The Northern Virginia Ethical Society was founded in the 1980s as an outgrowth of the Washington, DC, Ethical Society, which sponsored our development for several years. All Ethical Societies are descendants of the New York Society for Ethical Culture which was founded by Felix Adler and others in 1876. Adler envisioned that ethics was the common ground among all religions and among well-meaning people who did not think of themselves as religious. Ethical Culture meant to him, as it does to us today, the 'cultivation of ethics.' Ethical Societies communicate and support each other today through the American Ethical Union (AEU). The AEU is part of the International Humanist and Ethical Union (founded 1952).