Here’s how it all started, according to the front page of the Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2006:
A few weeks ago, Hemant Mehta posted an unusual item for sale on eBay: a chance to save his soul.
The DePaul University graduate student promised the winner that for each $10 of the final bid, he would attend an hour of church services. The 23-year-old Mr. Mehta is an atheist, but he says he suspected he had been missing out on something.
“Perhaps being around a group of people who will show me ‘the way’ could do what no one else has done before,” Mr. Mehta wrote in his eBay sales pitch. “This is possibly the best chance anyone has of changing me.”
Evangelists bid, eager to save a sinner. Atheists bid, hoping to keep Mr. Mehta in their fold. When the auction stopped on Feb. 3 after 41 bids, the buyer was Jim Henderson, a former evangelical minister from Seattle, whose $504 bid prevailed.
Mr. Henderson wasn’t looking for a convert. He wanted Mr. Mehta to embark with him on an eccentric experiment in spiritual bridge-building.
You can see the completed auction record on eBay.
Hemant and Jim have each written about the auction. Hemant’s FAQ page gives his perspective. Jim shares his account of the auction in The Ebay Atheist Update. He explains his motivation in Why Did We Hire an Atheist?
Hemant’s church surveys he wrote for Off The Map are all posted on this blog.
After Hemant’s church visits were complete, Jim and Hemant answered some final questions for us.
This project attracted a fair amount of media attention. We’ve blogged about the national media exposure. Hemant has a media page also.
Both Jim and Hemant were invited to write books about atheists attending church as a result of this project. The two books will be published in the first half of 2007.
When we have updates relating to the ebay atheist story we’ll post them on this blog. Meanwhile feel free to join in the ongoing atheist-Christian dialog on here.