Word: atheistical
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...March 1989, long after Madalyn Murray O'Hair dropped from fame but before she dropped from sight, she enjoyed one of the sweet contradictions of life as America's foremost atheist: she played the preacher at Scott Kerns' wedding. Kerns was something of a favorite of O'Hair's; for a while he led the Texas chapter of her American Atheists group. And so Madalyn invited the couple up to her handsome tan shingle house on Greystone Drive in Austin. The event took place in the library, and was attended by friends, a photographer and Madalyn's son Jon Murray...
...heavy woman with a strong voice and jaw who even in repose resembled, as author Lawrence Wright once observed, "a bowling ball looking for new pins to scatter." She was an Army veteran and a law-school graduate and a big talker. Most important, she was an atheist...
...believe in God or a universal spirit?" in a 1994 poll by the Gallup Organization, 3% of those surveyed replied no. That response, whether one agrees with it or not, might be deemed something of an act of courage. During the cold war, the words communist and atheist became almost interchangeable; even today some feel comfortable writing the latter out of the civic contract. South Carolina, one of a handful of states whose constitutions require belief as a condition for holding public office (a dead letter in the others), is currently defending itself at the appeals-court level after losing...
...from public view. Madalyn Murray O'Hair's organizational and financial heyday occurred in the mid-'80s. Having worn out her welcome with authorities in Maryland, where she filed her original suit, and then Hawaii, she arrived in Austin in 1965 and established the Society of Separationists, later adding Atheist Centre in America and several satellite groups. By the late '80s, there were eight. Each had a five- or six-person board, and each board was dominated by Madalyn, Jon and Robin (she was Bill's daughter, but he had given her up to his mother years before his Christian...
Despite Madalyn's claims that American Atheists had 50,000 members, it was tiny (it currently numbers 2,400). Lawyers for other church-and-state separatists say its lawsuits fell primarily into the nuisance category and few prevailed. Yet her acerbic, sometimes erudite weekly radio show ran on 150 stations. The group was still the only national atheist organization in America, with more than 30 state chapters. It threw national conventions, which, although "outrageously expensive," according to Kerns, were "Madalyn's moment to shine...