Edwin Kagin, the ‘Legal Heart of American Atheists’ and Co-Founder of Camp Quest, Is Dead

March 29, 2014
By Hemant Mehta

Edwin Kagin was one of the first atheist leaders I ever had a chance to meet in person. When I was running a Secular Student Alliance group in college, we were very excited that Edwin, the Kentucky State Director of American Atheists at the time, agreed to come to Chicago to debate a Catholic professor about the existence of God. The event drew several hundred audience members to our mostly-commuter school and gave our group a lot of energy, momentum, and additional members. That was well over a decade ago and Edwin has been a friend to me ever since, most recently giving me permission to include his essay “Thoughts for Atheists at Graduation” in my book The Young Atheist’s Survival Guide.

On Friday, American Atheists confirmed that Edwin had died at the age of 73.



More details are still forthcoming, but this is a tough loss to take as Edwin did so much behind the scenes.

While his biggest claim to fame on paper may be his role as AA’s legal director for many years, his most important role was arguably founding a summer camp for children of atheist parents along with his late wife Helen. Camp Quest now has well over a dozen sites across the U.S. and overseas, hosts hundreds of kids each summer, and continues to grow in popularity every year

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/03/29/edwin-kagin-the-legal-heart-of-american-atheists-and-co-founder-of-camp-quest-is-dead/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Kagin