Candidate Without a Prayer By Herb Silverman

Guest Host: Alex Mescavage

Host/Producer: Nell Cole

Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt

By Herb Silverman

Humanist Press, the publishing house of the American Humanist Association, has released as its first ebook, Candidate Without a Prayer: An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt. This autobiography by atheist activist and college math professor Herb Silverman proves it takes a sense of humor for an atheist Jew living in South Carolina to run for governor simply because the state constitution said he couldn’t.

Silverman is a national public spokesperson for the rights of nonbelievers as president of the Secular Coalition for America and a board member of the American Humanist Association. Candidate Without a Prayer details his upbringing (raised by Orthodox Jews as a “liberal, Yankee, Jew atheist with four strikes against me”), studying to become a professor in mathematics (“Part of the beauty of mathematics is seeing the strange and mysterious places that apparently simple and innocuous assumptions may lead”), and his run for the governorship of South Carolina to challenge the state constitution that stated “No person shall be eligible for the office of governor who denies the existence of the Supreme Being.”

Sharon Fratepietro, who is Fred's wife,  was raised Catholic and became atheist later in life.  She is on the board of the Institue for Humanist Studies as well as many other important causes.

Humanist Press is the publishing house of the American Humanist Association, providing material for the humanist/freethought/atheist market since 1995. (www.americanhumanist.org)