Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?
— ERICH FROMM

One third of Americans go to church every week. Asked why, primarily, they go to church, one quarter of churchgoers say seeking guidance, one fifth say grounding and inspiration, and one eighth say the church community. While I may not completely agree with all of their teachings or methods, I still think that church is one of the best ideas we’ve ever had as a species.

Here’s why.

Faced with unprecedented challenges of an interdisciplinary and intergenerational nature, education is our only hope. This is the conclusion that my friend Kevin and I reached several years ago while pondering the apparent hopelessness of solving the many problems we face today, and since then it has only come to seem more true.

As much as I would like to predict that we will successfully overcome all of these challenges, and as much as I think that we can overcome them in less than a decade if we all work together toward common goals, the evidence suggests it will take quite a bit longer. Absent an immediate global shift in consciousness, we’ll be working on these issues for decades, lifetimes.

So here’s an arresting thought: children entering kindergarten this year will be retiring in 2075, in a world unimaginably different from ours. Thus, we need to develop a curriculum which will serve these children well over six or more decades in this rapidly changing world. But once we find an appropriate curriculum, the opportunity for massive change is phenomenal. Here’s an even more striking statistic: more students will pass through the global education system in the next thirty years than have previously been educated in the entirety of human history. The potential impact of education is unprecedented.

However, even if we somehow instituted a perfect curriculum from elementary school onward starting today, we don’t have time to wait around for children to solve our problems for us. (‘Til then, we’d just be singing that classic song by John Mayer.) The truth is that we need to educate ourselves as well, becoming more adaptive adults.

As Eric Hoffer wrote,

“the central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”

What we really need now is Hoffer’s learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children learn together.

Enter the idea of cathedrals for the curious.

Proposed by freethinker Robert G. Ingersoll more than one hundred years ago in his 1896 lecture “How to Reform Mankind,” I have updated this idea of a scientific church, where a whole community can come together and learn, educating each other throughout their lives.

In the text below, my 21st century updates to Ingersoll’s original proposal appear in italics, and several notes appear in « brackets ».

Cathedrals for the Curious
Co-Authored by Robert G. Ingersoll (in 1896) & Nick Enge (in 2014)

Now, it seems to me that it would be far better for the people of a town, having a population of four or five thousand, to have one church, built to last for centuries, to the most sustainable standards, and the edifice should be of use, not only on Sunday, but on every day of the week, open 24/7 for continuous learning. In this building should be the library of the town, filled with the latest and greatest science, along with all of the tried and true classics, open to everyone all of the time. It should be the clubhouse of the people, where they could find the principal newspapers and periodicals of the world, the news (and “olds”) from around the globe.

Its auditorium should be like a theatre, available to local performing groups for free. Plays should be presented by home talent (Inherit the Wind? Twelve Angry Men? Copenhagen?); an orchestra formed, music and social dancing cultivated. The people should meet there any time they desire: for discussion, support, celebration . . . anything!

The women could carry their knitting and sewing (or in the 21st century, whatever they please); and connected with it should be rooms for games, billiards, cards, chess. There could be a room for meditation, an exercise room, perhaps even a Roman bath. In the courtyard and surrounding areas, there could be garden of native plants for peripatetic pondering.† There could be an orchard of fruit for anyone to pick and eat. There could be a kitchen with free culinary classes, and healthy food available to all.

« † While I do quite enjoy seated dialogue, I am even more partial to the peripatetic kind, from the Greek peripatetikos “given to walking about (especially while teaching”) from peri- “around” patein “to walk.” My friends and I formed a Peripatetic Club in high school because we so enjoyed (and still very much do!) having meaningful discussions while wandering. Whether with friends or by myself, half of my best thinking occurs while walking. The other half occurs in the bathtub, hence the Roman bath suggestion. »

Everything should be made as agreeable as possible. The citizens should take pride in this building. They should adorn its niches with statues and its walls with pictures. It should be the intellectual centre. They could employ a person of ability, possibly of genius, to address them on Sundays, on subjects that would be of real interest, of real importance: science, religion, ecology, love.

They could say to this minister: “We are engaged in business during the week; while we are working at our trades and professions, we want you to study, and on Sunday tell us what you have found out.” (O! how I wish I had this position! Let me know if you’d like me to fill it!‡)

« ‡ My friend David has proposed a practical method which could be used to fund such a position: in a group of ten people (or “N” people, it doesn’t really matter the number), one person is selected (randomly, by choice, by nomination, etc.), and the other nine (N minus 1) people agree to give the tenth person one tenth (1/N) of their salary each year. This way, the tenth person receives the average salary of the group, but is freed completely from the necessity to work for a wage, and is available to do whatever the ten agree will make the most difference in the world, in this case, acting as a scientific minister. »

Let such a minister take for a series of sermons the history, philosophy, the art and genius of the Greeks. Let him tell of the wondrous metaphysics, myths and religions of India and Egypt. Let him make his congregation conversant with the philosophies of the world, with the great thinkers, the great poets, the great actors, the great orators, the great inventors, the captains of industry, the soldiers of progress. Let them be made familiar with the greatest of poems, the finest paragraphs of literature, with stories of the heroic, the self-denying and generous. Let them have a Sunday school in which the children shall be made acquainted with the facts of nature; with botany, entomology, something of geology and astronomy. Let the youngest and oldest be always kept acquainted with the latest findings of ecology and psychology essential to living a satisfying and sustainable life on Earth. Let them have a time and place to ask questions, to be researched by the minister, and discussed by the congregation. Let there be a repository of life experience to be consulted by those with decisions to make. Let the elderly have a time to tell their life stories, to be recorded and preserved throughout the ages. Let there be commitment ceremonies for any two loving adults wishing to marry, coming of age ceremonies for those growing up, and life celebrations for those who have passed.

Now it seems to me that such a congregation in a few years would become the most intelligent people in the United States.

This cathedral for the curious would truly facilitate Hoffer’s learning society, in which every generation can come together to practice science and improve their lives, their community, and their relationship with Earth. Having all of the social benefits of church, and the resources of the greatest community centers, such a cathedral for the curious might just be the single greatest thing that could happen to a town, or perhaps to the entire human species.

Update #1: If you have thoughts about this idea, or want to help implement it, send me an email at: cathedralsforthcurious@gmail.com

Update #2: I was recently introduced to Sunday Assembly, which I see as a great start toward the implementation of this idea.