I’m Flamy Grant.
And I’m fabulous. Hi, heathens—it’s me, Matthew Blake, now with more makeup! I started this podcast in 2017 long before I had ever applied a fake lash or padded my ass. Now I’m a big, beautiful drag queen and I felt like it was time to introduce my Heathen family to Flamy.
Here’s a fun drinking game for the next time you binge a few episodes of Heathen. Take a drink for every time I mention Amy Grant. Take a shot for every time I sing a lyric from one of her songs.
I’ve always been a late bloomer. I didn’t come out until I was 28, clung to virginity until 31, and waited until I was 37 before I dressed in drag for the first time. One night while my husband and I were watching RuPaul’s Drag Race, we started inventing drag names for ourselves. As a lifelong lover of Amy Grant who wore out at least 3 different Heart in Motion cassette tapes in middle school, it didn’t take long to land on my name.
Before I became a gorgeous godless heathen drag artist, I was a practicing fundamentalist evangelical (Plymouth Brethren, for the fans) born and raised in the mountains of western North Carolina. I was the golden boy, the kind of kid who won sword drills at church, memorized Second Timothy by heart, competed in regional Bible trivia championships, and was elected student body chaplain by his Christian high school classmates.
At the Christian college I attended, I was a member of the campus drama ministry team (hey-oh DawnTreaders!) and I co-led “Devos,” the biweekly informal worship gathering held in our dorm lobby where the real Christians could praise Jesus and also judge anyone who was trying to get back to their dorm room without joining in a rousing chorus of “Better Is One Day.”
I spent my twenties as a church planter and worship leader, deeply codependent, way in the closet, repressed, depressed, and, naturally, absolutely overflowing with the joy of the Lord. I desperately wanted to belong, but the only community I’d ever known was full of conditions for belonging. I became a master of fitting into Christianity, and I was convinced if I just believed enough, prayed more, and obeyed the Bible (and, more to the point, all of the people interpreting the Bible for me), I would find true belonging in the family of believers and overcome the “sins” that plagued me.
My deconstruction story, my liberation story, is contained in the conversations of this podcast, but the very short version is: becoming a Heathen saved me.
I’m an apostate, a heretic, a heathen—and I’ve never felt more whole. I adore what this podcast and the community it’s created have given me: the opportunity to explore things that were always forbidden with people I probably would have avoided, prayed for, or gossiped about in my evangelical life. I’m enthralled with learning what people believe, how they practice spirituality, and how they find wholeness in heathen spaces. I just want to soak it all in, from past life regressions to cognitive behavioral therapy to the exploration of sexual ethics.
Heathen is how I share the unexpected joys I’ve found in my new godless spirituality. It’s how I examine myself, how I become more human and whole, and how I build empathy and connect with others who have felt adrift and alone in their egress from toxic religion. There’s something soul-saving in these conversations, and I hope they are as helpful to you as they have been for me. Thanks for listening.