Racialising the Study of Religious Exit: Thinking through Stories of Former Christians and Muslims in the UK and the Netherlands

In existing studies of leaving religion, there is a lack of discussion of structures and experiences of constructions of race. This presentation aims to further trouble terminology and categories around religious exit: utilizing an intersectional perspective, it does not only foreground the constituting role of gender and sexuality but also that of the religion-race nexus in trajectories out of religion. It discusses how women’s trajectories of leaving Christianity and Islam in Western contexts such as the UK and the Netherlands are informed by everyday embodied experiences, as well as by intimate and social relations. They are moreover informed by a larger context of constructions of religion, secularity and race that position those who are losing faith and leaving their community in particular ways. This presentation draws on life story research emerging from the project ‘Women Leaving Religion in the UK and the Netherlands’. It rethinks and makes use of the concept religio-racial formations to explore and analyse the role of whiteness, blackness, racialisation and Islamophobia in processes and experiences of leaving Christian and Islamic traditions and communities. As such, the chapter unravels gendered religio-secular-racial formations, and argues for a much more profound engagement with and integration of critical perspectives on race in studies of religious exit.