Daniel Edwin Barker is an American atheist activist and musician who served as an evangelical Christianpreacher 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. 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.
Biography
Barker 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 several churches: Religious Society of Friends, a church in the Assemblies of Godfellowship, and an independent Charismatic church. Ironically, to this day he receives royalties from his popular children's Christian musicals, Mary Had a Little Lamb and His Fleece Was White as Snow, both published by Manna Music. In 1984 he announced to his friends, family, and co-ministers that he became an atheist, and appeared on AM Chicago 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 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, including the Prometheus Society.
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 Oprah Winfrey, The O’Reilly Factor, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Phil Donahue, Hannity & Colmes, Maury Povich, Good Morning America, Sally Jessy Raphael, and Tom Leykis, as well as many international television and radio shows. 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 more than 125 debates around the country. Barker and his wife host a weekly one-hour radio program, Freethought Radio. It is carried on several stations throughout the Midwest and is available through podcast.
