These faith podcasts for LGBTQ listeners have exploded during the pandemic
Melissa Weisz and Pelayo Alvarez, hosts of The Forbidden Apple podcast, sit together on a couch in New York City. Photo courtesy of The Forbidden Apple.
Melissa Weisz and Pelayo Alvarez interviewed comedian Leah Forster about having a show canceled in a kosher restaurant because of her sexuality in their podcast The Forbidden Apple. Daniel Franzese and Azariah Southworth reflected on their experience of being in conversion therapy in their podcast Yass, Jesus!. These conversations are common in many podcasts—but not in some places of worship their audiences attend.
Each week, thousands tune in and listen to Weisz, Alvarez, Franzese and Southworth speak with LGBTQ people from various faith backgrounds about the intersections of gender, sexuality and religion. While some of their audiences identify as religious, many are among the young adults around the world that are less likely to be religiously affiliated.
Their shows are dedicated to helping LGBTQ people connect and grow their relationship with God. While both podcasts believe LGBTQ people have a place in their faith communities, each episode is guided by a discussion that is informed by the guest’s religious background and beliefs. This formula appears to have struck a chord: during the coronavirus pandemic, their audiences have grown.
When The Forbidden Apple made their debut a year ago, Weisz and Alvarez averaged 70 listeners a month. Their audience steadily grew until March, when their monthly listeners began to double. Today, the podcast averages 5,000 monthly listeners and has appeared at the top of "Religion and Spirituality" podcast charts in countries like Russia, New Zealand, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Norway and the United States.
“I started The Forbidden Apple with Melissa in order to find why it was so important to my parents to take me to church every Sunday and to find meaning and have a connection with God, heaven and the Bible’s miracles,” said Alvarez, who grew up in the Catholic Church in Spain. “I found a lot of pleasure in connecting with people and creating community.”
Alvarez met Weisz, who grew up in Brooklyn’s Hasidic community but left before coming out as queer, at a party. The two first bonded over their queerness and later over what it was like to grow up religious.
“I felt very alone in the world,” said Weisz. “I feel like in the queer community, we do not often talk about our spiritual life. And we thought we would create a podcast to explore and ask other people coming from different religious and spiritual backgrounds who are finding meaning in religion in so many different ways.”
The Forbidden Apple is dedicated to having these conversations because they want to show there is not just one way LGBTQ people can practice religion.
“A common thread with our guests is that they have been told they are not enough—they’re not enough Jewish or Black or queer. And our objective is to try to abolish that. We're going to love you and your story, whatever they are,” said Alvarez.
Recently, the hosts have spoken to a young woman who, after listening to their podcast, talked to their Christian mother about being queer and feeling less shame. Another listener, a Jewish man who became religious again, is now celibate. These types of conversations have taught them the importance of having conversations when they naturally come up.
“I wasn’t speaking up on queer issues outside of my personal life,” said Weisz. “Doing this podcast was a reminder of the need to have conversations as they come. So some of the things that are happening on our podcast now are with the Black Lives Matter movement and talking about racial tensions in our community.”
For Franzese and Southworth, who both grew up in Pentecostal homes, talking about religion with other LGBTQ people was something they felt a pull towards.
“We’re conversion therapy survivors who still believe,” said Franzese. “Both of us always felt compelled to continue spreading the word of Christianity to LGBTQ people. We began hanging out and ended up having these deep conversations about God and thought that it was important that other people were able to hear what we had to say because they were messages that we were lacking when we were struggling.”
Yass, Jesus! released their first episode in April and doesn’t have hard numbers on how the pandemic has affected their audience growth, but says more listeners join each week. He often receives new messages from people who have been moved by the podcast.
“We wanted to create something that for others who are going through it or still coming out of it deconstructing for them to have a resource, where it's just not apologetic or all about theology-- a place where they can just relax, laugh and connect with others who have also gone through it,” said Southworth.
Religious podcasts are nothing new, but The Forbidden Apple and Yass, Jesus! regularly invite familiar LGBTQ voices on their shows, including actor Jonathan Bennett, singer Mary Lambert, and author Garrard Conley.
“Podcasts are one of those formats that gets to reach people where they are, and it feels personal. It feels like they're in a relationship with your coach who is kind of on the same path of learning and understanding and faith development that their listeners are,” said Evangelical Lutheran Deacon Ross Murray. “So instead of feeling like they're reading a book or hearing a sermon that sounds like it's directed at them, it’s much more like it's in conversation with someone who's probably in a very similar space.”
Franzese and Southworth don’t claim to be teachers or preachers. They're trying to figure out and investigate the tensions between religion and the LGBTQ community themselves. They do know one thing: that God loves everyone.
“At some point, every LGBTQ person who grew up Christian has to decide between gay and God, or is told that they have to decide,” said Franzese. “And I think that’s a lie. There's nobody that can tell a queer person that God doesn't love them, and I think that once they hear that, that's such an opening for them to be able to be accepted and feel God’s love.”
Nick Fiorellini is a freelance writer from the Philadelphia area. You can find his work in The Guardian, The Philadelphia Citizen, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Teen Vogue, and more. You can find him on Twitter at @NickFiorellini.