Herb Silverman, president of the Secular Coalition for America, talks about his childhood as an orthodox Jew in Philadelphia, his eventual atheism, and his political career in the South. His new book, Candidate Without a Prayer, An Autobiography of a Jewish Atheist in the Bible Belt, recounts his bid for governor of South Carolina in 1990, when he challenged a law that prohibited public office to anyone who denied the existence of a supreme being. His story is funny, poignant and intelligent.

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