Name Dan Barker Role Musician | ||
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Full Name Daniel Edwin Barker Albums Friendly Neighborhood Atheist Books Losing Faith in Faith, The Good Atheist: Living a P, Maybe Yes - Maybe N, Maybe right - maybe wr, The Old Testament Explaine Similar People Annie Laurie Gaylor, Robert G Ingersoll, Jerry DeWitt, Sam Harris, Ella Wheeler Wilcox | ||
Dan barker plays atheist music nothing fails like prayer beware of dogma
Daniel Edwin 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. He and his wife Annie Laurie Gaylor are the current co-presidents 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.
Contents
- Dan barker plays atheist music nothing fails like prayer beware of dogma
- Dan barker on piano
- Biography
- Personal life
- Freedom From Religion Foundation
- Media appearances
- Publications
- References
Barker has been an invited speaker at Rock Beyond Belief. He is on the speakers bureau of the Secular Student Alliance.
Dan barker on piano
Biography
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".
Personal life
Barker and Gaylor met when both were guests on the show. They began dating six months later and married in 1987. They have a daughter, Sabrina Delata.
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.
Freedom From Religion Foundation
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.
Media appearances
Barker has appeared on dozens of national television and radio programs to discuss and debate issues related to atheism and the separation of state and church. He has discussed nativity scenes on government property, the campaign against a Mother Teresa stamp, prayer in public schools, and has appeared on Phil Donahue, Hannity & Colmes, Maury Povich, Good Morning America, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Tom Leykis.
He was featured in a New York Times article about the growing of atheism in Southern states, has given addresses on his own de-conversion across the United States, and has participated in debates around the country.
Barker and his wife host a weekly one-hour radio program, Freethought Radio. It is broadcast weekly, on Progressive Talk The Mic 92.1, out of Madison, Wisconsin. It is carried on several other stations throughout the Midwest and is available through podcast.
Publications
Musicals
Books
Music albums