Dan Barker
| Dan Barker | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born |
Daniel Edwin Barker June 25, 1949 Santa Monica, California |
| Residence | Madison, Wisconsin |
| Alma mater | Azusa Pacific University |
| Occupation | Co-president, Freedom From Religion Foundation, author, musician |
| Known for | Advocacy of atheism and rationalism Criticism of religion |
Daniel Edwin "Dan" Barker (born June 25, 1949) is an American atheist activist who served as a Christian preacher and musician for 19 years but left Christianity in 1984. Barker, along with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor, is the current co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. He has written numerous articles for Freethought Today, an American freethought newspaper. He is the author of several books including Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist.
Barker has been an invited speaker at Rock Beyond Belief. He is on the speakers bureau of the Secular Student Alliance.
Barker received a degree in religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1970. He served as associate pastor at a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) church, an Assembly of God, and an independent Charismatic church. To this day, he receives royalties from his popular children's Christian musicals, Mary Had a Little Lamb (1977) and His Fleece Was White as Snow (1978), both published by Manna Music.
In 1984 he announced to his friends that he was an atheist, and appeared on AM Chicago (hosted by Oprah Winfrey) later that year on a show about "kicking the religion habit". Barker met Annie Laurie Gaylor when both were guests on the show. They began dating six months later and married in 1987. They have a daughter, Sabrina Delata.
A successful musician, Barker has composed over 200 songs that have been published or recorded.
He is a member of the Lenni Lenape (Delaware Indian) Tribe of Native Americans, and in 1991 edited and published Paradise Remembered, a collection of his grandfather's stories as a Lenape boy in Indian Territory.
Barker belongs to a number of high IQ societies.
He is the current co-president with his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an American Freethought organization that promotes the separation of church and state. Barker is co-host of Freethought Radio, a radio program based in Madison, Wisconsin radio station WXXM for atheists, agnostics, and other freethinkers that has included interviews with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Steven Pinker, Julia Sweeney, and Michael Newdow.
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