Dale McGowan

Dale McGowan
Occupation	Author, speaker, philanthropist
Nationality	American
Subject	Atheism, humanism, parenting
Website
www.dalemcgowan.com

Dale McGowan (born February 28, 1963) is an American author, speaker, and philanthropist who has written and edited several books related to atheism, particularly parenting without religion.

Personal and professional life

McGowan graduated from University of California, Berkeley in 1986 with a B.A. in anthropology and music theory. In 1999, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in music theory and composition.

From 1991 to 2006, he was associate professor of music at St. Catherine University, a Catholic women's college in Minneapolis/St. Paul. His experiences at the college are satirized in his 2002 novel Calling Bernadette's Bluff and the 2010 sequel Good Thunder.

He currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with his wife, Becca, and their three children; he is presently managing editor of the Patheos Atheist Channel.

Writing, editing, and speaking

In 2006, McGowan resigned his university position to pursue a full-time writing career. He edited and co-authored Parenting Beyond Belief (2007), a compilation of essays on raising children outside of religion. Contributors to this volume included Michael Shermer, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, and Julia Sweeney. Around the same time, he began to travel throughout the United States, giving seminars on secular parenting at atheist conventions, as well as Unitarian Universalist and Ethical Culture congregations. In 2009, he released a practical companion to Parenting Beyond Belief titled Raising Freethinkers: A Practical Guide for Parenting Beyond Belief. Like its predecessor, Raising Freethinkers included contributions from multiple authors, including McGowan himself.

Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics, edited by McGowan and published in September 2012, is a collection of documents from atheists and agnostics throughout history. In March 2013, McGowan's book Atheism for Dummies was released by Wiley Publishing. August 2014 saw the release of In Faith and in Doubt, the first book on secular/religious mixed marriages.

Philanthropic work

In 2010, McGowan launched Foundation Beyond Belief (FBB), a nonprofit organization designed to encourage and facilitate charitable giving and volunteering among humanists and atheists. The Foundation selects five charitable organizations per quarter, one in each of the following cause areas:

• Education
• Poverty and Health
• Human Rights
• Natural World
• Challenge the Gap (a special category for non-proselytizing religious charities)

Members join the foundation by signing up for a monthly automatic donation in the amount of their choice, then set up personal profiles to indicate how they would like their contribution distributed among the five categories. As of November 2014, the members of FBB have raised over $1.75 million for charities worldwide.

FBB also sponsors over 100 humanist volunteer teams in cities around the U.S., a Humanist Service Corps providing global service opportunities for nontheists, and Humanist Disaster Recovery Teams, a program coordinating humanist volunteers to respond on the ground after natural disasters.

Noelle George is FBB's Executive Director and Greta Christina, among others, is on its Board of Directors.

Awards

McGowan was named 2008 Humanist of the Year by the Humanist Chaplaincy at Harvard University in recognition for his work in nonreligious parenting education.

References

"About Dale". Retrieved November 7, 2014.

Freedman, Samuel G. (April 3, 2010). "Atheists' Collection Plate, With Religious Inspiration". New York Times.

Miller, Lisa (July 15, 2007). "BeliefWatch: How-To". Newsweek.

Winston, Kimberly (July 9, 2012). "What "Dummies" need to know about atheism". Washington Post.

External links

• Personal web site
• Foundation Beyond Belief