Editing John Dewey (section)

=== Religion ===
[[File:John Dewey, sem data.tif|thumb|upright|John Dewey]]
Historians have examined his religious beliefs.<ref>Howard L. Parsons, "The Meaning and Significance of Dewey's Religious Thought." ''Journal of Religion'' 40.3 (1960): 170–190 [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1199556 online] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210424054307/https://www.jstor.org/stable/1199556 |date=April 24, 2021 }}.</ref> Biographer [[Steven Clark Rockefeller]] traced Dewey's democratic convictions to his childhood attendance at the [[Congregational church|Congregational Church]], with its strong proclamation of social ideals and the [[Social Gospel]].<ref>Stephen Rockefeller, ''John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism'', (1994), p. 13</ref> Historian Edward A. White suggested in ''[[Science and Religion in American Thought]]'' (1952) that Dewey's work led to the 20th-century rift between religion and science.

Dewey went through an "evangelical" development as a child. As an adult he was negative, or at most neutral, about theology in education. He instead took a [[Meliorism|meliorist]] position with the goal of scientific humanism and educational and social reform without recourse to religion.<ref>Leo R. Ward, "Theology and Liberal Education in Dewey." ''Modern Age'' 21.2 (1977): 139–146.</ref>

As an [[atheist]]<ref>{{cite book |title=Dewey at One Hundred Fifty |publisher=Purdue University Press |year=2009 |isbn=978-1-55753-550-4 |editor1=A.G. Rud |page=22 |quote=With respect to his personal beliefs, Dewey wrote to Max Otto that "I feel the gods are pretty dead, tho I suppose I ought to know that however, to be somewhat more philosophical in the matter, if atheism means simply not being a theist, then of course I'm an atheist. But the popular if not the etymological significance of the word is much wider. ... Although he described himself as an atheist in one sense of the term, it is also clear that Dewey was opposed to militant atheism for the same reason that he was opposed to supernaturalism: he thought both positions dogmatic. |editor2=Jim Garrison |editor3=Lynda Stone}}</ref> and a [[secular humanism|secular humanist]] in his later life, Dewey participated with a variety of humanistic activities from the 1930s into the 1950s, which included sitting on the advisory board of [[Charles Francis Potter]]'s [[First Humanist Society of New York]] (1929); being one of the original 34 signatories of the first ''[[Humanist Manifesto]]'' (1933) and being elected an honorary member of the Humanist Press Association (1936).<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20030608113016/http://www.siu.edu/%7Edeweyctr/CHRONO.pdf "John Dewey Chronology" 1934.04.08, 1936.03.12, 1940.09, and 1950.09.11.]</ref>

His opinion of humanism is summarized in his own words from an article titled "What Humanism Means to Me", published in the June 1930 edition of ''Thinker 2'':

{{blockquote|What Humanism means to me is an expansion, not a contraction, of human life, ''an expansion in which nature and the science of nature are made the willing servants of human good''.<ref>"What Humanism Means to Me," first published in ''Thinker 2'' (June 1930): 9–12, as part of a series. Dewey: p. lw.5.266 [''The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953'', The Electronic Edition]</ref>}}