April Little — Leaving Evangelical Christianity

Note: This episode was previously recorded in 2024.

In this episode of Jesse's Stories: Unheard Voices, Jessi sits down with April Little — a queer, autistic theologian and podcaster — to discuss her journey leaving a conservative evangelical church, coming out as queer, and navigating an autism diagnosis. April shares powerful excerpts from her memoir-in-progress, breaks down the rise of Christian Nationalism, and advocates for LGBTQ+ and disabled communities. A raw, honest, and eye-opening conversation.

You can find April's Podcast here: Reclaiming the Garden - Podcast - Apple Podcasts

Music By: AJ Music Group

Lyrics By: Jessi Hersey

Artwork By: Zummi

All opinions are our own and not meant to malign any group or institution. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Listening to voices, stories can be strange. It's good to open up to new stories and finding backstories of how people came to be, only to free the mind of what blinds us with only a glance, gives us a chance to see people be who they truly are. From silent voices to shining light. Stories that inspire awareness and change. I welcome you to Jesse Stories, Unheard Voices. So welcome to Jesse Stories, everyone. If you are an LGBTQIA plus member of the community, thank you so much for being here. If you're new to the channel, please like, subscribe, leave a comment below. Today I have the pleasure of interviewing April Little, who was in actually, I'm gonna let her explain the high control group she was in.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

Yeah, I was in a conservative evangelical church for all of my adolescence. So the thing is, like from the outside, they might look like they're more contemporary and maybe like progressive because they have like modern worship music and like they have a cafe in the church, that sort of thing. But underneath the sort of glossy image is a very rigid conservative theology about gender roles, sexuality. You know, they're anti-LGBT. And I actually, you know, since leaving, I sometimes sort of check back in to see what's going on on their website and everything. And it's like they've only gotten more conservative, they're very pro-Trump. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

Yeah, that's like Twin Flames Universe, too. They love Trump also. They also indoctrinate that too. But if you would like to, you can introduce yourself of who you are, what you do.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Yeah, I'm a queer autistic theologian and podcaster. My podcast is Reclaiming the Garden, where me and my friend Anna talk about the intersection of LGBTQ and Christian identity. Because I am still a Christian. I'm just on the more like progressive and open end of it now. I'm part of the United Methodist Church. I'm very passionate about working with youth and creating spaces where LGBTQ plus youth can thrive because I, you know, didn't thrive when I was a teenager. So yeah, I'm I'm working on a memoir about my whole experience of leaving the evangelical church. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:17

Yay. Thank you so much. What is your, well, you just kind of went into that, but what is your full background and your faith?

SPEAKER_00 2:24

My family started attending this non-denominational. They always like typically when you hear a non-denominational church, it tends to be more of like a conservative evangelical with like modern worship music, modern, you know, you don't have to like dress fancy to church, that kind of thing. We started going when I was in sixth grade. And as I was like a rising seventh grader during the summer, people were asking me, like, oh, are you gonna go to church camp? And I was like, Oh, I'm not sure. But then I ended up going. And during the church camp, there's like morning and evening teachings, like, you know, sermons and worship and stuff. And then there's also an hour allotted in the day for you to read your Bible on your own. So that very much sort of kick-started my faith. And I sort of gave my life to Jesus on the very like final night of camp, where you know, the pastor like asked, he's like, Oh, if you want to accept Jesus into your heart, pray this prayer with me. And so that's where you like repent of your sins and accept Jesus as Lord and Savior who like died for you, that sort of theology. And yeah, I was a part of, you know, the very active youth group at that church until I went to college. When I started to realize I was queer in high school, I obviously got like very afraid and confused because I was like, oh, if I'm the good Christian girl, this shouldn't be happening to me. You know, I thought I was like following all the rules, so I couldn't be attracted to women. And so I just sort of repressed those feelings down, very much like started to compartmentalize and disassociate from those emotions, which just up all of my emotional processing. Yeah. And in college, finally, is when like I just thank God that I went to I decided to go to a women's college in Virginia, Hollands University. And that definitely like rocked my world because there were, of course, I mean, I say women's college, but you know, some students there were not identifying as women and use different pronouns. And so that was like that got me confused because of all my evangelical theology about like gender roles and stuff. And that's when I started to question. And then of course, the my first semester of college is when the 2016 election happened, and so I saw my church celebrating Trump's win, and I was like, these are not the values that you taught me, like what's going on? And so that got me to like start to really question. I looked into like LGBTQ affirming theology and sort of came to that position, started to remember like that I had crushed some girls in high school, came to terms with queer identity. Yeah, that's my background.

