Mangasar Magurditch Mangasarian was an American rationalist and secularist of Armenian ancestry. He was born in Mashger, Ottoman Empire, and studied at Robert College in Constantinople before being ordained as a minister in Marsovan in 1878. Around 1880, he enrolled at Princeton University. He served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Philadelphia from 1882 to 1885, when he quit to become an independent preacher and lecturer on "independent religion" in New York. In 1892, he became president of the Ethical Culture Society of Chicago, a group founded by Felix Adler. In 1900, he founded the Independent Religious Society of Chicago, a rationalist organization, and served as its pastor until 1925. Mangasarian wrote several works over the course of his life. His most prominent works, The Truth About Jesus - Is He a Myth? (1909) and The Bible Unveiled (1911), address the evidence against the existence of a historical Jesus. In addition, he wrote hundreds of essays and talks on current issues. His works and writings have been translated into French, German, Spanish, and other foreign languages. His writing focused primarily on religious critique and philosophy of religion.