On Friday, podcaster, comedian, and influencer Russell Brand announced he was “taking the plunge.” Since Brand was describing that he planned to be baptized on Sunday, it is more taking the dunk than the plunge. Tomatoe, Tomata. 

With more than a grain of snark, UnHerd called it a “rebrand.”

Russell Brand is taking the plunge (literally) into Christianity, marking the latest step in his transformation from raunchy actor and comedian to public intellectual to, as of this Sunday, baptised Christian.

He took to X on Friday to ask his followers what baptism had been like for them, and what he can expect from the experience.

The English actor, previously named the Sun’s 2008 Shagger of the Year, announced last month on X that he had visited various churches and was considering a baptism, joining a growing cohort of cultural and political commentators converting or returning to Christianity. Days earlier, conservative firebrand Candace Owens announced her own Catholic conversion, while Ayaan Hirsi Ali shared her conversion to Christianity in these pages in November. Will his latest rebrand stick? 

Cynicism is expected from the secular entertainment industry, which has recorded his every move since before his infamous marriage to singer Katy Perry all the way to the sexual assault allegations lodged against him in 2023. This transition from atheism to agnosticism to mysticism to the Christian faith has also not been instantaneous. Brand’s biggest progression toward an actual Christian faith could be documented in December of last year, when he talked about reading the Bible, C.S. Lewis’ “The Problem with Pain,” and Lao Tzu’s “Tao The Ching.” Then in February, Brand talked about the meaning of the Lenten Season and talked about what he was sacrificing for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Now, it appears Brand has taken the ultimate step that proclaims to the world that one belongs to Christ, and the act Jesus himself took in order to “fulfill all righteousness.” 

WATCH:

Baptism. This Sunday I’m taking the plunge! How was it for you? pic.twitter.com/DnwcUrzoqa

— Russell Brand (@rustyrockets) April 26, 2024

This Sunday, I’m taking the plunge. I’m getting baptized. At the moment I’m very curious as to what you who have been baptized feel about it. What your expectations are of the event prior, and what it’s actually like. What’s been explained to me is it’s an opportunity to die and be reborn, an opportunity to leave the past behind and be reborn in Christ’s name like it says in Galatians, that you can live as an enlightened and awakened person. 

Sometimes I think of non-Christian’s perspective on it, like Marcus Aurelius saying you are already dead, now live the rest of your life properly. Or the Buddhist saying, “Put down the corpse.” All of these things seem so inviting, and beautiful. 

While many, like Jon Gabriel, Robby Starbuck, and our own Brandon Morse, welcomed him into the family of God, wished him well, and shared their own baptism stories (as Brand requested), others decided it was their time to play armchair theologians and keepers of the law.

Being baptised is something to take extremely seriously. This can not be a fad. This can not be something you’re doing for clout or clicks. If you do this, you must give your entire life to it, and understand the responsibilities that come with chosing this path.

We will never…

— Bo (@KingBobIIV) April 26, 2024

The Apostle Peter, who had his own journey of failure to forgiveness to redemption preached to an entire crowd on the Day of Pentecost, and 3,000 were saved as a result. In the Book of Acts, Peter commanded the people listening to his sermon do two things: 1. Repent; 2. Be Baptized.

Acts 2:37-39

Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

Brand even spoke to this cynicism toward the news of many converting to Christianity, his own journey toward belief, and his excitement over taking this pivotal next step. 

I know a lot of people are cynical about the increasing interest in Christianity, and the return to God, but to me it’s obvious. As meaning deteriorates in the modern world, as our value systems and institutions crumble, all of us become increasingly aware that there is this eerily familiar awakening and beckoning figure that we’ve all known all our lives within us and around us. And for me it’s very exciting. One of my concerns is that I’m thinking about doing it in the River Thames so I could be getting baptized in toxo-plasmosis and e-coli based on what I’ve learned. So, I may be leaving behind the sins but picking up some pretty serious viruses. Let me know what you guys think about it, and how you feel about it.

Christians should be rejoicing that our faith is reaching and affecting even those who seemingly have it all and appear to have no need of a Savior. As Jesus said of the rich young ruler, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!” Of course, in our lack of understanding of the depth and power of God’s redemption, we trade “Hard” for “Impossible.” Jesus was quick to correct this assumption among his disciples, “With man this is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.”

But if the armchair contingent on X is any indication, what the Bible says about whosoever will let him come, now has a codicil full of qualifiers. If you’re a sinner who is now professing Jesus Christ, but you just happen to have a huge social media presence, then you are now required to prove your sincerity and show that your life has been truly changed. That’s in the apocryphal text of The Book of X, Chapter 2, verse 4. 