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Well, thank you. How has your beliefs changed since coming out of the high control group Angelica and Evangelical or some so evangelical, or some people say like evangelical, but yeah. Evangelical evangelical church.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

Yeah. I guess, like I said, I discovered like LGBTQ affirming theology. There's this really great organization called Q Christian Fellowship, which creates community groups for queer Christians and also has a conference each year. I guess a yearly conference will have like just recently happened, and I'm going to be on the podcast stage there. So that's gonna be really fun.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Congrats on that.

SPEAKER_00 5:19

Yeah. And just figuring out like how there are like so many denominations in the Christian church, and I'm like, wow, like with so many denominations, like how can what where I grew up say they got everything right, you know? You know, they don't they don't actually hold the market on truth. And so just looking into like going to various different Protestant churches, like the ELCA, which is like the Progressive Lutheran Church, the Episcopal Church, finally did land, I guess, in the United Methodist Church because a lot of there are some institutional issues with it. I mean, it was only this year that the denomination took anti-LGBTQ language out of its like denominational book, which is called the Book of Discipline, but they did finally at least do that. I mean, but the a lot of progressive United Methodist churches have been like an active rebellion against some of the discriminatory policies. And I've found just great communities there. Definitely deconstructed some purity culture ideas, like realized that I didn't necessarily like have to wait until marriage to have sex. You know, for me right now, I guess I'm just like waiting for the right person and right time, whatever I feel that that is, and definitely just getting more involved in like progressive politics and connecting with communities to try to make the world a better place.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I like that. That is all very good work to be doing and your realization, I guess, of belief. When did you realize you were queer?

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, so I actually, you know what? I might pull up a excerpt of my memoir here to read because I really don't know that I definitely I don't know how we can do that on here though.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Let's see.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Well, I can just read it. I mean, yeah, I'm just pulling it up.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yes, yes, please do share. I hope my computer is able to handle having two things open at once. It was at my freshman homecoming dance. I mostly hung out with friends in my grade at the edge of the gym and had smiling awkward photos taken of us and our dorky dance moves. But at some point I ventured into the center fray of people dancing near the DJ. I pushed into a crowd of seniors and I found a friend among the grinding bodies. Her name was Brenna, not real name, but you know, I had met her in Creative Riding Club. Her red dress was several shades brighter than her dyed hair, and she was swaying up against everyone around her. She smiled at me and gestured for me to come closer, so I did. And right then, looking at her as she swayed, it was as if something in my head had clicked into place, the curves of her body suddenly present, the shine in her eyes, and I knew. I knew something was different, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I felt giddy and my chest got warm, the way I usually felt around my perceived boy, crushes. But since I was having these feelings while looking at a girl, I didn't recognize her as a crush at first. Though I was confused, I smiled back at Brenna and danced with her, letting my gaze go up and down, examining the details of the dress, the puffy skirt, the black tool, and a few places. A few weeks later, as I walked out of a yellow restroom stall to the sink before Creative Writing Club started, the image of me kissing Brennan came to my mind, unbidden, sudden. And that was when my confusion turned into fear and shame. Badly translated verses from my Bible sprang up in my head like wheeze, weeds, along with the voice of my youth pastor saying, dating leads to marriage, and marriage is only between one man and one woman. So, like, I guess that was the initial realization of queerness. And then, of course, after my whole experience of like repressing and literally forgetting those sort of memories, after I sort of theologically was like, it's okay to be queer, then my body, I think, sort of was like, okay, it's okay to bring these memories back again then. And so I sort of I had all these memories and I was like, but I don't know what to do with that. And I told my sister, like August 2017, I was like, I think I had crushes with girls in high school. I don't know what that means. And then it was finally, I had a in my sophomore year of college, I had a crush on a grad student in one of my creative writing classes who also had like dyed red hair. I haven't time. Um, don't worry. And you know, by realizing like that I definitely had feelings for her and I could see myself with a woman like her, I finally, when I was hanging out with a group of my uh friends who from high school who weren't weren't Christians, so like I knew it was safe to tell them. I well, actually, they were like sort of talking about some crushes that they had, boys who who had caught their eye. And then my friend Harley, a non-binary lesbian, they were talking about their girlfriend. And then I was like, you know, what should I say? And should I say that I had a crush on a girl this semester? And so I did, and I was like, okay, I I think I can say that I'm queer. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

That is awesome. I love your story and I love your paragraph. Was that a paragraph that you read? A few paragraphs, yeah. Well, they were really good, very well written.

