Coming Out of the (Confessional) Closet: Christian Performatives, Queer Performativities

Abstract

In 2007, the Richard Dawkins Society for Reason and Science launched the ‘Out Campaign’.¹ In a statement addressing the campaign’s purpose, Dawkins claimed that too many atheists remain ‘in the closet’, and encouraged ‘the non-religious to admit it — to themselves, to their families and to the world’.² Predictably, the campaign announcement was met with protest from certain religious groups. An article in the Christian Post, for example, decided to fight fire with fire and expressed hope that the mass outing of atheists would draw ‘believers’ out of their own closets into ‘the true life of faith’.³ The decision to frame the campaign in the rhetoric of ‘the closet’ and ‘coming out’ prompts immediate associations with queer politics and might seem like a somewhat problematic appropriation. Yet, as a member of the Out Campaign might argue, it is precisely the same hegemonic religious (Christian) forces that work to silence both atheists and queers, effectively pushing both ‘communities’ out of the public sphere. And it is for this very reason, of course, that both atheists and queers have actively turned to secularization as a crucial political goal. But what is it that makes ‘coming out of the closet’ such an appealing paradigm for minoritarian populations seeking to increase their public presence and visibility? How did such a paradigm emerge and what are its features? Is there something about the performance of ‘coming out’ itself that is always already marked by Christianity? Are queerness and religion such natural enemies? And is there a way to think a productive relationship between the two that goes beyond more ‘tolerant’ religion on the one hand or queer theology on the other?⁴