Welcome to the Ethical Society of Boston!

The Ethical Society of Boston is a secular religious and educational fellowship without formal creed or dogma inspired by the ideal that the supreme aim of human life is working to create a more humane society. Together we develop our ethical ideals, celebrate life's joys, and support one another through life's crises. We work for the improvement of our world and for the future of our children. Membership is open to those who agree with our principles regardless of race, religion, or national origin.

Our Sunday Platform Meetings are held at 33 Garden Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts each Sunday at 10:30 A.M. on a more or less academic calendar and are open to the public. Platforms include a featured guest speaker and discussion, readings, and music. We also give a series of short courses called the School for Ethics that explore ethics in society, in personal relationships and in the arts.

For information on upcoming platforms and events, or if you have questions or comments, please call (617)739-9050 or email us at  ESBoston@BostonEthical.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

A Little Bit About Us

Our meeting place at 33 Garden Street in Cambridge is one block from the main Longy School of Music building and two blocks from the Sheraton Commander Hotel on the edge of the Cambridge Common near Harvard Square.

About 50 people attend the Sunday Morning Platform Meetings.  You will notice from our Sunday Platforms schedule that we cover a wide range of social, political, environmental, emotional, and interpersonal issues - including matters of war, peace, and justice.  We are ethical humanists and we believe it is important to understand the complexity of modern life.  We live in a changing society and we want to help our social world change in a way that is helpful to humanity.

Our Sunday Platform meetings begin at 10:30 a.m. with Opening Words, very good music, and then the speaker addresses us for about thirty minutes.  We have more music, announcements, Closing Words, and then we break for refreshments.  We return for a Circle of Discussion with the speaker and close our Meeting at 12:30 p.m.

Our meetings are like those of other Humanists, Unitarians, Humanistic Jews, Quakers, Rationalists, and Atheists.  We are similar to traditional religious groups in knowing that our values are important in our personal and social lives.  But our values and beliefs are not limited by dogma or tradition.

We present an annual Humanist of the Year Award each Spring.

The Ethical Society is part of the larger Ethical Culture movement whose member societies are joined together through the American Ethical Union, headquartered in New York, NY, which has about two dozen societies in the U.S.  The AEU belongs to the International Humanist and Ethical Union with branches in about 100 countries worldwide. 

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