Ep. 49 - Jason Heap, Executive Director of the United Coalition of Reason

Friendly Atheist Podcast

Religion & Spirituality, News Commentary, Politics, News

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2015

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jason Heap is the Executive Director of the United Coalition of Reason, an organization that has placed billboards promoting local atheist groups all over the country. He is also trying to become the first Humanist chaplain in the United States Armed Forces. I spoke with Jason about the strategy behind putting up non-aggressive billboards, how he left the evangelical Christian faith he was raised in, and why politicians are working so hard to prevent Humanists from becoming officially-recognized chaplains. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Hemmant-Metta and you're listening to the podcast for Friendly Atheist.
0:09.0	You can now listen to all of our episodes and see show notes at friendly atheist podcast.com.
0:15.0	I am here with Jason Heep.
0:19.6	Jason is the executive director of the United Coalition of Reason, which has put up a lot of
0:25.0	billboards all across the country.
0:27.0	And he's also a humanist chaplain who's done a lot of work in that area.
0:31.0	We'll talk about that soon.
0:32.0	So Jason, thanks for being with me.
0:34.0	I appreciate your time today. Sure. So let's talk about United Corps. How many states have you all put
0:39.2	billboards up in at this point? It wouldn't be easy to say about the states.
0:45.0	I would actually say about the number of coalitions that we've...
0:48.0	How many coalitions have you formed now?
0:50.0	At the moment we've got nearly 80.
0:52.0	80 coalitions and these are local
0:54.3	humanist groups, atheist groups working together as a coalition to what are their
0:59.6	purposes I mean I know what the purpose of the Chicago one is because I've worked with that one but what do you see is the purpose of these coalitions?
1:06.3	Well when it first started in 2009 in Philadelphia it moved from that
1:12.3	idea of just being visibility where to say hello I'm an
1:15.2	atheist I'm here or I'm a agnostic or a skeptic or a free thinker I'm here but
1:19.0	over time though since 2009 it's moved into 80 coalitions across the country and there's about
1:25.6	two or three that are currently in the pipeline. Some of them are wanting to do more
1:29.5	than just visibility. A lot of them are trying to become more politically active where they realize
	...

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