John Hassler Dietrich

The Fathers of Evolution John Hassler Dietrich

John Hassler Dietrich began life in a Moderate Protestant Christian Religion in the 1880's and 1890's. In High School and College he came aware of Science and how the Universe and the World work naturally according to Universal Laws. He learned all about the thousands of years of Evolutionary thought before Charles Darwin and what has happened since Darwin. All of this liberalized his Religious thought. He became friends with liberal Unitarian Christians. He became a Minister of his denomination and was removed from ministry by them because he was too liberal for them. He became a Unitarian Christian and served a Church in Spokane, Washington where he developed a Natural non theistic Religion called Humanism. In both of those Churches attendance grew from a couple of Hundred to one or two thousand, or more. Dietrich worked from a pulpit for the rest of his life but became more liberal in thought and called himself a public speaker rather than a Minister. He served the First Unitarian Church of Minneapolis, for the last 22 or more years of his career speaking to three to Five Thousand people on Sunday while speaking on the Radio to thousands more. Science, including Evolution was his major focus in producing a better World for Humanity. Hence, this book, "The Fathers of Evolution. After he retired he wrote "Thoughts on God," which considered that some people might feel better if they thought of his Natural process as God in a poetic sense. At the same time he promoted living to the heights of our ability with a sense of Awe and Wonder about our lives throughScience, Music, Art, Nature, and more in a secular sense of Spirituality so that we might excel in our emotions as well as in our reason. Dietrich did not believe in a Personal Creator God, but neither did he call himself an Atheist because he felt that calling ones self an Atheist was the absolute opposite of a Fundamentalist. He preferred the word Agnostic.