moncure Conway who died in 1907. The decision to create the Lecture was made in 1908 and the first Lecture, The Task of Rationalism, was given by John Russell and is presumed to have been chaired by Edward Clodd.
No Lectures took place in 1958, 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, or 1966.[17]
The 2014 Conway Memorial Lecture was given by Professor Lisa Jardine on 26 June 2014. It was titled "Things I Never Knew About My Father"[18] and detailed the MI5 files kept on her father, Jacob Bronowski, who sixty years earlier had delivered that year's Conway Memorial Lecture.
Library
Photo of Conway Hall Library with comedian Robin Ince
The Humanist Library and Archives based at Conway Hall is the UK's foremost resource of its kind in Europe and the only library in the UK solely dedicated to the collection of Humanist material.[19]
"The Ethical Record" redirects here. For the 1888–1890 journal of the Philadelphia Society for Ethical Culture, see Samuel Burns Weston.
The front page of the December 2012 edition of the Ethical Record, the journal of the Conway Hall Ethical Society
The journal of the society, which records its proceedings, is the Ethical Record. The issue shown for December 2012 was volume 117, number 11. This edition outlines the procedure that took place for the historic change of name the previous month.
Sunday Assembly
Since 2014, Conway Hall has been host to the Sunday Assembly, a popular secular service which takes place on the first and third Sunday of every month.[25]
Secular humanism is a philosophy, belief system or life stance that embraces human reason, logic, secular ethics, and philosophical naturalism, while specifically rejecting religious dogma, supernaturalism, and superstition as the basis of morality and decision making.
Religious humanism or ethical humanism is an integration of nontheistic humanist ethical philosophy with congregational rites and community activity which center on human needs, interests, and abilities. Self-described religious humanists differ from secular humanists mainly in that they regard the nontheistic humanist life stance as a non-supernatural "religion" and organising using a congregational model.
Moncure Daniel Conway was an American abolitionist minister and radical writer. At various times Methodist, Unitarian, and a Freethinker, he descended from patriotic and patrician families of Virginia and Maryland but spent most of the final four decades of his life abroad in England and France, where he wrote biographies of Edmund Randolph, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Thomas Paine and his own autobiography. He led freethinkers in London's South Place Chapel, now Conway Hall.
Barbara Smoker was a British humanist activist and freethought advocate. She was also President of the National Secular Society (1972–1996), Chair of the British Voluntary Euthanasia Society (1981–1985) and an Honorary Vice President of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association in the United Kingdom.
William Johnson Fox was an English Unitarian minister, politician, and political orator.
The Ethical movement is an ethical, educational, and religious movement established in 1877, by the academic Felix Adler (1851–1933). In effort to develop humanist codes of behavior, the Ethical movement emerged from the moral traditions of the secular societies of Europe and the secular society of the United States of the 19th century. In practice, the Ethical movement organized themselves as two types of organization: (i) a secular humanist movement and (ii) a moral movement, with a religious approach.
Stanton George Coit was an American-born leader of the Ethical movement in England. He became a British citizen in 1903.
The First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia is a Unitarian Universalist congregation located at 2125 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a regional Community Center it sponsors cultural, educational, civic, wellness and spiritual activities.
The Historic Chapels Trust is a British Registered Charity set up to care for redundant non-Anglican churches, chapels, and places of worship in England. To date, its holdings encompass various nonconformist Christian denominations and Roman Catholic sites.
Frederick James Gould was an English teacher, writer, and pioneer secular humanist.
The London School of Philosophy is an independent adult education college located in London, United Kingdom. It offers part-time non-degree courses on a wide range of topics within philosophy. It was founded in 2010 by lecturers from Birkbeck College. It is based within Conway Hall, in Bloomsbury.
Irreligion in the United Kingdom is more prevalent than in some parts of Europe, with about 8% indicating they were atheistic in 2018, and 52% listing their religion as "none". A third of Anglicans polled in a 2013 survey doubted the existence of God, while 15% of those with no religion believed in some higher power, and deemed themselves "spiritual" or even "religious".
Cleveland Hall was a meeting hall in Cleveland Street, London that was a centre of the British secularist movement between 1861 and 1878, and that was then used for various purposes before becoming a Methodist meeting hall.
Sophia Dobson Collet was a 19th-century English feminist freethinker. She wrote under the pen name Panthea in George Holyoake's Reasoner, wrote for The Spectator and was a friend of the leading feminist Frances Power Cobbe.
Alfred Joseph Clements was the Organiser and secretary of the South Place Sunday Concerts in London for over 50 years, from 1887–1938. During that period Clements arranged over 1,300 concerts featuring 1,500 artists.
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis is a non-theistic humanist community and member of the Unitarian-Universalist Association located at 900 Mount Curve, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Once led by the influential minister John H. Dietrich who is known as the "Father of Religious Humanism," First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis is considered in today's terminology the "birthplace of Congregational Humanism."
Elhanan Bicknell was a successful London businessman and shipowner. He used his wealth as a patron of the arts, becoming one of the leading collectors of contemporary British art.
Zona Vallance was a writer, lecturer, feminist, and key figure in the British Ethical Movement. As the inaugural Secretary of the Union of Ethical Societies, she held the equivalent role of today's Chief Executive.
Nathaniel Wedd was a historian, lecturer, tutor, and a noted influence on E. M. Forster. Like Forster, he was a humanist, who attended South Place Ethical Society and admired the freethinking Moncure D. Conway.
↑ Royle, Edward (1974). Victorian Infidels: The Origins of the British Secularist Movement 1791–1866. Manchester: Manchester University Press. p.309. ISBN0-7190-0557-4.
↑ Conway, Moncure (1904). Autobiography: Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway (v. 2). London: Cassell and Company, Limited. p.39.
This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain:American Unitarian Association (1922). Christian Register (Public domained.). American Unitarian Association – via books.google.com.
Conway, Moncure Daniel. Centenary History of the South Place Society: based on four discourses given in the chapel in May and June, 1893. London/Edinburgh: Williams and Norgate, 1894
MacKillop, Ian (1986). The British Ethical Societies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN0-521-26672-6
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
GBP £917.69K [1] 
