Stedman is a proud atheist and humanist with a focus on interfaith and inter-religious dialogue, contributing to the "Religion" and "Gay Voices" portions of the Huffington Post web-newspaper.
Through his own blog, NonProphet Status, he and several like-minded young men and women form a panel of atheistic interfaith advocates - no small feat, as it turns out.
His contributions to HuffPost, especially, are noteworthy, including (but not limited to) this piece on "atheist activism" problems and this piece on growing up queer and "born-again".
For more on Chris, check out his Huffington Post bio.
He's a fascinating guy. I love the queer and born-again article. "I engage in interfaith work because I see my dignity and my identity as an atheist and a queer person -- my happiness, my well-being and my freedom -- as bound up in the identities of others, and their abilities to be happy and live freely." Stedman works to know and respect the identify of others, and to share his own identity. We need more of that attitude in today's all-too-shrill public square.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't agree more. I love reading the stuff he writes - I feel like I'm in the room with him, you know? He is extraordinarily present in his writing.
ReplyDeleteIt is heartening to me to see strong voices of reason enter the field of this (in my opinion, pointless), science versus religion debate. Stedman seems to be well spoken and capable of looking at multiple sides of an argument, whether or not he addresses them as valid.
ReplyDeleteI am interested to see where you take your PI paper. He has glowing reviews from some, and I did not easily find any negative views of him that did not seem clearly bigoted or close-minded.
I'll enjoy seeing how you develop thoughts on his approach to writing; whether or not he can accomplish peace between religious and non-religious people while outside of a religious affiliation.