Welcome to the Circle of Light. We are a faith-based organization founded on the belief in humanism, equity, secular ethics, and scientific method. We seek to develop and establish a new religion that would gently steer humanity towards universal health, prosperity, literacy, and democracy. We build tools to support communities aligned with our tenets.

Why a new religion?

The moral principles at the heart of major religions, while inspired by pursuit of love and happiness, again and again get subverted with fear, hate, and violence. Trying to bend interpretations of the ancient texts to fit the modern understanding of the human psyche only leads to more division and sectarian conflict. The time has come to reflect centuries of study of personal relationships and social structures in a radical clarification of the concepts of good and evil.

Why not a political movement?

Political change is impossible unless enough people believe in the fundamental goodness of its outcome, and becomes inevitable when they do. A new religion, one that provides an objective scale for measuring political decisions and their outcomes and encourages people to make their own informed moral choices, will have broader and more lasting impact than political campaigns for the hot issues of the day.

Creed

Every person is unique and every person is equally valuable.

The Circle is an infinity of positions, each at the same distance from the center, all in perfect balance. On one side of the line, those who look to others for leadership, who are prone to be led into evil. On the other, those who seek to impose their will on others, who would often do evil to get their way.

We seek to bring all into the Circle, to teach all to respect their own worth and that of others, and to protect everyone in the Circle from the hurt of prejudice and from the temptations of privilege.

We believe that the world is knowable, that objective truth can be found, that a line exists between the good and the evil, and we dedicate our lives to holding that line with empathy, love, and art.

We practice and continuously improve ways to coexist that encourage everyone to contribute and enable everyone to benefit. We detect, study, expose, and disrupt prejudice, manipulation, coercion, and exploitation.

Cosmology

We believe in hard facts about the Universe, obtained through scientific method. We don’t worship the science itself, though, and we don’t pretend that it has an answer to every question. New discoveries lead to new mysteries, and we happily accept that there are things we don’t yet understand about the world; we don’t need to fill the gaps in our knowledge with myth.

Worship practices

We gather in a circle that allows every voice to be heard. We rotate every member of a circle through all roles that facilitate our gatherings. All members of every circle are encouraged to learn facilitation skills and are given an equal opportunity to practice.

We examine, question, and seek to improve every aspect of ourselves, our lives, and the world around us: language and other tools of communication, etiquette around our daily routines, making decisions, resolving disagreements, sharing resources, learning and teaching, raising children.

A circle must remain in touch with up to 6 other circles, and regularly exchange members to participate in other circles' gatherings. The purpose of this is twofold: share knowledge, detect malpractice.