We, the writers of this article and leaders of the College Freethought Society of UWEC, organized and hosted the well known deconversion from Christianity to Atheism speech by Dan Barker of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., of Madison. We and our organization felt that Dan Barker's story needed to be told, his perspective considered and used to stimulate new questions to be asked about religion on this campus.

The speech on April 28th brought nearly 700 UWEC students and community members from across western Wisconsin to Schofield Auditorium, causing some to have to settle for only listening from the hallways. This event was significant to many people, including many Christians. Those not able to attend can find a fairly good snapshot of what Barker had to say in Kelly McBride's article, "Speaker attracts large crowd" in The Spectator issue released Thursday, April 29th.

Starting in October of 2003, after the founding of the College Freethought Society, the two of us began making plans to bring Dan Barker to campus. In years past, we both had read Barker's book Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist (FFRF Inc., 1992), which made us want to share his remarkable experience and outlook with our campus community.

Dan Barker is well known in the non-religious community for his extensive knowledge and experience with both Christianity and Atheism, and has done over 35 formal debates with Christian authorities on controversial religious questions. Last fall, we sent emails and letters to over two dozen Christian organizations and individuals throughout the Eau Claire area, inviting potential debate opponents
to speak opposite him.

Such organizations included InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Student Impact, the Navigators, Truth Matters, local churches including Valleybrook and Harvestime Assembly of God, and several people within the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies. After several months of these efforts, nobody was willing to take on the challenge.

Instead, we decided to invite Barker to make the appearance alone. The management and funding of this event was sparse. The two of us wrote small grant requests to fund (primarily) Barker's single hotel night. No other payment was made to him. The Progressive Student Association (PSA) on campus gave us the initial funding followed by more from the Student Secular Alliance (SSA). With scarce help even from members of our own organization, we hand made over 600 signsand posters. We spent hours going out to display them each week, while also having to monitor and replenish the many that were vandalized by prejudiced people. This was an extremely difficult event to pull off, but we did it.

We have been getting numerous requests for videotaped copies of Dan Barker's speech within the last few weeks. If the event was that important for people to attend, we expect they should have taped the event themselves, or at least made the time to attend the event in person.

Recently, many Christian groups and individuals have felt a responsibility to interpret and critique Barker's message to their followers and possible converts. The evening after Barker's speech, at the same time and same place, the local chapter of The Navigators advertised an event entitled, "Losing Faith in Atheism: How Life & Logic Lead to Christ – Mark Durand's story of deconversion from Atheism to Christianity." Their parodic posters were amusing, but Mark Durand's story of "de"conversion was not. While an atheist, Durand said that a Christian friend of his told him, "My hope for you is that you could find God." When his friend died two days later, Durand took it as a sign he should think more openly about God and how he could live a more meaningful life with him. In this case, we hardly see how logic has led to Christ, as this event was advertised.

On Monday, May 10th, Truth Matters is (The Flip Side goes to print before the event) sponsoring "Answering an Atheist: A Rebuttal of 'Losing Faith in Faith… the Dan Barker Story,'" (not the correct title of our event) where local pastor Dan Stanley will attempt to debunk Dan Barker. Even though Stanley was invited last fall to debate Barker in person, he avoided the opportunity to address Barker's views until now.

The posters advertising the event, to be held in Davies Theater, say that Barker's speech was "very interesting, controversial, well-spoken, and genuine, but he left many problems unsolved and many questions unanswered." Barker came to share his experience, not to solve all of the problems in the world. What were all of these unanswered questions? After the speech, and after over an hour of Q & A session, our event ended with no one left standing in line to ask any questions, and there were still nearly 500 people in the auditorium.

The poster for the Truth Matters event lists reasons why to attend their rebuttal, including "Dan Barker's faith is nothing new," and "It might make the difference in where you spend eternity." The group assumes Atheism is some sort of religion like theirs complete with the concept of "faith," as if everyone is just like them, followed by the handy last resort tactic of scaring people into following religion.

In The Spectator Letters to the Editor in the issue released May 6th, Jay Anderson, staff member for the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, made some strange arguments against us and Barker. Last October,
Jay Anderson responded to our invitations with interest in jointly hosting a religious debate on campus. Now, using claims of Christians as being a minority group on campus similar to that of African Americans, Muslims, or homosexuals, Anderson has equated Barker's remarks to hate crimes. At least 10 Christian organizations exist on campus, many of which have a long established history here. Currently, only one Freethought organization exists here and is still brand new. Who is the minority here? Perhaps Anderson feels his group the minority because Dan Barker's appearance was the first of its kind. Rarely are Christian groups challenged publicly.

The debate ensuing among Christians (long after Barker has left this campus) is disturbing in light of the fact that nearly every prominent representative of the Christian faith in this area was contacted and encouraged to debate Barker. Some were offended by the idea in general, others did not respond, and others such as Jay Anderson himself were intrigued by the idea at first. Anderson said however, that finding a "suitable sparring partner" for Dan Barker would take more than the two months left in the last half fall semester. We never heard from him again until his Spectator
letter.

Again, we invite the Christian groups to find someone to debate Barker next fall. We would prefer that rather than giving them free reign to continue distorting past powerful events like ours two weeks ago. Of course, distortions made by religious groups are nothing new considering the past 2,000 years of historical fabrications.