Polish Humanist Association was set up in the beginning of the nineties (1991) as the first humanist organisation in post-communist Poland. At that time, we didn't know about the existence of international humanist movement and the contemporary meaning of humanism as a worldview, set of values, intellectual, social and political option was a concept we had developed quite independently in the late eighties (nearly 40 years after Amsterdam founding congress of International Humanist & Ethical Union). It was only a year or so after the establishment of the Association when we had first contact with Dutch humanists and when we discovered that humanism in the modern sense was not our original discovery. As you may imagine we were both - a little disappointed and quite thrilled by the perspective of the future possible relations with a large international movement.

The founding group consisted mainly of young intellectuals: writers, philosophers, historians, publicists and students. Some of us were mainly interested in politics and social issues (advocating human rights and liberties, redefining democracy etc.) others in arts or philosophy, so for the first two years we were first of all preoccupied with building our own group identity. This process has not been and will probably never be finished but what we have already managed to achieve in this regard proved to be enough to survive and do some work together.

With some help of the often forgotten humanist value of sense of humour, we have solved some classical dilemmas facing humanist organisations in many countries: For example, we had to answer the question whether we should accept religious members; strange as it may seem, being openly non-theistic to say the least, we had attracted some persons who declare adherence to one of the Christian churches. After long deliberations we have come to the conclusion that we can accept those who believe in God on condition that they do not believe in Hell. The reasoning here is that belief in God is just a morally neutral error of judgement (after all, we are all mistaken) while belief in Hell ensues some degree of acceptance for the idea of eternal condemnation and suffering which we find incompatible with humanist values.

As for the activities it is too long a story to give account here. We have been engaged in writing for various magazines, and newspapers, we have done some social and political work, trying to promote humanist cause (fighting discrimination of women, young people and non-denominational citizens, advocating innovative solutions of some social and political problems ) and we have been working in the organisational field together with other humanist organisations (e.g. as one of the member organisations of the Polish Humanist Federation we were strongly involved in organising the first international humanist conference in Warsaw ).

Our co-operation with the Humanist Federation is very close. The chairman of the Association is one of the three chairpersons of the Federation, so sometimes the difference between the Association and the Federation is not very clear. There are times, however, when the Federation refuses its support the initiatives of the Association and the difference, luckily, is clear again. One should be aware that the Federation is a very heterogeneous organisation. some of its members, for example, are very close to the big political party, so they do not support activities which they consider to be disadvantageous to the policies of the party. Some organisations have been formerly (in the communist period) involved in anti-church activities as a state sponsored institutions while the others consist mainly of the former activists or sympathisers of the anticommunist opposition. There is also a wide generational gap which results in quite strong differences in attitudes and views. For example, currently the Association is trying to convince the Federation to launch a campaign aimed at concluding the "concordat" with the state. As some of you know the Polish parliament has recently ratified the so called "concordat" with the Vatican. The document provided the catholic church in Poland with legal basis for the privileges that the church has enjoyed in practise over the last 8 years. Discrimination of non-denominational citizens has been strongly reinforced in the document which as an international agreement cannot be changed by simple majority of votes in the parliament. Since the new constitution guarantees equality for all, regardless of belief, we suggested that similar "concordat" should be agreed with non-believers.