TRANSCRIPT KEY
Speakers (in order of appearance):
In this transcript, speakers’ words will all appear in size 12 black type. Speaker names are in bold size 12 black type.
Flamy Grant: a drag queen on Tik Tok, portrayed by Matthew Lovegood.
Mary Steffenhagen: the host and reporter.
Matthew Lovegood: the central character. An exvangelical Tik Tok maker and podcaster.
@aprilajoy: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@heather.elise.rainbow: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@thewoodmother: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@waynefeltonii: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@kylee60: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@ericakshannon: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@joeytrieb: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@lissajostewart: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
@abrahampiper: An exvangelical Tik Tok maker featured in a montage.
Ambient Sound and music: Ambient sound and music will appear in brackets.
END TRANSCRIPT KEY
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
Mary Steffenhagen:
I’m going to show you my favorite video on Tik Tok. Well not show you, obviously. But here, just listen.
[Sustained piano note crescendos under high-pitched beeping tone to signal a shift in place]
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
I was a Bible Belt baby. I’m talking evangelical, be at church anytime the doors are open, Christian school, Christian music, even our movies came with all the provocative bits edited out.
Mary Steffenhagen:
The speaker is a 38 year old named Matthew Lovegood. He’s white, freckled, with big brown eyes and short brown hair. And with each cut of the video, he transforms. He glues down his eyebrows—
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
We had the portrait of white Jesus on the wall next to the Thomas Kincaid. And the cross stitch quote from the book of Joshua that said, “as for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.”
Mary Steffenhagen:
Paints his eyelids with dramatic blue, purple and pink shadow—
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
And serve him I did. I did everything I was supposed to do. And more importantly, I avoided everything I wasn’t.
Mary Steffenhagen:
Cakes a thick layer of light powder into his skin—
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
I spent 35 years avoiding the impulse to paint my face, but nobody can tell me it wasn’t worth the wait
Mary Steffenhagen:
And sets a massive pair of fake lashes onto his eyelids. By the final shot, he’s got a huge, cotton candy blue wig on and a sequined, navy blue dress.
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
Baby, it might take you half a lifetime or more but when you finally realize that the deepest truth of the divine is that you are meant to be happy in the here and now—well, I can’t wait to see what you make of your second act.
Mary Steffenhagen:
Matthew is now Flamy Grant, a drag queen. And that video you just heard is her most popular one on Tik Tok with 908,000 views. And even though he was a Bible Belt baby, Matthew is no longer a Christian.
[Rhythmic harp strumming to a beat with an anticipatory tone]
He’s an exvangelical. That’s an ex evangelical, a term adopted by people who have left evangelical Christian churches. And full disclosure, I’m also one of those people. I grew up evangelical and I left Christianity about seven years ago. At the time, I didn’t really know who to talk to about it. But it turns out there are hundreds of exvangelicals on Tik Tok now, making videos and memes about living in the church, and leaving it.
[Harp strumming fades]
[Sustained piano note crescendos under high-pitched beeping tone to signal a shift in place]
[Tik Tok montage]
@aprilajoy [Tik Tok audio]:
Hey guys—
@heather.elise.rainbow [Tik Tok audio]:
Hey Tik Tok—
@thewoodmother [Tik Tok audio]:
Hi did you maybe grow up Christian but you’re not now?
@waynefeltonii [Tik Tok audio]:
Hi, my name is Wayne. I have a degree from Bethel University in biblical and theological studies, I served as a pastor for a decade, and I have time for you today. Let’s do this.
Mary Steffenhagen:
Plenty of them are lighthearted, like inside jokes.
@kylee60 [Tik Tok audio]:
Here’s some more things that aren’t Christian but have Christian energy for no reason. Essential oils, obviously. Chaco tans, these highlighters which I didn’t want to include in the video because I have two have every color—
@ericakshannon [Tik Tok audio]:
Did anyone else try and sit their dog down and teach them the gospel so that they would see them in heaven?
Mary Steffenhagen:
Some make short explainers on Christian theology and history—
@joeytrieb [Tik Tok audio]:
Do the images that come to mind when you think about hell actually come from the Bible? The idea that hell is a place where the devil torments people for eternity does not actually exist in the Old Testament—
@lissajostewart [Tik Tok audio]:
Let’s talk about philo-semitism and anti-semitism in white American Christianity, because why the hell not?
Mary Steffenhagen:
And they poke fun at the stuff that they used to never question.
