Dan Barker Oz Interview: Losing faith in modern America

[Synnical]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/category/story.cfm?c_id=301&objectid=10508457

5:00AM Wednesday May 07, 2008
By Christopher Garland


"I threw out the bathwater and found there was no baby there."

Growing up in what remains the most religious country in the West, Dan Barker, a former evangelical minister and one of the most prominent and politically active atheists in America today, possesses a unique story of "deconversion".

Like hundreds of thousands of evangelical American youth across the heartland of the US, Barker accepted the call of God in his mid-teens. By age 17, he had trekked through Mexico, where he spread the word of the gospel and spent two years preaching in villages and small jungle settlements.

On his return to the United States, Barker dedicated years of his life preaching in prisons, parks, schools, and on street corners around the country - wherever he could find an audience.

Ordained as a minister in his mid-20s, Barker, a Lenni Lennape (Delaware) Native American tribe member, embarked on a career as a highly successful charismatic Christian musician. (His father, Norman Barker, was a Christian musician who performed a duet with Judy Garland in the 1948 film Easter Parade.)

After serving in various churches and touring the US in attempt to spread the Christianity, in 1984, the high point of Reagan's conservative America, Barker announced to a shocked collection of friends, family, and colleagues that he was now an atheist.

For fifteen years, Barker had worked as the main producer for the most famous Christian recording artist in the Spanish-speaking world, Manuel Bonilla. Barker, 57, also wrote over 200 of his own songs and a number of Christian musicals, including Mary Had a Little Lamb - from which he still receives royalties.