“The greatest danger which confronts our nation today is not political but religious,” said Ricker. “You cannot have free schools, free speech and a free press where the mind is not free.”

It was on this date, February 21, 2012, that masked members of the feminist punk-rock collective Pussy Riot staged a performance on the soleas of Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior (Храм Христа Спасителя) to protest the support of Orthodox Church leader Kirill I for Vladimir Putin during his election campaign that year. The resulting […]

It was on this date, December 3, 1960, that British-American actress Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith in the Fort Bragg, North Carolina, army installation, the daughter of a military father who later became a military judge and a psychologist/social worker mother who had emigrated from Scotland. Because of her mother’s heritage, Moore claimed […]

It was on this date, November 13, 1969, that Somali-born American feminist and atheist activist, writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali was born Ayaan Hirsi Magan in Mogadishu, Somalia. While her father, a leading figure in the Somalian Revolution, was in prison, Ayann’s grandmother had the 5-year-old young girl’s genitals ritually cut off in what […]

It was on this date, November 4, 1960, that American comedian and actress Kathy Griffin was born Kathleen Mary Griffin in Oak Park, Illinois. At about age 18, she moved to Los Angeles to study drama at the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute, becoming a member of The Groundlings improvisational comedy troupe like her […]

It was on this date, October 24, 1765, that Scottish political philosopher and politician James Mackintosh was born in Aldourie, near Inverness-shire, Scotland. Because his mother died while he was a child, and his father was frequently abroad, Mackintosh was reared by grandparents. He studied at King's College, University of Aberdeen and, in 1787, took […]

It was on this date, August 26, 1941, that American feminist, democratic socialist, and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich was born Barbara Alexander in Butte, Montana, the daughter of a copper miner and a liberal Democrat. An award-winning columnist and essayist, Ehrenreich has been called “a veteran muckraker” by The New Yorker magazine for such works […]

Femen founder Anna Hutsol says, “Feminists can’t be religious ... There is no such thing as Orthodox or Catholic feminists or, most absurdly of all, Islamic feminists. It’s ridiculous. They are antagonistic ideologies; mutually exclusive.”

It was on this date, August 15, 1750, that French writer and political theorist Pierre Sylvain Maréchal was born in Paris. Trained as a lawyer, he found employment at the Collège Mazarin as an aide-librarian. Maréchal was an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, Helvétius, and Diderot, and connected with deist and atheist authors like himself, […]

It was on this date, August 2, 1924, that American writer, social critic and civil rights activist James Baldwin was born James Arthur Baldwin in Harlem, New York City, U.S.A. Known chiefly for his semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman,* Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), which examines the role of the Christian Church in the lives of […]