On Sunday, July 17, I spoke at the Washington Ethical Society (WES), giving a slightly-updated version of an address I gave at NoVES in 2005. The audio version of that is available at the Washington Society's website. Here's the description as WES announced it, and following that, links to their platform address archive and to this particular audio file:

Shall We Pray?
Jone Johnson Lewis, Leader Northern Virginia Ethical Society
From the early years of the Ethical Movement, community prayer was rejected. Why was that? What has science found about the power of prayer? What needs of a community and of individuals are served by prayer in religious groups? If we reject community prayer, what serves those needs in an Ethical community?

I developed the list below using principles learned in Straight Talk™ and Nonviolent Communication™ as well as "best practices" for small group work in general -- with a little common sense added in. I invite you to consider these basics as ideals -- ideals, in the sense that we all fall short of meeting these at some times, and yet we can continue to improve. One of the goals of belonging to an Ethical Society is to get support for learning to live more in accord with our ideals!

Jone Johnson Lewis, 2003

While we don't require every member of an Ethical Society to consider Ethical Culture their religion, the Ethical movement as a whole and the national and local institutions within that movement have defined themselves as both religious and educational. The question isn't whether we are a religion, but in what way we are a religion, how we are a religious movement.