SPEAKER_00 9:42

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 9:43

Very excited for it to come out whenever it does. What was your journey in recognizing your autistic?

SPEAKER_00 9:48

Yeah, I definitely feel like I didn't talk until like the age of three. I I would usually like sort of grunt and point before that. Like, because like I clearly, yeah, I clearly like understood language. I just wasn't talking yet. And then like sort of I'm looking back on childhood, like I've and and now I have like very bad small motor skills. Okay, yeah, I should say right now I'm talking about deficits. I will get to the strengths, but so I feel like there's always been a kind of feeling that I'm like, I don't think I'm neurotypical. And then specifically when I was studying abroad in Paris in spring of 2018, I definitely got very overwhelmed by like the completely new situation and just everything, you know, in my life being different. And I was like, oh, it's because I'm autistic and I got this social anxiety. And but then my sister sort of was like, Well, you don't have like an official diagnosis, maybe don't use that term solely, which like I I get on one hand, I now think that like um self-diagnosis is okay. But at the time I really hadn't done that much like research or communication with the autistic community. So I sort of like shelved it for a little bit. And then it was in spring of 2022 that they were a Christian at the time, they're not now, but uh writer Chris DL Mayfield has this Substack called, well, at the time it was called God is My Special Interest. Now it's called Healing is My Special Interest. And they wrote wrote about their experience of being someone socialized as a woman who grew up in like conservative evangelicalism. And I realized as they were talking about their experience of realizing their autistic, I was like, oh, like, you know, we focus so much on the boys who like trains and not about the girls who are like are obsessed with religion or God. Um yeah, and I realized I definitely yeah, have like a lot of hyperfixations. I mean, I I graduated in the spring with my master's in theology. You know, I'm a person who can very much focus on a lot of nerdy stuff and definitely have some like sensory issues, sensory processing things. And I also, I mean, I also, yeah, in terms of strengths, like my my passion for things being so intense, I have, I think my joy can be quite contagious. And I enjoy sort of how realizing I'm autistic has got myself to be kinder to myself and trying to like love the way that my mind and body works, and to of course help me advocate for neurodivergent and other disabled people in our society.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

So understandable. I know with me, I did get diagnosis, but I was self-diagnosing for women in general, it's harder to get a diagnosis. Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

I mean, especially like once you're I mean, yeah, once you're an adult, it's very like difficult and expensive. And so I personally have chosen, I don't think I'm going to do that because I think the particular accommodations I need are hopefully things that I can just like communicate with my supervisor. But I know other people, you know, it's like you, you know, just determine whether weigh the pros and cons of what's right for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Well, yeah. And just in general, I was gonna say for women to get a diagnosis because it's based off of a white cis gendered male, that's where most statistics come from. Most of the late diagnoses that are happening today are a lot of females are self-diagnosed, but you also have to be really specific because I was very specific. I made sure I got a female, and actually she was really nice. She gave a big discount. So some people give huge discounts because I don't have any insurance. So there are some ways to still get it cheaper. I think the total was like maybe 325 at most when formally.

SPEAKER_00 13:24

Or wait, I guess it was your just ADHD or autism, or it was everything.

SPEAKER_01 13:29

I tested for ADHD, autism, bipolar depression. I did everything. So I did all of it, and she asked me my background and family, and which my family does have ADHD at least shown, and dyslexia and many other things because autism and ADHD are genetic.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

So if you just Yeah, my my dad has said my dad has said that mental health doesn't like our mental health issues, don't just run in our family, they gallop.

SPEAKER_01 14:01

I like the way you said that. Yeah, I learned after the fact that it's a possibility that both of my parents have it because my sister has at least ADHD. She hasn't formally been diagnosed with autism, but I was. And sometimes you only get one out of two having autism when you have two parents with it or one parent with it. It's always one of or the other parent. I only know this because that's who I work with. I work with children with autism. I work with children with ADHD. I work with children with mental everything who are also everywhere on the spectrum. So I was very familiar with it. So I made sure my psychologist who was doing her intake of me got all the information she needed and knew every step of the way of how I was feeling when we did our six-hour testing thing that comes after the initial family background history and then the telling you afterwards. So it's a long process, it's not short. And the list because there's so many women today trying to get in for autistic assessment in the US really good. But yeah, I thought that was important to bring up because you brought up the self-diagnosis.

SPEAKER_00 15:07

So it is definitely, yes, it's a good thing to self-diagnose because you will probably know just as yeah, just as long as like you're not using the term like lightly the way that some people are like, oh, I'm also so OCD, you know, like you should look into like the community and things, but like, yeah, it's absolutely valid.

