Twenty years ago I considered myself an atheist and a secular humanist, and I was proud to use both labels for myself. That has not changed, but something about the connection between the labels has—and it matters to me. The change took some time and was helped along by many people, writings, and events, but Paul Kurtz was the main instigator and gets the main credit. People like my wife, Warren Tidwell, and Dale McGowan deserve credit, too, but Kurtz was the key.

For those who don’t know me, a few biographical bits: I worked, as executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism, for and with Paul Kurtz, for about three years starting in 2001. Some years after I retired from that, I became president of American Atheists for a little over two years. Now I’m really retired.

Before I came to the Council and for many years afterward, my first philosophical self-label of choice was “atheist.” I thought—and still do—that the word is an honorable, accurate word to apply to myself and to the idea of holding no supernatural beliefs. (I realize that the meaning I always intend for the word is a bit broader than its most literal definition.) I thought—and still do—that “I have no religion; I’m an atheist” is often the right answer when people ask me, “What’s your religion?” I thought—and still do—that atheism should be promoted, that the absurd, irrational associations of atheism with indecency and immorality should be vigorously countered. I’m proud to have served as the leader of American Atheists and I’m impressed with the efforts of the group’s current leader, David Silverman. He strikes just the right balance for that organization as a strong, assertive, unapologetic defender of the idea that living without religion is reasonable and worthy of respect from all. He also consciously makes it politically easier for less assertive nonreligious groups.

I still call myself, proudly, an atheist in many settings. So, what has changed and why does it matter?

When I worked for the Council, there were many (sometimes including me) who thought Paul Kurtz was somehow short of courage or wisdom because he usually did not go out of his way to defend “atheism.” He never, as far as I know, denied that he qualified as an atheist, and he certainly was a vocal, effective critic of religious ideas and of the political harm done by religious—especially right-wing—believers. No one who knew him at all well doubted he was an atheist.

Nor was he a mere passive, reserved, quiet critic of theism and religion. He personally argued, very publicly, very sharply, against Christian and Muslim beliefs and ideas. He courageously supported, as a publisher and as an activist, hundreds of others in their unvarnished critiques, including critics of Islam like Ibn Warraq and Armen Saginian—people who brought threats on themselves and on those like Kurtz who dared support them. He sought out minority voices in opposition to Christianity—people like Norm Allen—and actively engaged and helped them. He effectively (in ways practical, financial, and, by publishing their work, intellectual) encouraged religious skeptics and critics from all over the globe, from Bill Cooke from New Zealand (a scholar of freethought not only in New Zealand but also in the United Kingdom, in India, and elsewhere) to Valerii Kuvakin, a renowned Russian critic of religion, to many other international scholars, as well as from across the US.

But Paul Kurtz also gave cash to poor street people, unconcerned with whether they were religious or were con artists, because they were fellow human beings and were apparently suffering. He championed, in print and in his life, what he called “the common moral decencies.” He also generously supported (sometimes ungrateful) students or people from abroad, and did so without demanding dogmatic purity or organizational blind loyalty. He gave his own time and money to organizations he started, like the Council for Secular Humanism, and did little to correct the false impressions of others that he paid himself a salary or otherwise benefitted financially. (Kurtz did have plenty of faults, including inadequate trust in the decision-making of others and too much eagerness for competition among organizations accompanied by too little trusting cooperation with other irreligious groups.)

There were people, including good friends and prominent atheists and secular humanists who declared, when I worked with Kurtz and since, that we should all be, at least in the short run, single issue voters of a sort: that if a candidate for public office openly declared himself to be an atheist, that should win our vote, pretty much no matter what else was true of that candidate. Because the respectability of atheism was at stake, according to this way of thinking, atheism should outweigh takes on issues. I had some sympathy with that viewpoint then and I would still rather someone I vote for be an atheist or at least not be a pushy theist. But too much else is too important, I now think, to let overt atheism be the dominant key.

Kurtz thought and acted decisively, creatively, and on a grand scale—but never just to advance atheism. His humanism had to be secular, but his humanism always surpassed his atheism in importance to him and, he concluded, to humanity.

What has changed for me, in retrospect influenced more than I then realized by Paul Kurtz, is not my atheism or my affection for the word “atheist.” I still know that if I can have an atheist as a boss, employee, school board member, friend, neighbor, state representative, or kinsman, I’ll be glad of it. And if I can have a caring human as a boss, employee, friend, neighbor, or kinsman, I’ll be glad of that. But if I must somehow choose either an atheist or a caring human, I wouldn’t hesitate: I’d choose the caring human—the humanist. Secular, if possible, to be sure.

Donald John Trump—who may actually be an atheist, for all anyone really knows (and if he is, may he please stay firmly in the closet)—fixed in my head the idea that there are more important things in life than atheism. But Paul Kurtz is the public figure I give primary credit to for my significant shift in opinion over the last decade or so. I wish I’d have told him that.