Funeral celebrant standard. Many Funeral Directors in these states saw celebrants as a threat to their income and were openly hostile. Several firms declared every member of their staff a celebrant. Others employed an in-house celebrant who was required to perform 13 or 14 funeral ceremonies per week — compelling such employees to resort to one-size-fits-all impersonal ceremonies. A "celebrant funeral" in these contexts became the worst option available. As author and commentator Robert Larkins put it, speaking of one family’s experience- As church attendances declined, funeral directors in New South Wales pushed non-church people into organising "family ceremonies". A few families
The Humanist Institute of THI is to provide educational opportunities that serve humanist and secular communities in world where humanism is widely accepted and respected life-stance. The Institute was founded to educate and train effective leaders, organizers, and advocates for a variety of organizational settings, including within the humanist movement itself. The idea for the Humanist Institute originated in Pittsburgh in 1976 and was the brainchild of Paul Beattie, a Unitarian Universalist minister. In August 1982, Rabbi Sherwin Wine organized a gathering of forty-five humanist leaders at the University of Chicago [where] the North American Committee for Humanism [NACH] was formed with Rabbi