American Atheist Magazine

American Atheist

50th anniversary cover.
Editor-in-chief	Pamela Whissel
Categories	Secularism, news magazine
Frequency	Quarterly
Publisher	American Atheists, Inc
Year founded	1963
Country	United States
Based in	Cranford, New Jersey
Language	English
Website	www.atheists.org/aa-insider
ISSN	0516-9623
OCLC number	60639278

American Atheist: A Journal of Atheist News and Thought, commonly known as American Atheist Magazine, is a quarterly magazine currently edited by Pamela Whissel and published by American Atheists.American Atheist is available in print for a yearly subscription fee, electronically with an annual membership in American Atheists, or on newsstands at select Barnes & Noble bookstores.

The name of the magazine has changed several times over the course of its history. An early issue is numbered Volume 1, Number 1 (January 1971) and is titled: The American Atheist - Poor Richard’s Reports.

Frank Zindler documented the beginning of the magazine as follows:

It is impossible to determine exactly when the magazine began. It appears ultimately to have grown out of a mimeographed newsletter that Madalyn Murray O'Hair circulated in Baltimore before her 1963 victory in SCOTUS [Supreme Court of the United States]. Certain reconstructions (e.g., the fact that the Sept. 1975 issue is labeled Vol. 17, No. 9) would place this in 1958, but that does not seem likely. In any case, there may have been a publication in the early 1960s styling itself a magazine, but no copies survive at the American Atheist Center in NJ. Over the course of American Atheists history, there have been a number of newsletters, both general and private (i.e., a members’ Insider’s Newsletter). It is possible that the Volume 17 numbering for 1975 represents a continuation of the numbering of a newsletter going back to the late 1950s.

The issue bearing the earliest publication data was printed in [fax] in American Atheist, Vol. 46, No. 6 (July, 2008). It is numbered Vol. 1, No. 1, and is dated January, 1971. The title includes the definite article —The American Atheist—and carries the subtitle Poor Richard’s Reports.

The earliest issue of the magazine in the archives of Zindler (still carrying the definite article in the title, but no longer having a subtitle) is numbered Vol. 17, No. 7 and dated July 1975. As Zindler wrote: "Thus, the circumstances surrounding the date at which the publication of the present journal American Atheist began are a complete mystery."

By late 1991, publication became extremely sporadic, lapsing entirely in early 1992. The magazine eventually resumed publication in late 1996.

Vice President George H. W. Bush was questioned by American Atheist Press news reporter Rob Sherman at Chicago’s O'Hare Airport on 27 August 1987, just after announcing his candidacy for president. Sherman asked Bush about separation of church and state and about his opinion of the citizenship and patriotism of Atheists. Sherman quoted him as saying: