Learn English – Word for fake religious people

single-word-requests

Is there any word for calling people who pretend to be religious in the religious group they’re in? I mean, the people who lost their belief but can’t say they’re not religious anymore because people will turn against them?

I’ve met several people of that kind so I’d thought it’ll be good to know a word for it. Any suitable adjective then?

I am not implying anything here. No one’s wrong. This is how the world works, sadly. The word fake in the title is a bit off, I know.

Best Answer

Consider closet ___, where ___ stands for the person’s true religion, other weltanschauung, or some relevant aspect of it. This uses closet (adjective) in the sense of:

being so in private <a closet racist>

Some examples and suggestions for possible realisations of the above:

  • Arguably a good compromise between coverage, understandability, and common usage¹ is closet atheist, using atheist:

    A person who does not believe in deities.

    This works whenever the rejected religion is theistic (i.e., featuring at least on deity) and the person in question does not secretly adhere to another theistic religion.

    Here is an example of usage with a situation as the one you describe:

    I’m a closet atheist and I’m coming out. Preparing to lose half my friends in 3…2…1 :-(

  • Arguably, the most general solution would be closet apostate, using apostate:

    A person who has renounced a religion or faith.

    This works with any rejected religion and actual beliefs, even if only a specific flavour of a religion was rejected. However, it is not very common¹ and arguably less likely to be understood.

  • Very commonly¹ used is closet [religion], e.g., closet christian, closet muslim, closet pastafarian, … However this only works if the person in question follows the respective specific religion in secrecy.

  • Closet irreligious or closet non-religious have the advantage that they are likely to be understood and also work in the case that the rejected religion is not a theistic one.

Neither of these explicitly capture that the person in question ever believed in the religion, but this does not seem to be central to what you want to say.


¹ Going by Google hits.