Lunch/Lecture: Can I Give My Kids the Benefits of Religion Without the Religion?

Join us for our first Sunday afternoon Lunch/Lecture of 2013 at Phillips Brooks House in Harvard University, Sunday January 27. There will be a BUFFET LUNCH at noon (free) followed by the lecture at 1 pm.

Katherine Ozment will speak on "Can I Give My Kids the Benefits of Religion Without, You Know, the Religion?" Katherine is a Boston-based freelance writer who has worked in senior editorial positions at National Geographic and Boston magazines. She has written extensively on family, work and pop culture. In a recent piece in Boston magazine of the same title, she tackled the issue of the ethical education of children in Humanist families.

How do Humanists, "None's", atheists resolve the issue of how to introduce their children to ethical education and some orientation to the religion they will encounter in their environment? This is an issue of great importance as we try to form communities of secular people. Katherine tells her personal and local story of discovering she is a secular Humanist, and about the venues and authorities she consulted (including Greg Epstein and several professors), and the reactions of her Presbyterian relatives from Arkansas, in her quest to discover how to talk about ethics with her 3 children.

She will share her story, and we'll try to grapple with the questions raised by living in a world in which ethics education seems to have been kept in the domain of religious communities.

FREE PARKING in the Littauer Library Lot near the Science Center will be available during the event: Enter the Science Quadrangle from Oxford St. and follow the road through to its end in the Science Center/Law Library area. Phillips Brooks House is in the very corner of Harvard Yard (which is also accessible by the MBTA).