My Christian fundamentalist mother was furious when I wrote about an atheist convention, but she was practically sputtering to read that once there, I hugged Matthew Chapman, the great-great grandson of Charles Darwin. Our paths had nearly crossed at Sundance in 2011 where we each premiered a film about faith and doubt.
When he later screened his film The Ledge at the national atheist convention held in my hometown, Des Moines, I queued up to meet him and tried not to feel sycophantic. Even though I had heard lots of atheist speakers by the time I spoke to Matthew Chapman, it was our brief conversation that stayed with me. If my mom takes the fun out of fundamentalism, Matthew Chapman puts the human into secular humanism. Later, we had a more extended conversation.
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