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Exactly. And on top of that, autism, at least in females, it doesn't necessarily manifest the same way it does in males. So females, like you gave examples of hyperfixations, can be like for me, it's Pokemon and other things. Everyone has different ones, and for me, at least sensory-wise, I have to have soft. That's why for myself I grabbed that. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Oh, yeah, I had lots of stimming things. Like I'm constantly like moving my fingers and like yeah, this is one of mine.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

But yeah, see, it's good to share in that too, trying to make sure, just like even with my notes to make sure I get everything in here. Okay, what is Christian national nationalism? Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Yeah, Christian nationalism is a belief that America was founded as a Christian nation. And so we need to go back to those beliefs and values and to systematize like Christian belief systems into our government at every level. This belief system is the re one of the main reasons why Trump won the 2024 election. You know, like despite the fact that Trump, at least to me, does not seem to be an actual Christian. You know, like he's had multiple wives and affairs, and he, you know, he can't he's said before that he's never asked God for forgiveness. Like just I can list so much.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

He's married to an immigrant, too. Just keep that in mind as his policy is getting put into place.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

Yeah. And but the thing is that these evangelical, the evangelical voting block, you know, you when you can look at the statistics, I think it was about like 80% or more of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. And, you know, they believe, despite him, despite all the evidence they've been shown, that he'll still advocate for their values and their this Christian nationalist belief system in in the White House. And I mean, in Project 2025, we see that, you know, they we see how they want to take away all reproductive rights, they want to dismantle the Department of Education because they want there to be Christian private schools that get funded. You know, they want to erase trans people from society, they probably want to get rid of like equal marriage. I mean, yeah, they want to like create a theocracy. And so I can probably give you several links to your resources that talk about Christian nationalism. Brad Oniishi and Andrew Whitehead have done a lot of great work researching it. There's sort of different levels of like where people are in the sort of spectrum of Christian nationalism. There are the people sort of at the top who are really the leaders, and there's folks who are more like, what is it? It's people who like aren't necessarily like super fervent, but are sort of like your your average churchgoer in an evangelical church that's sort of like compliant with it, even if they're not like actively in the cause. And oh, there's a YouTube channel called The New Evangelicals that covers a lot of news and events about Christian nationalism. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

New what is it?

SPEAKER_00 18:10

It's called The New Evangelicals. I think when the founder Tim Whitaker created it, I think he, you know, I think now he feels different about using the word evangelicals because now he thinks that it's not necessarily a he was trying to sort of reclaim it. And I don't think it's a word that can really be reclaimed because of all the political baggage. Uh, but yeah, that's the name of the channel. It is, it is not evangelical, even though it's called the new evangelicals.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

Well, it's good for everyone to get educated on it. I've been writing notes on some of the names and everything you've given me. I do that.

SPEAKER_00 18:40

Yeah, it's important to know about it because I mean we're gonna be fighting it the next four years. We're gonna be fighting it really hard.

SPEAKER_01 18:46

And this channel, I'm planning on reaching out to a lot more LGBTQIA, whether they're survivors of a cult or authors. I do have a couple authors already on my channel, just everywhere. I want more voices.

SPEAKER_00 18:58

We need to protect our trans siblings, you know. Like they're I mean, I have a friend who's really worried about their health care.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Like it's terrible. I hate it. It's it's like it's not exactly the same as black and white and way back in the 50s, 60s, I don't know when that was, but for the LGBTQIA, just as for those of color, we haven't had our rights, not fully at least. I think we've only had the equal marriage, which is now gradually getting taken away.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

And also, as you point out, because we've, you know, we both are passionate about like disability rights, a lot equal marriage. There it there isn't necessarily equal marriage for disabled people in the US right now. Like if they're on, if they're on, yeah, if they're on like disability benefits, if they get married, they usually like lose them.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

So and they're getting their health care taken away during well.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

What's interesting, what frustrates me is that I think some people were like, Oh, I hope Trump gets rid of Obamacare, but not the Affordable Care Act. And it's like the same thing. I do think maybe it wasn't the best thing on the Democrats' part to like label it Obamacare, because then like all Republicans are like against it, but it's actually just like the Affordable Care Act, anyway.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

Exactly. It's everyone that is not majority is getting their rights taken away right now in the process of which I hope that Trump gets lazy like he did in 2016 and doesn't do everything.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

I don't know though, because like again, I I hope I'm wrong about this, but like when you look at Project 2025, the sort of document, like the long-ass document, a mandate for leadership. I mean, I haven't, you know, I haven't actually read it. I've read like watched a lot of YouTubers analyze it. And well, they want to get rid of like civil servants who are like, you know, career civil servants who can't be that aren't partisan, you know, in the government. They want to get rid of those people and replace them with like Trumpers. So I'm like, if he does that, then he could maybe get more powerful and like not, you know, like you said, not lazy. But I'm hoping I I would be happy to be wrong about that. But we'll see.

