Back in the dim recesses of history, I wrote for several information technology publications.

A running joke in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was that thisyear, whichever year that was, would be the "Year of the LAN," or local-area network, that had long been prophesied. My colleagues and I would smirk a bit whenever some conference speaker declared this, and go back to our reporting.

The "Year of the LAN" did eventually arrive. Anyone who has a home network, wired or wireless, could be said to have ushered it in. But it came gradually, without the fanfare many in the industry sought to attach to this trend.

I had similar emotions when looking over a story in The Washington Postproclaiming the advent of a growing coterie of humanist clergy. Though posited as an oxymoron, the article noted that humanists -- who say there is no God and declare they can live ethical lives without a deity or scriptures to guide them -- need leaders, too. From the article:

The Postitem is resonating in other quarters, it appears. Maine's Portland Press-Heraldpicked it up, and perhaps other papers have or will do so. It has the "man-bites-dog" quality of many click-worthy news articles. In this case we are talking about self-proclaimed "God-less" clergy. This is also a story that has been written many times. It's a trend that journalists have been seeing on the horizon for quite some time now.

But how widespread a phenomenon is it, really? Even the Postacknowledges that this affects only "a small portion" of the 25 percent of Americans who claim no religious affiliation or "identify as atheist or agnostic." How small? How significant? Is there any way to measure the growth?

I ask because, like the aforementioned "Year of the LAN," this isn't the first time the Posthas heralded a humanistic congregation's rise. Go back to December 2007, when the paper looked at "Believers in Community," hinting at growth in the sector:

So we've gone from 2.1 percent as atheist and 4.3 percent agnostic in 2007 via the NORC, to "a small portion," unspecified. Forgive me if I don't see an ordained humanist tsunami just yet.

Missing from the latest Postreport -- and from its predecessor article, for that matter -- is any outside academic voice, such as Stephen P. Weldon, a University of Oklahoma professor who has studied the history of humanism for the past 20 years. Ironically, Weldon was quoted in a 2001 Postarticle about humanistic Judaism, which is not available online. (I found it via http://www.nexis.com.)

Weldon's voice, or another academic's, would have been a welcome addition to the story. Context is vital, I believe, to understanding how big or important a particular group is. Here, there's little in the way of context.

If I were the assigning editor, I'd ask the reporter to go back and get some more voices, some clearer statistics and more of a sense of direction. "A small portion" just doesn't cut it, in my view. And to herald 2017 as the "Year of Humanist Clergy" takes me back to those tech-conference days when the "Year of the LAN" was proclaimed again and again, until one day, it actually happened with virtually no fanfare.

Image with blog post: Sincere Kirabo, American Humanist Association; John Croft, Ethical Society of St. Louis; Chris Steadman, Yale University Humanist Director, at the Humanist Clergy Collaboratory in Washington, D.C. Photo via American Humanist Association on Twitter.

Read the rest here:

Happily God-less clergy say this time, it really is their year; Washington Post uncritically says, 'Amen' - GetReligion (blog)