Jerry DeWitt is an author, public speaker, secular minister, life coach, and business consultant who has been interviewed by the major news organizations numerous times in his few years of secular activism, including The New York Times (2) (3-Video), CNN (2), Morning Joe, Time Magazine, NPR (2), Q on CBC, The Christian Post, and many, many others.
His Christian ministry (audio from 1990) began at age seventeen. He evangelized in numerous locations throughout the Southern United States, assisted at three Pentecostal churches, and later held the pastorate of two fundamentalist congregations.
After more than twenty-five years of ministry, he realized he had become an atheist (Huffpost article) and that his motivation had been humanism (concern for the well-being of people) all along.
He is a former board member of the Foundation Beyond Belief, as well as The Clergy Project, of which he was the very first member to go public about his non-belief.
Currently, Jerry is engaged in five projects:
1. Co-Hosting Hope After Faith-The Podcast with Bobby C. of the No Religion Required Podcast.
2. Supporting the growing secular community in the Deep South, as well as a unique online community with his son Paul DeWitt at Patreon.com/jerrydewitt.
3. Touring with his memoir, Hope After Faith, published by Da Capo Press.
4. Working with the Peabody Award-winning, Bread and Butter Films to produce the documentary The Outcast of Beauregard Parish, which picks up where Hope After Faith leaves off.
5. Putting his many years of public service experience to good use as a professional life coach and independent consultant for various, individuals, companies and organizations.
Jerry DeWitt, his wife Kelli and their adult son Paul, still live in the DeRidder, Louisiana area.
“Skepticism is my nature;
Freethought is my methodology;
Agnosticism is my conclusion;
Atheism is my opinion;
Humanism is my motivation.”
— Jerry W. DeWitt