@abrahampiper [Tik Tok audio]:
You want to know one of the silliest things about being raised devoutly evangelical? Children are expected to read the Bible. It’s basically Game of Thrones. Except if you don’t read it, you go to hell. Hey, if you’re deconstructing, good for you. There are a lot of serious thinkers out there who can help you navigate this stuff. But if you just wann roll your eyes at fucking weird it all was, thaat’s what I’m here. Stick around if you want to.
Mary Steffenhagen:
But beneath the fun, relatable vibes, there’s some heavy stuff lurking under the surface. And if you keep scrolling, it’s gonna start coming up. Because when you leave evangelicalism, you don’t just stop going to church, you pretty much have to re-examine everything you believe, not just about god, but about yourself.
[Sustained piano note crescendos under high-pitched beeping tone to signal a shift in place]
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
Hey, Tik Tok. It’s me, Flamy Grant! Your polygender preacher. I just wanted to say hi to all the new followers, and I’m so glad you’re here. When I started my drag, I never imagined that so much of it would be about connecting with people around our religious trauma.
Mary Steffenhagen:
Yeah, she said religious trauma.
[Rhythmic harp strumming to a beat with an anticipatory tone]
Mary Steffenhagen:
It’s a thing that comes from internalizing biblical beliefs, like you’re born evil, your mistakes are actually sins, and that without god, you can never be good enough. There’s also a long history of evangelicalism aligning itself with conservative ideologies. So many women, trans and queer people and people of color, are many to feel even more inferior. And they might get gaslit about it by their churches. And religious trauma can manifest in symptoms that resemble depression, anxiety and PTSD.
[Harp strumming fades out]
Matthew grew up in a really devout church family, and he was a true believer. He led music on Sundays; as an adult, he even helped start two different churches.
Matthew Lovegood:
I think that was just so ingrained in my thinking from a young age that if you weren’t in the church, you didn’t matter. You didn’t matter to God, you’d no longer mattered to your community like there was just nothing for you but pain and eventually hell.
Mary Steffenhagen:
But Matthew is gay. And while there are churches that don’t see that as a sin, Matthew didn’t grow up in one.
Matthew Lovegood:
I feel like I could spend the rest of my life solely focused on recovering from the teaching that I can’t trust my own body. From the youngest of ages, I was taught to mistrust what my own body was telling me what my own mind wanted. The desires of my heart were not the desires of my heart, they were the desires of Satan in me.
Mary Steffenhagen:
It took him nearly 28 years to even admit to himself that he was gay. And that whole time he was desperately searching for a way to remain Christian.
[Ambient tones fade in, with beeps and notes that sound underwater]
Matthew Lovegood:
It’s the whole doctrine of original sin and being fallen, you’re completely unworthy, God can’t stand you, God can’t be in your presence. I think that is probably the crux. That’s the main teaching of evangelicalism that does so much damage and so much harm, because then it gets applied to just a spectrum and array of life experiences, including being gay. You spend years and years believing that, like genuinely believing it in your bones, that you’re worthless.
Mary Steffenhagen:
When he did finally decide to openly date men, the church he helped start basically shunned him. And he realized, these beliefs no longer held any value for him. Instead, they left him with scars.
Matthew Lovegood:
That alone is more than enough reason to walk away and never come back and never give them a second thought. That alone, we owe nothing to the traditions that put this trauma in our bodies.
Mary Steffenhagen:
This is what Matthew means when he talks about religious trauma as Flamy Grant. These internalized beliefs that he’s still trying to dismantle nearly a decade later. There’s a word exvangelicals use for this process of examining and dismantling toxic theologies: deconstruction.
[Ambient tones fade out]
[Sustained piano note crescendos under high-pitched beeping tone to signal a shift in place]
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
Do you have a hard time trusting your body, wary of your own intuition, gut causing you grief, nice to meet you, fellow survivor of high demand religion. The idea that my own body was a Trojan horse that could betray me at any moment permeated my entire upbringing. I was trained to be suspicious of my own inclinations, which when you think about it is a great way to control someone. feeling unsafe with a certain church leader? Probably your body disrespecting an elder. Attracted to someone you shouldn’t be? It’s that duplicitous flesh bag luring you into sin again. If you were gaslit by a religion that promised love and acceptance, but instead stole your body, it’s time to take it back.