We are truly missing the point, not to mention conflating salvation and sanctification. Salvation is God’s redemptive work, a gift — meaning we have nothing to do except receive it. Sanctification is the process one goes through after conversion, and the starting line for that work is baptism. But many have rewritten the Bible to exclude the redemption of social media influencers, especially in the case of an OnlyFans model named Nala Ray. 

Nala Ray, an Illinois-born pastor’s child turned OnlyFans model, left the adult industry after a come-to-Jesus moment led her to reconnect with her forgotten faith. 

The content creator was working as an orthopedic surgery scheduler before a man recruited her for the online site in 2020, but despite her popularity as a top 1% earner on OnlyFans (OF), a subscription-based adult website, Nala had a change of heart.

“The ones who are glamorizing [this lifestyle] are men trying to run women’s lives and take a percentage out of it, and it’s horrifying. It’s truly horrifying to be a woman and have men take a percentage of you showing your body on the internet. It’s just like having a pimp… It’s truly horrific that it’s being advertised in that manner, but it makes me want to fight all the more to help women understand that this is not where you want to go,” the influencer said.

She cited that her perspective continued to shift after being baptized.

BOOM. Ray confirmed that taking that step puts one squarely on the road to sanctification.

“I can’t even tell you how much my life has changed since then. Everything in my life has just kind of come to this room where I can now observe it and then be like, OK, so I don’t really want to do this anymore. I knew that this isn’t what God wanted me to do with my life,” she said.

After Ray appeared on Michael Knowles Show at The Daily Wire, another young influencer named Hannah Pearl Davis, who gives advice to incels and disses women over 40, decided that Ray’s testimony is suspect and that she is a false prophet looking for a new way to make money off the internet. Sounds like Davis needs to look in the mirror and then go read the Gospel of John, Chapter 8. To Ray’s credit, she responded to Davis’ accusations and articulates well not only what she believes but that Davis could use our prayers.

Nala confronts Pearl and I feel, did so from the Spirit. pic.twitter.com/XAqQW3vOpK

— The Feminist Misogynist (@igarglewithfire) April 24, 2024

Where did Christians get this idea that we have to vet every conversion story, especially ones where the person has had a nefarious past? Isn’t that why Jesus died and was resurrected? I shudder to think what the X-chair set would have done with Saul of Tarsus, Mary of Magdala, or the Woman at the Well. One of Jesus’ parables talks about allowing wheat and weeds to grow together, and at the time of the harvest, it will all be sorted out. One of the things Jesus’ warned was that in the effort to strip out the weeds, you would end up stripping good wheat in the process. How much wheat is being prematurely ripped from good soil because certain Christians feel the need to judge someone’s salvation and their sincerity in proclaiming their faith? This is not our job. 

Speaking of Saul of Tarsus, after his Damascus road experience, Paul starts by preaching the Gospel to the Jews but ultimately begins preaching to the Gentiles, who receive the message with gladness and great joy. Not unlike what Russell Brand said above, first-century Asia was experiencing its own deterioration of meaning, value systems, and institutions, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ was revolutionary stuff. When Paul returned to Jerusalem and told the apostles about all the lives being transformed through his preaching of Jesus Christ and Him Crucified, James, one of the original 12 disciples, had this to say in Acts 15:19-20.

It is my judgment, therefore, that we should not cause trouble for the Gentiles who are turning to God. Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood. 

Wow, so simple. They didn’t have to become Jews in order to experience salvation. They didn’t have to be circumcised or go through a 15-week course or a year’s sabbatical. All they had to do was stay away from idols, sexual perversion, and impure food. These were actions that showed allegiance to a pagan culture, and eschewing them was evidence of shedding one’s old life in order to take on the new life in Christ. But just like the Pharisees of old, these armchair Xers want proof of conversion and 25 steps to sanctification for these new believers. These are man’s standards, not God’s.

As a Christian going on 40 years now, I rejoice with Russell Brand and Nala Ray over their new lives in Christ and their excitement and desire to share. From what they have both said on their platforms, they are not coming to these conclusions by themselves but have strong believers in their lives who are praying for them and discipling them in The Way. If someone has a problem with it, then I would say just leave them alone. The Lord of the Harvest knows how to separate wheat from weeds and will do so at the right time. As Christians, here are five actions that should embody our response to former unbelievers professing faith in Jesus: 

1. Rejoice that they have embraced Jesus as Savior and another soul has been delivered from a burning hell. Heaven and hell are real, and Jesus died and rose again so that all could have entrance to the former.

2. Pray that they find a Bible-believing congregation where they can work out their salvation with fear and trembling, surrounded by believers at different stages of sanctification. If you read through Paul’s letters, which make up the bulk of the New Testament, there were always three types of persons: There were Apolloses (Acts 18), There were Priscillas and Aquilas (Acts 18, 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Timothy 4), and there were Timothys (1 and 2 Timothy). We need these people at every stage of our spiritual journey, and we need to be these people to others.