SPEAKER_01 20:57

Well, right now at least Biden has appointed a lot that can potentially block him in the long run of everything. Uh judges. I don't understand fully their role, but I know he's done it in three branches and plus appointed someone to We need we need term limits on the Supreme Court, otherwise, we're really like Yeah. Well, I'm really hoping that. Well, either way, we're in for a big fight, and I know I'm definitely gonna be using my channel more towards the fight, and I will finish up my behind-the-scenes background of Escaping Twin Flames that will get finished eventually. But I do already have trans voices, I have three of them interview-wise, that are on my channel, and I'm trying to highlight their voices more too. That's yeah, I hope to get more trans voices on here too that aren't afraid to speak and have their voice be heard because yes, we can stand with them and be there for them, but ultimately their voice is most important because their voice they speak the truth, they speak their experience. We can only stand by their experience and support them in any way we can. But yeah. Anyway, we're both gonna go off almost. Well you already went on that really the how has I can't even say the word evangelical Christianity deeply impacted politics.

SPEAKER_00 22:16

Yeah yeah I mean like like I said like there's the statistics about how many voted for Trump and like you know so many of like the people in Congress like just just this week you know there was a Republican congresswoman arguing like people of the same biological sex could use like the the rest restroom like only biological women could use the women's restroom and it's because of like trying to protect women but it's actually like rooted in yeah this like evangelical gender ideology that like God creates only men and women and like God doesn't make mistakes there's this trans Christian uh theologian Austin Hartke who has in his book Transforming he talks about like his interpretation of Genesis is not that like God created all these binaries but God created all these spectrums actually like there's you know the diversity in creation is beautiful and we should embrace it. I like that that's pretty good I don't know what to say on that. What inspired you to want to write your memoir well I was a creative writing major in in undergrad and I guess it's yeah starting in high school I got just really into writing stories and then yeah I was in sort of my second and third creative writing classes in undergrad that I did a creative nonfiction exploring writing about my own stories. And after I had written like an essay about my experience of the 2016 election I was like I think I have a memoir in my hands. And so I kept you know writing about my faith deconstruction and especially with some poetry as well and it was I guess end of my junior year that I was like when I was proposing my senior honors thesis I was like I'm gonna write a memoir about my faith deconstruction in college. And so that it ended up being an 171 page honors thesis which is like more than double the minimum required pages but I had you know a lot to write about. And so since then expanding and revising it I'm in conversations with the publisher right now I still need to actually send some sample chapters to continue those conversations but hopefully within the next few years or so because I do want to go through the publisher that I'm talking with. So yay. Congrats on that and the very last question if you would like anyone to follow you anywhere can you look at so I am on Instagram April underscore the writer I just joined Blue Sky.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

I don't know if you've I'm on blue sky too.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

I'm gonna go find you then yeah I'm April dash the writer because they don't allow underscores in their username so April dash the writer there and my podcast reclaim in the garden is at reclaim the garden on Instagram.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

So reclaiming okay and I am gonna also leave links down below for everyone to go and follow you and to stay informed of whenever your memoir comes out and it's reclaiming the garden podcast right well the actual Instagram handle handle is at reclaiming the garden I can provide you the link for like the Spotify and Apple Podcast uh links to my podcast yeah so they can follow you there too perfect all right well thank you so much for this a very educational honestly conversation and hopefully we stay in contact and definitely let's see for those that have stayed for the entire interview if you could like subscribe and share share this video with lots of people help our voices be heard part of the LGBTQIA plus and disabled community since we are both part of both please share it at anyone you know even if they're a friend of me even if they're a Trumper I don't care just share.

SPEAKER_00 25:53

We we honestly need to like we need to show these conservative Christians that are like the ways of Jesus are like not what you're doing right now.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

So no not at all especially over stupid bathrooms but anyway thanks for being here thanks so much for being here everyone uh I hope you enjoyed this episode with many more to come if you'd like to help support and grow the podcast and even the YouTube channel please not only follow like subscribe but please leave a review on Spotify YouTube Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to this podcast thanks so much for being here until next week on Wednesday at 7 a.m Mountain Standard Time Please catch you later