[Rhythmic harp strumming to a beat with an anticipatory tone]
Mary Steffenhagen:
As individual and internal as deconstruction can be, it’s also becoming a shared experience. Data shows that the number of people calling themselves Christian is declining. People are always commenting on Matthews videos like, “I needed to hear this. No one has ever put this into words for me. I carried things because of the church that I never realized. You just told my own story back to me.”
Matthew Lovegood:
“Me too, like oh my gosh, you’ve spoken this truth that I didn’t have words for.” That’s my favorite, favorite thing about making my little 60 second drag sermons.
[Harp strumming fades out]
Mary Steffenhagen:
When Matthew first got on Tik Tok it wasn’t this serious. He had just wanted to play around with his new drag persona during quarantine. But once he made that first video you heard at the top, his account took off. So he kept making them.
Matthew Lovegood:
I feel some obligation and I feel like a responsibility to because I made it out, I guess? Because I know what it’s like to be happy finally, that’s what that whole sermon is about is happiness. So I feel like at least at minimum, I can be a guidepost for some, some people, whatever handful of people care to listen to a crazy drag queen.
Mary Steffenhagen:
Because that’s another thing about being an exvangelical. It can be really alienating at first. If you voice these doubts you’re having you can lose family and friends who stay in the church. And even though you may have completely different values from them at this point, it can still feel like a betrayal. It doesn’t happen to everyone, but it happened to Matthew, and it happened to me.
But even though you lose the church, leaving it opens you up to an entire new world of experiences. Because when you can let go of this idea that everyone is a sinner, you can realize that people are actually amazing.
Matthew Lovegood:
The more experiences I had with people outside of church contexts and Christian contexts, the more the body learns that I’m gonna be able to find community And it doesn’t have to be centered around, you know, the body and blood of a man who died 2000 years ago, like we can actually have real authentic relationship outside of that.
Mary Steffenhagen:
For Matthew, Tik Tok has been one space to start creating those new relationships. And it’s helping him re-examine what community looks like.
Matthew Lovegood:
I don’t know, like, what is the drag show, if not a place to come share some communion, gather around a figurehead or two. There’s a way that you’re paying attention to your soul or your spirit in that space as well. Drawing like inspiration and empowerment from what’s happening either on stage or just just around you in the space around you. You’re there to connect around the shared experience with other humans to create memories to make friends. I think we do need those spaces as humans, and you don’t have to find it in a pew on a Sunday morning. I think that in the absence of those physical places, I mean, people are going to gather somehow, right? I really do think Tik Tok is just like this, it’s the same kind of virtual extension that it is for any other kind of community.
Mary Steffenhagen:
I’d actually been avoiding Tik Tok for all of last year. I just thought it was a silly app. But I came across Flamy Grant when someone shared that first video, actually on Reddit a few months ago. And then I started seeing all these other exvangelicals. And it clicked for me. Like sure, Tik Tok, like all social media, can be a time suck. Iit can be vapid. It can be toxic. But watching these exvangelical Tik Toks, the serious ones and the silly ones, it does make me feel relieved. That I’m not crazy for still needing to process what I’m still holding on to from church.
[Ambient synth tones fade in with a uplifting tone]
Mary Steffenhagen:
And that I’m not alone in this process.
Matthew Lovegood:
For anyone who has questions, and has experiences that just don’t add up, if I’m right there, if I’m Flamy Grant and you can find me through these hashtags that are related, then then it’s just that much closer to the the kid who’s coming out heartbroken and bruised and hurt. And they’re getting a message that they’re their body is good and that their their intuition is good. And that means that they are loved unconditionally without restriction around who they are, who they love, how they identify all of those questions.
Mary Steffenhagen:
For Matthew, being Flamy Grant, preaching these 60 second drag sermons, it’s a way of reclaiming these terms and these practices that did so much harm to him and to others. It’s a way of reclaiming himself.
[Ambient synth notes remains mellow]
Flamy Grant [Tik Tok audio]:
I started out a sinner. Growing up in church, no doctrine was more indispensable than the one that says sinners all are we you were born, broken, damaged, fallen and unworthy. But here’s the bit they like to forget: the first word spoken over you was never sinner. Genesis 1:31, “God saw all that he had made and it was very good.” When we see a newborn, we don’t call that baby a sinner. We call them precious, perfect, beautiful. Because we know that the first words we speak over our life, are a prophecy. Baby, it may have been a while since you heard a good prophecy. So if you’ll let me, I’ll speak one over you right now. You are very good. Your desires are good, and your heart is trustworthy. Baby, it’s all good.
[Ambient synth notes crescendo to a beat then fade out]
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