Edwin H. Wilson

Edwin Henry Wilson (August 23, 1898 – March 26, 1993) was an American Unitarian leader and humanist who helped draft the Humanist Manifesto. Wilson was born in Woodhaven, New York, and raised in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Meadville Theological School in 1926 and was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1928. He served churches in Dayton, Ohio; Chicago, Illinois; Schenectady, New York; Yellow Springs, Ohio; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Cocoa Beach, Florida. During the 1980s, he returned to Dayton to serve as the First Unitarian Church's Minister Emeritus. By 1930, Wilson was the managing editor of The New Humanist, which published the first Humanist Manifesto in 1933. In 1941, he became the first editor of The Humanist magazine and a founder of the American Humanist Association. Wilson was a primary author of both Humanist Manifesto I (1933) and Humanist Manifesto II (1973). In 1952, he was a founding director of the International Humanist and Ethical Union. He was named the 1979 Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association. His book, The Genesis of the Humanist Manifesto, was published posthumously.