Amanda Shapiro, a 20-year old undergraduate at Harvard University, was born in Boston’s own quirky town of Jamaica Plain. Before gaining a real sense of the extracurricular activities she wanted to pursue in her teen years, Amanda played on a variety of sports teams as a child, including the local soccer and softball leagues. At her high school, Boston Latin School, participation in local sports leagues was one of the commonalities she shared with her peers, though she quickly realized that her views on politics and religion were at odds with those of her classmates.

Instead of taking on a religion, Amanda felt compelled to put her efforts into social justice work, volunteering and later interning at a non-profit workers’ rights organization, Jobs With Justice, with which she continues her work today. Along with secularism, her parents had continually imbued a sense of service and action to support those less fortunate. Amanda’s father works as a union lawyer in his own practice; her mother works as a real estate lawyer also in her own practice, serving as a board member for an organization that offers free legal advice to low-income individuals. Amanda claims a true sense of economic justice from the work of both of her parents.

In the academic sphere, Amanda held great interest for the classics and writing, taking as many Latin and English classes as possible in her high school career. After school, she spent her time tutoring at her high school, acting as tour guide for the school’s alumni and prospective students, and running a film club she started with a few of her peers, bringing in local actors and film reviewers to discuss the inner workings of cinema. Amanda also engaged an interest in the fashion world, serving on the costumes crew of several plays in her summer camp and high school, and later receiving an internship with fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg. At Harvard, Amanda’s extracurricular activities mostly drew from her progressive politics: through the Phillips Brooks House Association, she became an active member of Student Labor Action Movement and a tutor in the Mission Hill After School Program; at the same time, she joined Harvard Secular Society, and with two other women at the college, she helped rejuvenate the pro-choice group on campus. After college, Amanda has hopes of going to Law School, to gain a greater understanding of the American justice system, but more importantly, how she can change it.
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HCH: How did you realize you were a Humanist, or that you had a Humanistic perspective on religion?

Amanda: Growing up, I was exposed to two religions: Catholicism by way of my mother’s side of the family, and Judaism by way of my father’s side of the family. My parents, however, had both become disillusioned with their own religious upbringings, and consequently gave me full autonomy in my religious practices. Both of my parents saw inherent hypocrisies and insulting archaic practices in organized religion, and I couldn’t help but agree with them the more I saw religious zealots popping up around me.

For a while, I took a very cynical approach to the discussion of religion, as I watched the religious right taint our political dialogue with a relentless tone of deism. However, when I began to talk to religious leaders across the city in my work with Jobs With Justice, I saw their unquestionable devotion to workers’ rights, and their selfless work in low-income communities. That experience shattered my cynicism (that is, most of it), and I grew to respect the humanitarian impact religion and religious leaders could have on a community. At that point, I found myself caught in an awkward position of belief – agreeing with most of the humanitarian tenets that parishes espoused, but considering all of their religious cores to be fables. Were the two beliefs even separable? Thankfully, a friend sent me the belief-o-matic quiz which labeled my beliefs as those of a secular humanist, and surprisingly, introduced me to a base of like-minded thinkers in the humanist movement.