Funeral celebrant and the director. A celebrant, by this definition, does not come from the standpoint of any doctrinal belief or unbelief. A trained celebrant usually operates professionally on the principle that their own beliefs and values are not relevant. An acknowledged pioneer of civil Celebrancy, Dally Messenger III claims to have officiated at the first funeral celebrant ceremony. This was in the sense that the client sought a service from Messenger, as a government appointed civil celebrant, and as a professional ceremony provider. There had occasionally been secular funeral ceremonies before this date, but they were extremely rare and informal, e.g.
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