Meet Flamy Grant, the drag queen with a chart-topping Christian music album.

BY BAILEY WAYNE HUNDL

Flamy Grant is a “shame-slaying, hip-swaying, singing-songwriting” drag queen from western North Carolina. Her name is a reference to 90s Christian pop star Amy Grant, and her album Bible Belt Baby centers on her journey as a queer person of faith—which, apparently, some people aren’t too happy about.

On July 26, infamous MAGA pastor Sean Feucht angrily tweeted about Grant, lamenting that “these are truly the last days,” and that Christian music from a drag queen was the “end goal” of the progressive Christian movement.

“End goal?” Grant tweeted back. “Baby, we’re just getting started. 😘”

And she meant what she said. Feucht told Grant that “hardly anyone listens or cares what you do,” so she rallied her fans on social media to get her songs on the Christian music charts. And by the next morning, her album had reached No. 1 on iTunes.

As a drag queen/queer Christian myself, I had to sit down with this diva and get into it all: the drama, the trauma, and what she hopes to give any Christian—both queer and the other kind.

Bailey Wayne Hundl: Over the last ten days, you have been in People, Rolling Stone, Billboard—when you put out your album, did you ever envision something like this happening?

Flamy Grant: Not to this degree. You know, I saw what happened with Semler, a good friend of mine, and they’re the first out queer artist to hit number one on the [Christian] iTunes charts. So I knew that it would be a big deal if a drag queen got on the iTunes charts. But I just thought it would be a cool moment of representation. I would’ve been happy with that, but like, my gosh, to have a Rolling Stone article that I can now point to… It’s crazy. It’s massive. 

When you started doing drag and mixing that with Christian music, was that your intention—to get as many eyes on it as possible? 

My intention has been to have a career, so whatever it takes to pay my bills. That’s been my intention. 

And that’s just the first rule of drag. Get your bag.

(laughs) Exactly. Yes. My second purpose and intention is to— I always tell people that I write for queer folks, specifically queer folks who grew up in evangelicalism or other high-demand religions who will resonate to that story of having to unburden yourself of a whole heap of oppression that was dropped on you. And then finding freedom, finding liberation, finding your sparkle.

You’ve been a worship leader in church since high school. What led you to add drag to that?

Well, the pandemic, honestly. I got super into drag in my mid-thirties. I’ve always been a late bloomer at everything because, you know, religious trauma. I mean, I didn’t even come out fully until I was 28. So it took a few more years to really become ingrained in queer culture. So once I fell in love with drag, I was just all about it.

And the pandemic gave me the time. I live [in] this house with some housemates who are also musicians. So we started a livestream, like many artists did during the pandemic, where we would just sing cover songs every Thursday night to, like, 30 people on Facebook. I started showing up to those in drag and really that’s where Flamy developed her chops, if you will.

[One day] my pastor asked me to give the sermon in drag…so I made a TikTok video to practice and gave a little [uplifting message] in 60 seconds while I was painting my face. And I woke up the next morning and it had completely blown up and gone viral. And I was floored at the responses: “This makes me feel so seen.” “It makes me feel so safe.”

And that inspired you to release a Christian album.

First of all, my record feels like a spiritual record, and I come from the evangelical world, so why not call it a Christian record? It’s telling a spiritual journey. It’s speaking to people who are still in the church. It’s speaking to people who have oppressed queer people in the church. That’s the audience that it’s for, really. So it just made sense to put it in the Christian category.

I struggled with that a lot because the word “Christian” is so loaded in America—because it’s been co-opted by evangelicals. I always like to make this point: Evangelicalism is a sect of Christianity. It is not representative of the entire faith. What we understand to be mainstream Christianity in America is not actually, like, historically Christian.

One thing that queer people of faith get asked a lot is, “How do you reconcile these two disparate worlds?” But I’m curious: Why do you continue to reconcile the two worlds?

Well, I mean, first and foremost, I think the main reason is simple: It’s representation. I don’t see anybody else who’s intentionally trying to be a Christian in the [contemporary Christian music] genre, trying to do that as a drag queen in particular.

And then, because I grew up the way I did, I know what it’s like to be a kid who has just nothing to look at that looks or feels like me—to feel like you are such an anomaly and to feel like you are such a broken thing.

So knowing that I can be there, present, especially in such a visible way—because that’s the thing about drag: It’s a very visibly queer art form. You know, we can see a picture of a drag queen, but then if you get to spend 45 minutes with her, listening to her heart…to hear a full record where I’m talking about this stuff…that’s gonna make [an impact].

And a good record, too, if you don’t mind me saying.

Thank you! I don’t mind you saying it at all. You can say it many times. I’m very proud of it.

Last question: If you could get just one thing across to the church, what would that be?

My answer might be a little skewed right now, because the past two weeks I’ve just been inundated and saturated with comments from Christians on the internet who make wild assumptions.

But my encouragement to Christians would be to just listen a little bit. Go listen to three of the songs on my record. And if you don’t wanna engage with me, at least take that posture to queer people in your life. And if you don’t know any queer people in your life: Yes, you do. You just don’t know that they’re queer yet.

Just push pause for just a little bit. I know you feel righteously compelled to speak. You feel educated about it because you’ve read six Bible verses. But there’s a whole life story in each of us that I promise if you really hear—it’s gonna have an impact on you. And it may not change your mind about homosexuality, but it may give you a window into a life that you would otherwise roll your eyes at or type a vomit emoji at.

Just listen as hard as you can for as long as you can. And see what happens.