Humanists UK
charitable organization promoting secular humanism
Humanists UK, known from 1967 until May 2017 as the British Humanist Association (BHA), is a charitable organisation which promotes secular humanism and aims to represent non-religious people in the UK through a mixture of charitable services, campaigning on issues relating to humanism, secularism, and human rights, and through publishing the magazine New Humanist.
The charity also supports humanist and non-religious wedding, funeral, and baby naming ceremonies in England and Wales, Northern Ireland, and the Crown Dependencies, in addition to a network of volunteers who provide like-minded support and comfort to non-religious people in hospitals and prisons. Its other charitable activities include providing free educational resources to teachers, parents, and institutions; a peer-to-peer support service for people who face difficulties leaving coercive religions and cults; work to promote tolerance and understanding between religious communities and the non-religious; and work to promote humanist values and understanding of humanism. The current president of Humanists UK is Janet Ellis and the chief executive is Andrew Copson. The association currently has 70 affiliated regional and special interest groups and claims a total of approximately 140,000 members and supporters.
Humanists UK also has sections which run as staffed national humanist organisations in both Wales and Northern Ireland. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists each have an advisory committee drawn from the membership and a development officer. Wales Humanists and Northern Ireland Humanists campaign on devolved issues in Cardiff and Belfast and work to expand the provision of humanist ceremonies, pastoral care, and support for teachers in those countries.
Aims
The organisation's Articles of Association sets out its charitable aims as:
The advancement of Humanism, namely a non-religious ethical lifestance the essential elements of which are a commitment to human wellbeing and a reliance on reason, experience and a naturalistic view of the world.
The advancement of education and in particular the study of and the dissemination of knowledge about Humanism and about the arts and science as they relate to Humanism.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Humanists UK” as charitable organization promoting secular humanism. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as charitable organization promoting secular humanism. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q656542. VIAF identifies the subject as 141640753. The Library of Congress control number is n79063587. 4 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967 and 2017.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Humanists UK primary sources, Humanists UK archive and Humanists research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Humanists UK” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.