Proudly on Record

Kate Johnson (she/her) is a writer, poet, and former pastor's daughter who joins us this week to talk about growing up in the PCA (Presbyterian Church in America) during the family values movement, and how a childhood built on obedience, arbitrary rules, and hierarchy shaped her relationship to safety, faith, and her own body.Kate opens up about her father's arrest for child sexual abuse material when she was nine years old, an event the church minimized as a "pornography addiction", and what it was like to live for fifteen years with her family's address on the sex offender registry. She talks candidly about the parentification, isolation, and financial instability that followed, and why she believes the conditions surrounding cases like this one deserve more attention than they get.We also dig into purity culture's failure to teach consent, Kate's experience of a non-consensual first kiss, and how discovering her bisexuality in college became one of the most confusing (and eventually healing) parts of her deconstruction. Kate shares how she found language for her queerness despite growing up homeschooled through a Doug Wilson-influenced curriculum called Classical Conversations, and how genuine friendships with queer people outside her sheltered upbringing shifted everything.From there, we talk grief, estrangement, and reconciliation which includes the personal ritual Kate created on a lakeshore to let go of who her father used to be, her work with Reiki and somatic therapy, and why she firmly believes "forgiveness isn't for the person who harmed you."This is a conversation about surviving a pressure-cooker environment built for abuse, reclaiming a body and identity that evangelicalism tried to own, and slowly learning that you were inherently good the whole time.In this episode:Growing up Presbyterian during the "family values" eraHer father's arrest for CSAM and 15 years on the sex offender registryHow the church reframed abuse as "addiction"Purity culture and her first non-consensual kissDiscovering bisexuality in collegeHomeschooling with Doug Wilson-adjacent curriculum (Classical Conversations)Estrangement, grief rituals, and choosing herself over reconciliationAdvice for anyone deconstructing their faith and identityFind Kate on Substack (Quips and Confessionals) and across all platforms @KateJohnsonWrites.New episodes every Wednesday.

Emily Clede (she/her) is an Emmy-winning, VMA-nominated producer, but before any of that, she was a homeschooled kid on an isolated Kansas farm. Her father worked with James Dobson and Focus on the Family, making anti-gay documentary content that used Emily and her siblings as unwitting participants from the time she was three years old.In this episode, Emily opens up about growing up without the freedom to choose her own clothes, cut her own hair, or express herself creatively, and how she secretly kept drawing and storytelling alive under her bedsheets with a flashlight. She talks about being treated like royalty in church spaces because of her grandfather's status, while having no autonomy behind closed doors. She shares what it took to finally leave, the years of surveillance and stalking that followed her out, and how she rebuilt a life on her own terms.What We Cover:Her father's connection to James Dobson and Focus on the FamilyLife on an isolated Kansas farm turned "pastors' retreat center"Being used as a camera crew at Pride parades (in an anti-gay way) as a young childMeeting Fred Phelps (Westboro Baptist Church) and other prominent evangelical figures growing upThe moment that changed everything: a trip to Old Navy at 16Years of surveillance, stalking, and boundary-setting after leavingBeing the family scapegoat and the cost of staying vs. leavingBuilding a chosen familySubscribe for new episodes every weekFollow us on Instagram @proudlyonrecord for the latest news

Hannah Orsag (she/her) grew up as the eldest daughter of a Methodist preacher in North Georgia, fluent in scripture, leading worship, and doing everything right. But being perfect never actually felt like enough. In this episode, Hannah walks us through her slow-burn deconstruction, from purity culture and a Christian summer camp that literally burned her shorts in a bonfire for being "immodest," to discovering her bisexuality through an unexpected D&D campaign, to building a life and a literary journal (Heimat Review) centered on telling honest, complicated stories.We talk about growing up in a charismatic Methodist church, the difference between performative worship and real connection, purity culture's lasting impact on marriage and intimacy, deconstructing faith through the lens of literature, coming out to unsupportive parents, and finding a queer-affirming Episcopal church as an adult. Hannah also shares some genuinely wild stories from working at a Christian wilderness camp, including gendered camp roles, a Revelation reenactment complete with gallows, and yes, the infamous shorts bonfire.What we cover:Growing up as a preacher's kid in a charismatic Methodist churchPurity culture, modesty rules, and writing letters to a future husbandThe wildest stories from working at a Christian wilderness campDiscovering bisexuality through a D&D character Deconstructing faith through literature and storytellingComing out to unsupportive parents and dealing with bi-erasureFollow Hannah:Heimat Review: heimatreview.comInstagram: @heimatreview (journal) / @scriptandstarlight (personal)New episodes every Monday on YouTube, all other platforms Wednesday.May we never be erased.

Dan Shenk (he/him) grew up the son of Mennonite missionaries in Tanzania, East Africa, spent his teenage years boarding at a mission school, and later found himself ordained as a chaplain working inside Rikers Island and the Virginia State Penitentiary. But it's what happened next that defines his legacy: as a gay man coming into his own identity in 1980s New York City, Dan became one of the co-founders of what is now known as Bailey House, one of the first organizations to offer supportive housing to people living with HIV/AIDS. He also helped establish the Bronx Harlem Needle Exchange Program, now New York Harm Reduction Educators Inc.In this episode, Dan takes us through it all: a childhood split between Tanzania and the USA, the loss of his mother in a plane crash, discovering his sexuality while isolated in a school infirmary, and the years he spent on the ground during the earliest and most devastating days of the AIDS crisis, organizing candlelight vigils, raising money through fish bowls on Christopher Street, and building community in the middle of unimaginable loss.Dan is the author of the memoir Search for a Blessing: A Gay Man's Journey from a Mennonite Missionary Childhood to the Streets of AIDS Activism. If his story resonates with you, we highly recommend picking up a copy.Content warning: this episode includes discussion of sexual assault.Note: We're on a every-other-week summer schedule and will return to weekly episodes in September. YouTube subscribers get episodes first on Mondays, with wide release on all other platforms Wednesdays.If this episode moved you, we'd love it if you left a rating or review, it genuinely helps other people in the deconstruction and ex-evangelical community find us.#religioustrauma #exvangelical #deconstruction #churchtrauma #proudlyonrecord #AIDSactivism #mennonite #queerhistory #chaplain

Proudly On Record sits down with Spencer, who is a non-binary lesbian, YouTuber, and community builder who grew up in a conservative Eastern European country where queerness wasn't visible or discussed.In this episode, they take us through the slow, nonlinear process of understanding their gender identity after immigrating to Canada as a teenager, encountering queer community for the first time, and eventually discovering trans androgyny as the framework that finally made sense.This conversation covers a lot of ground: Spencer's theory that sexuality and gender are more deeply linked than we tend to acknowledge, what it means to be a non-binary lesbian, and why androgyny can exist in femme presentations even when nobody tells us it can.Spencer also shares what it was like to build masculinity-free community spaces and why decentering how others perceive us might be the most important work we can do for our own gender identity.Topics covered:Growing up without queer representationTrans androgyny vs. non-binary identityThe link between sexuality and genderBeing a non-binary lesbianAndrogyny in femme presentationsGender affirming clothing and bindingMicrodosing testosteroneDecentering masculinity and body perception