Edd Doerr was president of the American Humanist Association from 1995 to 2003, serving previously as vice-president and board chair under Isaac Asimov from 1985 to 1991. He has been executive director and then president of Americans for Religious Liberty since 1982.

A former teacher of history and Spanish, he is the author, co-author, editor, or translator of twenty books, mostly on religious liberty and reproductive rights but also including five books of poetry and fiction and Timely and Timeless: The Wisdom of E. Burdette Backus. He joined Burdette Backus's All Souls Unitarian Church in Indianapolis in 1951, is currently a member of River Road Unitarian Church in Bethesda, Maryland, and has been a frequent delegate to Unitarian Universalist Association General Assemblies. An accomplished speaker, he has preached in over a hundred Unitarian Universalist churches in thirty states. He has served on the governing body of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice since 1973 and on the boards of NARAL, the ACLU of Maryland, and the National Committee for Public Education and Religious Liberty. More than 3,000 of his articles, columns, reviews, and letters have been published in The Humanist and many other publications.