In the February/March 2021 issue, I wrote a brief item noting the end of The Humanist, the longtime bimonthly journal of the American Humanist Association (AHA), as “a magazine of critical inquiry and social concern.” (Free Inquiry founder Paul Kurtz first came to prominence in the humanist movement as editor of The Humanist in the 1970s.) Based on a Facebook post by outgoing editor Jennifer Bardi (now removed) and information reported to me by several authors whose once-accepted articles had been returned to them, I reported that “the title will now publish on a less frequent schedule, focusing on promotion of the AHA and its activities.” The February/March issue featured a new banner trumpeting FI as “Now America’s Only Humanist Journal of Ideas.”

Then The Humanist’s first new quarterly issue came out, dated Winter 2021. Apparently, the magazine’s concept had shifted somewhat from the stern language of the fall. For one thing, The Humanist’s new tagline was “A Quarterly of Ideas and Action” (emphasis added). Several of the articles in that issue clearly merited description as think pieces. “The material published in The Humanist will now have less of a journalistic focus and more of a direct espousal of humanist positions—together with reportage on the actions the organization is taking to advance them,” declared outgoing AHA Executive Director Roy Speckhardt in a message introducing the new format. “Yet a number of familiar columns and features will continue to appear, as well as thought-provoking and illuminating articles.”

At that point, it was too late to include an update in the April/May issue of Free Inquiry. But we were able to amend the cover just before it went on press: FI now announces itself as “America’s Bimonthly Journal of Humanist Ideas,” a description with which one hopes no one can materially disagree.

Since then, the Spring Humanist has been published. There were fewer think-piece articles in it. Did the inaugural Winter issue include a few more cerebral articles from the magazine’s former incarnation that for whatever reason could not be canceled? Or will future issues better live up to the new quarterly’s focus on the ideas in “Ideas and Action?” I suppose time will tell.

Call it a termination, a reformatting, a reimagining—call it what you will, but the current transition of The Humanist is a solemn moment for the humanist movement. Launched in 1941, The Humanist was (or is, depending on how one interprets its metmorphosis) America’s oldest continually published humanist magazine. (On the freethought side, that honor goes to The Truth Seeker, founded way back in 1873 and since 2014 published under the aegis of the Council for Secular Humanism.) Thanks to reader Homer Price for his able assistance.

This issue also marks the conclusion of our “Pivot Point” feature, focusing on short essays describing the moment when an FI reader made the break from a former religious orientation toward humanism, atheism, or both. Because of overwhelming response, we extended this feature over five consecutive issues. It was exhilarating to present so many tightly focused accounts of the moments when readers broke free of religious shackles. Even so, I feel we’ve devoted enough emphasis to this topic for a while. If you haven’t sent in your Pivot Point essay yet, please don’t do so now; we are no longer accepting them. For the immediate future, we need to devote the whole of our sixty-eight bimonthly pages to the rest of the spectrum of humanist and freethinking ideas.