Father Nathan Monk is a former Orthodox priest, social activist, and best-selling author, known for challenging corruption, advocating for the unhoused, and exposing the darker corners of American fundamentalism.

Raised in a deeply conservative religious environment, Monk became nationally recognized when he left the priesthood to speak out against abusive church structures and to build grassroots support networks for families in crisis.

He's the founder of several nonprofit initiatives focused on housing insecurity and LGBTQ plus youth and his books blend memoir, theology, and sharp social commentary.

Today he's the sought after speaker whose frank storytelling, compassion, and willingness to

confront power make him one of the most provocative voices in modern faith-based activism.

And I had the pleasure of meeting Father Nathan Monk at the recent protests in D.C.

organized by Cliff Cash and other influencers, which hopefully we will have several more.

And I realize that many of my followers do not know who he is and his powerful story about challenging the abusive structures in the church. So today,

we're talking to Father Nathan Monk on flipping tables.

Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. This is a blast. This is going to be awesome.

And I also didn't realize that you lived so close to me until we were at the protest.

Yeah. So that's actually really fun. I have moved away from Nashville as a teenager because a lot of

the stuff that I went through early on with my own experiences with homelessness and etc.

It was here in the Nashville metro area.

So I sort of escaped here and had zero ambitions of ever getting involved in the entertainment industry or anything like that because that's what I had grown up around.

And so, you know, that's been a really weird, bizarre, full circle moment for me.

When did you move back?

I moved back to Tennessee about five years ago and moved back to the Nashville area about a year ago.

Okay. Awesome. And I know, I know your story. I've read your work. I followed you on Substack for a very long time. But so I would love to just give people your story to start with. So how did you like, I would love to talk about your childhood and what led you originally to the priesthood. So that's one of the weird things about this adventure for me is I grew up in a very conservative house. My parents are from

the south. My dad was a minister of music and was involved in the early contemporary Christian music

scene in the 70s. And so by the time I came along in the early 80s, dad decided, you know, everyone else was making their way to Nashville, which was originally just the country music mecca.

And then, you know, contemporary Christian music was starting to take over.

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