Hi, I’m Chrissy.

I’m many things: an academic turned writer, speaker, and social justice advocate; an exvangelical atheist who embraces pluralism, rejects antitheism, and finds absolute certainty off-putting; the holder of a PhD in modern Russian history from Stanford University (earned under my deadname); a transgender woman; the recipient of the Freedom From Religion Foundation’s 2025 Freethought Heroine Award; and the co-editor (with Lauren O’Neal) of the essay anthology Empty the Pews: Stories of Leaving the Church. You can find my writing at The Flytrap, a worker-owned publication that features fresh reporting on culture, politics, and current events. I also write for Religion Dispatches.

I’m deeply disturbed by the rise of the fascist Trump regime, backed (unsurprisingly) primarily by white Christians–especially the kind of right-wing, Christian nationalist evangelicals that I grew up as. Having grown up this way, I am well versed on the Christian Right from both lived experience and the subsequent study I’ve done to understand and contextualize where I come from. My writings and the topics I speak about include American politics, foreign policy, Russia specifically, religion, secularism, queer experience, and the intersections of these things. I’d love to address your organization, and I offer a sliding scale to make my speaking fee affordable for smaller orgs whose values I share.