Dale McGowan
| Dale McGowan | |
|---|---|
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| Occupation | Author, speaker, philanthropist |
| Nationality | American |
| Subject | Atheism, humanism, parenting |
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Dale McGowan (born February 28, 1963) is an American author, speaker, and philanthropist who has written and edited several books related to atheism, particularly parenting without religion.
McGowan graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1986 with a double major B.A. in anthropology and music theory. In 1991 he received an MA in Instrumental Conducting from California State University, Northridge. In 1999 he received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in music theory and composition.
From 1991 to 2006, he was associate professor of music at St. Catherine University, a Catholic women's college in Minneapolis/St. Paul. His experiences at the college are satirized in his 2002 novel Calling Bernadette's Bluff and the 2010 sequel Good Thunder.
He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Becca, and their three children and is director of engagement at the multi-faith website Patheos.
In 2006, McGowan resigned his university position to pursue a full-time writing career. He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief (2007), a compilation of essays on raising children outside of religion. Contributors to this volume included Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, and Julia Sweeney. Around the same time, he began to travel throughout the United States, giving seminars on secular parenting at atheist conventions, as well as Unitarian Universalist and Ethical Culture congregations. In 2009, he released a practical companion to Parenting Beyond Belief titled Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief. Like its predecessor, Raising Freethinkers included contributions from multiple authors, including McGowan himself. McGowan was prompted to write the two books because as a freethinking parent looking for advice, "There was nothing else out there". Parenting Beyond Belief lays out a general philosophy of non-religious parenting, and Raising Freethinkers "is the answer to practical questions, activities that the family can do together and resource reviews." His seminars and both books aim to help parents raise open-minded, inquiring kids and not to push them towards any particular world view. In 2009 Dale said
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