---
title: "Raymond Firth (1901–2002)"
date: "2025-10-30T15:13:20+00:00"
modified: "2025-10-30T15:13:20+00:00"
url: "https://heritage.humanists.uk/raymond-firth/"
post_id: 13349
categories: ["Arts", "Atheism", "Science"]
tags: ["Freethought", "Humanism", "Rationalism", "Science"]
---
# Raymond Firth (1901–2002)
> Though only some anthropologists are humanists, my own anthropological studies confirmed my review of religion as a human art, not requiring any assumptions of an ultimate reality such as God or Mind, independent of the human world.
>
> Raymond Firth, *New Humanist,* March 1993
Raymond Firth was an influential anthropologist, who made significant contributions to economic anthropology and the study of social organisation. A member of the Department of Anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE) for over three decades, he was also a prominent humanist: an Honorary Associate of the [Rationalist Press Association](https://heritage.humanists.uk/rationalist-press-association/), a member of the advisory council of the British Humanist Association (patron of Humanists UK), and a contributor to the edited essay collection *The Humanist Outlook* (1968). In 1996, Firth published *Religion: a Humanist Interpretation*, presenting his ‘personal view on the nature and origin of religion’.
See the gallery below for some documents illustrating Raymond Firth’s connection to the humanist movement.
Gallery
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[  Click to zoom Raymond Firth, Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association, in New Humanist, March 1993 ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/10/1993-03-New-Humanist-Honorary-Associate-697x1024.jpg "Raymond Firth, Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association, in New Humanist, March 1993")
[  Click to zoom ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/10/Humanist-Newsletter_19740801-page-001-1024x876.jpg)
[  Click to zoom Obituary for Raymond Firth in New Humanist, Summer 2002 ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/10/2002-Summer-New-Humanist-700x1024.jpg "Obituary for Raymond Firth in New Humanist, Summer 2002")
[  Click to zoom ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2025/10/Humanist-obituaries-Stephen-Jay-Gould-Raymond-Firth-740x1024.jpg)
1. Raymond Firth, Honorary Associate of the Rationalist Press Association, *New Humanist* March 1993
2. Raymond Firth, signatory to a letter to *The Times* on the Birmingham agreed syllabus, 1974
3. Obituary for Raymond Firth in *New Humanist*, Summer 2002
4. Obituary for Raymond Firth in *Humanist News*, 2002
See also
----------
- [ Ted Willis ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/ted-willis/)
- [ Edith Durham ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/edith-durham/)
- [ Eslanda Goode Robeson ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/eslanda-robeson/)
- [ Ronald Fletcher ](https://heritage.humanists.uk/ronald-fletcher/)