Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries. In one sense, secularism may assert the right to be free from religious rule and teachings, and the right to freedom from governmental imposition of religion upon the people within a state that is neutral on matters of belief. (See also separation of church and state and Laïcité.) In another sense, it refers to the view that human activities and decisions, especially political ones, should be unbiased by religious influence. (See also public reason.) Some scholars are now arguing that the very idea of secularism will change.

Secularism draws its intellectual roots from Greek and Roman philosophers such as Marcus Aurelius and Epicurus; medieval Muslim polymaths such as Ibn Rushd; Enlightenment thinkers such as Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, John Locke, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine; and more recent freethinkers, agnostics, and atheists such as Robert Ingersoll and Bertrand Russell.

Anthony Clifford Grayling (born 3 April 1949) is an English philosopher. In 2011 he founded and became the first Master of New College of the Humanities, an independent undergraduate college in London. Until June 2011, he was Professor of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London, where he taught from 1991. He is also a supernumerary fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford.

Grayling is the author of around 30 books on philosophy, including The Refutation of Scepticism (1985), The Future of Moral Values (1997), The Meaning of Things (2001), and The Good Book (2011). He is a Trustee of the London Library, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He is also a director of and contributor to Prospect Magazine.

His main academic interests lie in epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophical logic. He is also associated in the UK with the new atheism movement.

Grayling was born and raised in Luanshya, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) within the British expatriate community, while his father worked for the Standard Chartered Bank. He attended several boarding schools there, including Falcon College in Zimbabwe, from which he ran away after being repeatedly and brutally caned. His first exposure to philosophical writing was at the age of twelve, when he found an English translation of the Charmides, one of Plato's dialogues, in a local library. At fourteen, he read G. H. Lewes's Biographical History of Philosophy (1846), which confirmed his ambition to study philosophy; he said it "superinduced order on the random reading that had preceded it, and settled my vocation."

The Crisis is the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), and was founded in 1910 by W. E. B. Du Bois (editor), Oswald Garrison Villard, J. Max Barber, Charles Edward Russell, Kelly Miller, W.S. Braithwaite, M. D. Maclean.

The original title of the journal was The Crisis: A Record of The Darker Races. From 1997 to 2003, it appeared as The New Crisis: The Magazine of Opportunities and Ideas, but the title has since reverted to The Crisis. The title derives from the poem "The Present Crisis" by James Russell Lowell. Published monthly, by 1920 its circulation had reached 100,000 copies. Du Bois proclaimed his intentions in his first editorial:

Predominantly a current-affairs journal, The Crisis also included poems, reviews, and essays on culture and history. Du Bois' initial position as editor was in line with the NAACP's liberal programme of social reform and racial equality, but by the 1930s Du Bois was advocating a form of black separatism. This led to disputes between Du Bois and the NAACP resulting in his resignation as editor in 1934. He was replaced by Roy Wilkins.

Andrew Copson FRSA MCMI MCIPR is (since January 2010) Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association. He is a regular contributor to New Humanist Magazine, and has also written for The Guardian and New Statesman. Before becoming Chief Executive, he was responsible for education and public affairs at the BHA. He campaigns for an open society without faith schools, religious privilege or discrimination.

He is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, an Associate of the Centre for Law and Religion at Cardiff University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has a first class degree in Ancient and Modern History from Oxford University where he attended Balliol College.

Anne Atkins (born 1956) is an English broadcaster, journalist and novelist. A regular contributor to the Today programme's "Thought for the Day" feature, she is the author of three novels, The Lost Child, On Our Own, and A Fine and Private Place.

Anne Atkins was born in 1956 at Bryanston, Dorset, and moved to Cambridge at the age of three when her father became headmaster of King's College School. She went to Byron House School, the Cambridgeshire High School for Girls and the Perse School for Girls. After school, she went to the Decroux School of Mime in Paris and studied harp under Solonge Renie. She studied English Language and Literature at Brasenose College, Oxford, and then trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London.

She started her acting career at St George’s Shakespeare Theatre in Tufnell Park. Her career moved increasingly into writing until her last theatre appearance at the National Theatre in 1991.

The Lost Child is based on a true story, in which a family makes a decision one summer which haunts five-year-old Sandy into adulthood. Interwoven with the history of Cassandra, sooth-saying daughter of Priam King of Troy, The Lost Child was described by The Sunday Times as “ambitious and very readable”, and in The Telegraph, “the perceptions of childhood are excellent.”