Dan Barker became a teenage evangelist at age 15. At 16 he was choir librarian for faith-healer Kathryn Kuhlman's Los Angeles appearances. He received a degree in Religion from Azusa Pacific University and was ordained to the ministry by the Standard Community Church, California, in 1975. He served as associate pastor at a Friend's (Quaker) Church, an Assembly of God, and an independent Charismatic church. Dan was a Protestant missionary in Mexico for a total of two years.

Following five years of reading, Dan gradually outgrew his religious beliefs. "If I had limited myself to Christian authors, I'd still be a Christian today," Dan says. "I just lost faith in faith." He announced his atheism publicly in January, 1984.

Dan has been a staff member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation since 1987. He writes a regular column for Freethought Today, the Foundation's newspaper. Dan's letters and opinion columns on state/church separation have been printed in many newspapers across the country. He is featured in the Foundation's 60-second TV/radio commercial.

He will be talking to the campus community about the possibilities of establishing a system of morality without invoking religion, how people can be good without God and why nonreligious people have an equal claim to moral character as anyone else.

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