Coming Out Atheist How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, and Why

Coming out as an atheist is a powerful, liberating act. It makes life better for you, for other atheists, and for the world. But telling people you’re an atheist can be risky. What are the best ways to do it? And how can we help each other take this step? In this compassionate, friendly, down-to-earth how-to guide, author Greta Christina offers concrete strategies and guiding philosophies for coming out as an atheist. Based on hundreds of coming-out stories, the book offers a map of the territory atheists are likely to encounter and ideas on how to pick the path that’s best for you. This accessible, empathetic guide reflects a wide range of coming-out experiences, and for atheists who are already out, it gives practical ideas on how to help others join you in the sunlight. For atheists who are on the fence, it offers guidance on making that decision—and gentle encouragement to take that step. Inspiring and realistic, kind and powerful, Coming Out Atheist is the much-needed guidebook atheists have been waiting for.

Greta Christina is the author of Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More and Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and is editor of Paying for It: A Guide for Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and is on the speaker’s bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance and Center for Inquiry. She is a regular contributor to AlterNet, Free Inquiry, the Humanist, and Salon. Her writing has appeared in magazines and newspapers including the Chicago Sun-Times, Ms., On Our Backs, Penthouse, and Skeptical Inquirer, and anthologies including Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of Best American Erotica. She lives in San Francisco.