Jerry DeWitt | |
|---|---|
| Born | September 17, 1969 |
| Occupation | Writer, public speaker |
| Genre | Nonfiction |
| Notable works | Hope After Faith |
| Children | Paul (Son) |
Jerry DeWitt (born September 17, 1969) is an American author and public speaker. [1] [2] He is a former pastor of two evangelical churches and publicly deconverted to atheism in 2011. [3] [4]
DeWitt is a former pastor of two churches surrounding DeRidder, Louisiana, a town where two-thirds of the population report membership in a faith organization. [1] [5] [6] DeWitt first experienced doubts about his religious beliefs when he contemplated the idea of hell. [7] He later found himself unable to invoke God's help after a congregant asked him to pray for her injured brother. [1] He preached for the last time in April 2011. [1]
After becoming aware that he no longer held theistic beliefs, DeWitt joined The Clergy Project (TCP), a group which lends confidential support to preachers who no longer believe in God. TCP was founded by Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Linda LaScola, former preacher Dan Barker, and anonymous non-believing ministers "Adam Mann" and "Chris." [8] DeWitt's outing as an atheist occurred in October 2011 after a photo circulated online of DeWitt and Dawkins, taken at a meeting of freethinkers. [7] DeWitt was the first member of TCP to drop anonymity and speak freely about his involvement in the project.[ citation needed ] Following his departure from ministry and after more information emerged on DeWitt's loss of faith, he was subsequently fired from his non-ministerial job as well. Shortly thereafter, his wife then separated from him. [9]
DeWitt has written a book based on his career and experiences entitled Hope After Faith. [10] The 288-page autobiographical book was written by Dewitt and Ethan Brown, and published in 2013 by Da Capo Press.
The former fundamentalist minister hosted the first meeting of the Community Mission Chapel, which DeWitt calls a "Secular Service". In a story for the New York Times, DeWitt said, "Just because we value critical thinking and the scientific method, that doesn't mean we suddenly become disembodied and we can no longer benefit from our emotional lives." [11]
The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for atheists, agnostics, and nontheists. Formed in 1976, FFRF promotes the separation of church and state, and challenges the legitimacy of many federal and state programs that are faith-based. It supports groups such as nonreligious students and clergy who want to leave their faith.
Scott Walker Hahn is an American Catholic theologian and Christian apologist. A former Protestant, Hahn was a Presbyterian minister who converted to Catholicism. Hahn's popular works include Rome Sweet Home and The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. His lectures have been featured in multiple audio distributions through Lighthouse Catholic Media. Hahn is known for his research on Early Christianity during the Apostolic Age and various theoretical works concerning the early Church Fathers.
Thought for the Day is a daily scripted slot on the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 offering "reflections from a faith perspective on issues and people in the news", broadcast at around 7:45 each Monday to Saturday morning. Lasting 2 minutes and 45 seconds, it is a successor to the five-minute religious sequence Ten to Eight (1965–1970) and, before that, Lift Up Your Hearts, which was first broadcast five mornings a week on the BBC Home Service from December 1939, initially at 7:30, though soon moved to 7:47. The feature is mainly delivered by those involved in religious practice; often, these are Christian thinkers, but there have been numerous occasions where representatives of other faiths, including Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism, have presented Thought for the Day.
The Secular Coalition for America is an advocacy group located in Washington D.C. It describes itself as "protecting the equal rights of nonreligious Americans."
The Center for Inquiry (CFI) is a U.S. nonprofit organization that works to mitigate belief in pseudoscience and the paranormal and to fight the influence of religion in government.
Robert Holmes Bell Jr. is an American author, speaker, playwright, musician and former pastor. Bell founded Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, Michigan, and pastored it until 2012. Under his leadership, Mars Hill was one of the fastest-growing churches in America.
Daniel Edwin Barker is an American atheist activist and musician who served as an evangelical Christian preacher and composer 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, and he is cofounder of The Clergy Project. 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.
The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science is a division of Center for Inquiry (CFI) founded by British biologist Richard Dawkins in 2006 to promote scientific literacy and secularism.
Christian atheism is an ideology that embraces the teachings, narratives, symbols, practices, or communities associated with Christianity without accepting the literal existence of God. It often overlaps with nontheism and post-theism.
A Reader in a Christian Science church is a member of the congregation who has been elected to serve in one of two positions responsible for church services. Each week's sermon in Christian Science churches is outlined in the Christian Science Quarterly, prepared months in advance, and is the same in all Christian Science churches, worldwide. As a lay church, the congregation elects readers from the congregation and they serve as readers for a set period of time. The sermons consist of passages from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and are studied as lessons during the week and read aloud to the congregation on the Sunday following.
Atheist feminism is a branch of feminism that also advocates atheism. Atheist feminists hold that religion is a prominent source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive towards women.
The term New Atheism describes the positions of some atheist academics, writers, scientists, and philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries. New Atheism advocates the view that superstition, religion, and irrationalism should not be tolerated. Instead, they advocate the antitheist view that the various forms of theism should be criticised, countered, examined, and challenged by rational argument, especially when they exert strong influence on the broader society, such as in government, education, and politics. Critics have characterised New Atheism as "secular fundamentalism" or "fundamentalist atheism". Major figures of New Atheism include Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett, collectively referred to as the "Four Horsemen" of the movement.
Klaas Hendrikse was a Dutch minister of the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (PKN) who was known as de atheïstische dominee.
The Clergy Project (TCP) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that provides peer support to current and former religious leaders who no longer believe in a god or other supernatural elements. The group's focus is to provide private online forums for its participants, career transition assistance, and subsidized psychotherapy sessions in partnership with Recovering from Religion's Secular Therapy Project.
Recovering from Religion (RfR) is an international non-profit organization that helps people who have left religion, are in process of leaving, or are dealing with problems arising out of theistic doubt or non-belief. RfR provides support groups, telephone and chat helplines, an online peer support community, and online meetings for "people in their most urgent time of need". It is headquartered in Kansas City, Kansas.
Richard Dawkins is an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer. Dawkins himself has stated that his political views are left-leaning. However, many of Dawkins's political statements have created controversy among left-wing and atheist communities.
The secular movement refers to a social and political trend in the United States, beginning in the early years of the 20th century, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Atheism in 1925 and the American Humanist Association in 1941, in which atheists, agnostics, secular humanists, freethinkers, and other nonreligious and nontheistic Americans have grown in both numbers and visibility. There has been a sharp increase in the number of Americans who identify as religiously unaffiliated, from under 10 percent in the 1990s to 20 percent in 2013. The trend is especially pronounced among young people, with about one in three Americans younger than 30 identifying as religiously unaffiliated, a figure that has nearly tripled since the 1990s.
William Samuel Winston is an American televangelist, preacher, author, and entrepreneur. He is the founder and Senior Pastor of Living Word Christian Center, a non-denominational church in Forest Park, Illinois, with over 22,000 members.
Teresa MacBain is a former Methodist minister who came out as a nonbeliever in 2012, and returned to her faith in 2016.
The first Reason Rally was a public gathering for secularism and religious skepticism held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on March 24, 2012. The rally was sponsored by major atheistic and secular organizations of the United States and was regarded as a "Woodstock for atheists and skeptics". A second Reason Rally was held June 4, 2016 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.
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