Edwin Kagin

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Edwin Kagin
Edwin and Helen Kagin their last year as Camp Directors at Camp Quest.
Born	(1940-11-26)November 26, 1940 Greenville, South Carolina, United States
Died	March 28, 2014(2014-03-28) (aged 73) Union, Kentucky, United States
Nationality	American
Education	J.D. (University of Louisville)
Spouse	Helen McGregor Kagin

Edwin Frederick Kagin (November 26, 1940 – March 28, 2014) was an attorney at law in

He died in 2014 at the age of 73 at his home in Union, Kentucky.^[1][2][3]

Career and activism

Kagin worked for a time as a college English instructor and served as editor of the American Association of Mental Deficiency and National Institute for Mental Health project that created the Adaptive Behavior Scale, an instrument for the assessment of mental retardation. But the larger part of his career was as an attorney, sometimes focusing on civil liberties and constitutional issues.

After abandoning belief in Christianity, Kagin became a freethought activist. He was a founding member in 1991 of the Free Inquiry Group, Inc., (FIG) of Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky and served as its vice president.

Through his writings in Fig Leaves, the FIG newsletter, as well as those he published and circulated via the Internet, Kagin gradually became known in wider humanist and freethought circles. This led in 2003 to his authorship of a chapter in Kimberly Blaker's Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America and in 2005 to his own book, Baubles of Blasphemy, a collection of some of his often irreverent essays and poetry. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.^[4]

Kagin is the originator and was, for its first decade, Director of Camp Quest, the nation's first residential secular summer camp for children of Atheists and other freethinkers, started in 1996 by FIG.^[1] First incorporated in 1996 by Kagin and others as Camp Quest Company, Inc., restructuring was required by 2002. He was then an incorporator, and a founding board member, of Camp Quest, Inc., a national non-profit corporation established in 2002 to operate Camp Quest. In 2005, following ten successful years, he and his wife Helen retired from this venture, after transferring control and management of Camp Quest to other hands. That same year they were named "Atheists of the Year" by American Atheists.

Kagin was also a founder and board member of Recover Resources Center, which provides an alternative addiction recovery program to the religiously oriented Alcoholics Anonymous. He served on the national advisory board of the Secular Student Alliance and on January 13, 2006, was named national legal director for American Atheists, replacing the retiring Duane Buchholtz.^[3] In 2008, he was elected to the Board of Directors of American Atheists, a position he held until 2013. He was named as "Atheist of the Year" twice, first in 2005 with his wife and again in 2008.

As an outspoken public critic of religious intrusions into government, Kagin was a frequent speaker and debater at local and national events and has appeared on hundreds of

• Kimberly Blaker, editor, Fundamentals of Extremism: The Christian Right in America, 2003, New Boston Books (
  ISBN 0-9725496-1-7
  )
• Edwin Kagin, Baubles of Blasphemy, 2005, Freethought Press (
  ISBN 1-887392-14-9
  )

• Official Personal website
• Unofficial Fan website Archived 2009-11-05 at the Wayback Machine
• Camp Quest
• The Free Inquiry Group
• Charles LaRue, The American Religious Civil War report on Edwin Kagin from the Freethought Association of West Michigan.
• Answers in Atheism