Greta Christina
Author, Blogger & Speaker · b. 1961
Greta Christina is one of the most distinctive voices in the contemporary atheist movement. For two decades — first on her own blog, then on Freethought Blogs and The Orbit, then across books, podcasts, and conference stages — she has argued that atheism, feminism, and LGBTQ liberation are not three separate causes but three sides of the same fight against unearned authority.
Her best-known book, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless (2012), takes a question routinely asked of vocal atheists — “why are you so angry?” — and answers it with a list. Ninety-nine specific, sourced grievances. The book’s argument is that none of these things are abstractions: each is a real harm done to real people in the name of faith, and being angry about them is the appropriate response.
Atheist anger is legitimate — and useful
Christina argues that anger about religious harm is not a character flaw to be politely set aside but a reasonable response to documented injuries: bodily autonomy denied to women, queer people pushed to suicide, children indoctrinated, dissenters threatened. Naming the harm clearly is the first step toward stopping it.
The LGBTQ playbook for atheist visibility
She has consistently argued that the atheist movement should learn directly from gay rights — coming out openly, building community, lobbying for legal equality, and refusing to apologize for existing. Her book Coming Out Atheist is a practical handbook for doing this.
Religion is not gender-neutral
Christina's feminism is at the center of her atheism. She argues that the world's major religions are structurally invested in women's subordination — and that any honest critique of religion has to take that seriously rather than treating gender as a side issue.
Skeptical of accommodationism
She is one of the most consistent critics of the 'don't be too loud, you'll alienate moderates' tendency within the secular movement. The argument: minorities winning rights have never won them by staying quiet.
I'm angry that women are being told to cover their heads, or their bodies, or their faces, to keep men from being aroused by them. I'm angry that women's lives, women's choices, women's autonomy — are still considered fair game for religious authorities to legislate.
Atheism as a civil-rights movement
Christina’s most influential argument outside her writing on women is the case she makes in Coming Out Atheist: that organized atheism should consciously model itself on the gay rights movement. Visibility, she argues, was the single most powerful tool LGBTQ people had — once enough of them were openly themselves, the stereotypes their opponents relied on collapsed against the obvious humanity of the people in question. She thinks the same logic applies to atheists, who in the United States remain the most distrusted minority by some polling measures.
Her own coming out is part of this story. She was openly queer well before she was openly atheist, and she has written extensively about why the second closet was harder to leave than the first.
Why feminism is non-negotiable
Christina is one of the most prominent figures of what is sometimes called “Atheism+” — the (now-contested) movement to make explicit that the atheist community should be feminist, anti-racist, and inclusive by default. The argument: if religion is to be criticized for its treatment of women, the secular movement cannot replicate the same problems internally without making itself ridiculous.
Essential books
Best quotes
“Religion is the original Big Lie. It is the source of so many other lies — about morality, about sexuality, about the world.”
“I'm angry that women's lives are still being controlled by religious institutions that view us as walking incubators with insufficient willpower.”
“Being told that I'm just like the religious people I'm criticizing — for the simple act of criticizing them — is the kind of thing that makes atheists angry.”
“If you want to know whether your faith really is harmless, ask an ex-believer.”
“I came out of the closet as queer before I came out as an atheist. Coming out as an atheist was harder.”
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Women and atheism
The female freethinkers reshaping the conversation about religion.
New Atheism
The movement Christina helped extend into feminist and LGBTQ politics.
Religion and societal harm
The catalogue of harms her work documents in detail.
Secular humanism
The positive ethical project she defends alongside her critiques.