Timely and Timeless: The Wisdom of E. Burdette Backus

Timely and Timeless is a 251-page anthology of the pulpit and radio addresses of one of the most influential leaders and exponents of twentieth-century humanism and Unitarian Universalism, one of the original signers of Humanist Manifesto I, and the second president of the American Humanist Association.

Edwin Burdette Backus was born in Blanchester, Ohio, in 1888. He received his A.B. degree from the University of Michigan in 1909 and his B.A. from Meadville Theological Seminary in 1912. He pursued post-graduate studies at Oxford, Harvard, the University of California, and universities in Berlin and Jena, Germany, and was awarded a D.D. degree in 1940 by Meadville. After serving as minister of Unitarian congregations in Lawrence, Kansas, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Des Moines, Iowa, as well as the Chicago Humanist Society, he was called to the pulpit of All Souls Unitarian Church in Indianapolis in 1938. There he served until the end of 1953. He died in 1955.

Edd Doerr is executive director of the Americans for Religious Liberty, president of the American Humanist Association, and a board member of the National Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty, the National Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union. A frequent lecturer, newspaper contributor, and guest on radio and television, he has testified as an expert witness at congressional and state legislative hearings and been involved in numerous U.S. Supreme Court cases on religious liberty issues. He also is the editor of the Voice of Reason newsletter, the former editor of Church & State magazine, and the author or coauthor of seventeen books, including The Case Against School Vouchers and The Great Quotations on Religious Freedom (available from the American Humanist Association, 7 Harwood Drive, Amherst, New York 14226; 800-743-6646).