KEY POINTS:
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.
His decision disturbed many friends. "I went through a process of re-evaluating and migrating across the spectrum from fundamentalist to moderate and then to a new atheist," Barker said.
"I threw out the bathwater and found there was no baby there."
Speaking from his home in Madison, Wisconsin, Barker said the greater "secularising" of the US is a slow, painful, but necessary process.
"Our country is naturally growing up to be more progressive and modern," Barker said.
Like many other atheists in America, Barker argues the United States constitution demands "an anti-biblical nation that allows for the place of religion."
"There are still people in the US who take the Bible literally and they are an outright danger to this country - these (fundamentalists) want theocratic, biblical rule," Barker said.
"We need to ask them this: Do you want God or do you want America?"
Barker, who now runs America's largest atheist and agnostic organisation, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, pointed towards the recent results of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life as a confirmation that a growing number of Americans are turning away from religion.
The findings of the 2008 Pew study confirm earlier research into the faith of contemporary America. The American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) conducted by the City University of New York reveals more about this small but significant trend towards secularism in contemporary American society.
The ARIS study shows the greatest statistical increase in the US is among adults who do not subscribe to any religious groups.
Non-believers have more than doubled from 14.3 million Americans in 1990 to 29.4 million in 2001 and their overall "proportion has grown from just 8 per cent of the total in 1990 to over 14 per cent in 2001."
The growth of the atheist minority has not gone unnoticed by the evangelical movement.
On the front page of the New York Times, Ron Luce, founder of a large Christian youth ministry called Teen Mania, admitted that despite a push to appeal to America's youth through Christian music and other specialised projects, spreading the gospel has become a more difficult battle.
"We've been working as hard as we know how to work - everyone in youth ministry is working hard - but we're losing," Luce said.
Barker believes that grassroots movement on university campuses have been significant in giving atheists a greater voice.
"Twenty years ago, I could count on one hand all of the atheist or secularist university groups in the country. Now there are more than a hundred."
August Brunsman, 31, is the executive director of the Secular Students Alliance, an organisation based in Buffalo, New York.
Over the last year, Brunsman has seen campus affiliate groups of the Secular Students Alliance almost double in number - there are now 124 groups on campuses across the United States.
Brunsman claims shifting demographics caused by a globalised internet culture and immigration are also having an effect on Generation Y American university students.
"More young people are growing up exposed to more cultures and religions," Brunsman said. "As our society becomes more and more cosmopolitan, it's [more difficult] for young people to say that I believe because my parents and clergy believe."
After turning his back on a career in Christian music, Barker has centred his energies on representing atheism in the political arena.
Extending the quest to protect what Thomas Jefferson called "the wall" between church and state, Dan Barker and the Freedom from Religion Foundation have engaged in a legal battle to halt federal government funding of "faith-based initiatives".
In 2001, President Bush created the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives by way of an executive order. The office was a way of bolstering support for religious community organisations - a follow through of Bush's "compassionate conservatism" campaign ideology.
Last year, in the Hein versus Freedom from Religion Foundation case, the Supreme Court ruled against the foundation's lawsuit, essentially stating taxpayers do not have the right to "challenge the constitutionality" of spending by the executive branch of the government - namely, expenditure ordered by the President.
Despite great disappointment with the verdict, Dan Barker said the Freedom from Religion Foundation will continue to monitor "the rights of the first amendment and government neutrality" in matters of religion.
Even as the omnipresent role of religion in US national politics continues largely unabated - shown most recently in the controversy surrounding Jeremiah Wright, Senator Barack Obama's former preacher - Barker pointed to other evidence to show the religious right is losing ground in the US.
"All the major battles that the conservatives have fought - [against] giving women the vote, keeping prayer in school, about birth control - they have lost," Barker said.
"The religious right is like a wounded animal that is dying and knows that it is dying."
Reflecting on his journey from popular Christian songwriter to atheist political activist, Barker maintains a global view of the growth of the atheist minority in the US.
"Europe has beautiful but empty churches," Barker said. "Here in the US, we may now be beginning to turn that corner."
Religion in the US
78.4% of adults follow Christian faiths
4.7% Embrace other religions - Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist
16.1% Unaffiliated - Atheist, agnostic, nothing in particular
0.8% Don't know
- Source: Pew Research Centre
