Rev. Gerlyn Henry is an Anglican priest in Scarborough, Ont., where she has spent the past six years doing what she describes as her calling: serving a congregation. But outside her church, Henry has built a very different kind of congregation. More than half a million people follow her on TikTok and Instagram, where she posts near-daily videos about politics and religion, often from a progressive perspective.

Broadview’s recent summer intern, James Adair, spoke with Henry about her experience being an influencer priest.

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JA: If someone has never seen your videos, what should they expect?

GH: For people who don’t really know me, I say I make content about faith and politics and clergy lifestyle, but I think my content is somewhat layered at its core. It tries to demystify church and faith. For so many people today, they look at the church and they see this institution that is very rigid that only a few people with power can fully understand or fully access. I try to demystify that. 

I tell stories. I use a little sarcasm. I share mistakes that I’ve made. I kind of show the behind the scenes of the drama that we see on a Sunday morning.

I’m doing that so that people can see church at what it could be at its best, which is justice and community and love and inclusion, and to also make sense of faith and politics.

JA: The impression I get is that a lot of your audience is secular or they perhaps grew up going to church, but haven’t been in years. Why do you think you’ve attracted such a large secular audience?

GH: I’ve been making content for four and a half years and a lot of the early content was exclusively about church and being a clergy person, and that didn’t have a huge following.

I think for years I was stuck at a 40,000 follower count, but it shifted when Trump came into power a second time. 

A lot of religious people come to content creation with some sort of agenda, a hidden push to convert or to offer a judgment to bring people back into the pew. I try to offer hospitality without the conditions. 

I also offer levity. We live in such a heavy cultural moment where talking about politics and theology can feel heavy. So I use humour and personal storytelling and a little bit of weight to lighten this conversation without flattening it. That strategy is really helpful in breaking down the defensiveness that people have when we come to talk about faith or politics.

The biggest reason why people who are secular follow me is a shared pursuit of justice. People today are hungry for spaces that model systemic dignity and safety and inclusion, and secular people stick around because they see someone who’s in a collar, who is passionate about human rights and mental health and has........

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