(RNS) — Years before she donned a rainbow-colored stole and became known as TikTok’s Rev. Karla, Karla Kamstra was a child in Kentucky falling in love with Jesus in her grandmother’s Southern Baptist church.
Now an unequivocally LGBTQ+-affirming interfaith minister, Kamstra is known for offering both sassy critiques of Christian patriarchy and pastoral wisdom to the spiritual but not religious.
After years of viral videos and amassing over 700,000 TikTok followers, Kamstra is releasing a book that outlines her journey from evangelical churchgoer to “unchurched, nonconforming Christian.” In it, she offers an unflinching look at the cost of leaving behind “indoctrinated beliefs” and offers gentle insight for what healing might look like on the other side.
RNS spoke to Kamstra about her forthcoming book, “Deconstructing: Leaving Church, Finding Faith,” releasing Oct. 8. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you come to leave the church and begin your own deconstruction?
In the book, I talk about what I call spiritual breadcrumbs, those little nuggets in my life that led me to the point where I knew I was getting ready to leave. I was raised by a very passionate Southern Baptist grandmother who had me in church on Sundays and throughout the week. Even at 9 years old, I remember being captivated by the minister. My grandmother said I could be whatever I wanted to be, but I couldn’t be that. But I knew innately that I could be, and I also think my grandmother should have been. We come from a long line of Southern Baptist ministers.
That hypocrisy and those inconsistencies followed me no matter what church I was part of. I also experienced it in progressive Christianity, when I was a Presbyterian for a while, and the last church I went to was in the apostolic Pentecostal tradition. In the last one, I came to understand the toxicity of saying you are welcoming everyone, but then gatekeeping what you consider to be a good Christian or what it means to be saved, and requiring people to deny elements of themselves, particularly the LGBTQIA+ community. They could sit in the pews, sing, donate their time and resources, but the church wouldn’t baptize them, officiate their marriages or allow them into leadership. And I couldn’t do it. I started actively leaving the church around 2011 and 2012.
In your experience, what are some of the most common reasons people deconstruct?
I would say probably 95% of my followers, of the 740,000 I have across social media, are women. Women are just weary of the patriarchy. Oftentimes their voice has been silenced. Their talents have been ignored. Their pay has been less. Their worth has been based on what they looked like. They have been mocked as they age, and when you see that on the national stage, the message that women who are no longer of childbearing years have little value, that singes. People are done with that. Social media gives us a place where we can find each other, and opportunities to connect anonymously if it’s not safe for you to tell your story publicly. I get many anonymous emails from people thanking me for what I do but terrified to show their face in public. They didn’t have a name for what they were feeling inside. They just knew that they could not listen to one more sermon that undervalued women.
Recent TikTok posts by Rev. Karla. (Screen grab)
You write that some who deconstruct find themselves reconciling with good elements of Christianity. What has that looked like for you?
Any time you’re on some kind of healing journey, you know that when you can reach back and remember the things that were good, you’ve reached a certain level of healing. Now, for some people the trauma can be so raw and real and cruel that they can’t. But for many of us, we can reach back and say this is when it was good. As an example, this morning, all of a sudden, I just wanted to listen to contemporary Christian music. I wanted to hear Third Day. I wanted to hear Jars of Clay. I wanted to hear some Newsboys. I can remember the things that were good. I can remember the places where my spirituality soared, the times when I wasn’t being manipulated, when I wasn’t having to push back on the hypocrisy I was seeing. It did inform who I am today. I can’t deny that I’m a collection of everything that’s happened to me. I absolutely can claim that as mine, because it was my experience.
When we hear about folks who’ve deconstructed, it’s often in reference to Millennials or Gen-Zers. Can you talk about what it’s been like for you as someone who began deconstructing in your 50s?
Losing your entire spiritual community — that’s hard. I lost my entire contact list. I lost my friends. I lost my inner circles. I lost everything. I don’t think we realize how many people my age and older suffer. I posted something on Facebook when I was in seminary in 2015, and a woman contacted me. She said, I’m 73, and I could never tell my family. I just want you to know I’m watching silently, and your writings are saving my life. But I’m at an age where I don’t know who will take care of me. The support of her family was conditional upon her believing as they did. I hear from so many people like her who say, I can’t say that. You’re my voice. You’re my lifeline. I needed to be seen. They’re women my age, women older. So many people are doing it covertly because they can’t leave. They are often so invested into their family patriarchal structure, religious patriarchal structure, or all of it combined, and they don’t have a road out. The risk is too great. So these online communities become their mental and spiritual well-being.
What advice do you have for those who leave church but still crave community?
I think that’s going to be the challenge for the next decade. In my experience, there are people who say they would rather be lonely than return and risk being exposed to that from which they came or healed from. But I think you’re going to start to see a shift in what community looks like.
We’re watching several states right now suffer under the horrific impact of a hurricane. Society is changing. The weather is changing. I don’t think our society is going to tolerate a building that’s only used a few hours each week and is set aside for the holy. The system is not sustainable. The number of people who are leaving church is putting financial pressure on the church, especially the little neighborhood churches. It’s going to shift priorities. The only way they’re going to survive is to look at new ways to do community. And that means looking at their assets, their property, and asking, what does our community need? And how can we partner with other groups and make it less about just the church, but make it more secular in nature with a spiritual component?
I really do believe that that’s the only way Gen Z and Gen Alpha and the Millennials are going to tolerate supporting organized religion. It’s going to have to look much different. This is the time to transform. The church must have this massive paradigm shift and invite many people to the table to say, our humanity is changing. How can the church be part of it? Doubling down and insisting that it look the way it always has will ensure that people will continue to leave. And when they do, we’ll be out there helping them deconstruct.