YouTube star Christina Randall talks prison religion (2023)

LAKELAND, Fla. - In one of her most viewed videos on YouTube, Christina Randallcount the indignationbeing stripped naked and having to show her nether orifices to please a threatening prison guard.

“Because they want you to open up enough so they can see your fucking throat through your ass, okay?” she says.

The video has nearly 1.3 million views. That's higher than the average for Randall's channel, which has over 450,000 subscribers. It became her main source of income and led to her television debut on the competitive series Bravo.spy games, which premiered on January 20.

Randall, 35, doesn't know why his videos started in March 2019, just over a year after he started posting on the site. She performed with the same quirks and intimacy the entire time. Maybe it was something in the algorithm, he said. Her stories seem to resonate with many young women.

At the end of the video, after describing in sometimes drastic detail several other uncomfortable prison experiences, he mentions the one that changed his life. It was an unlikely discovery of faith, considering she held such a negative view of religion in prison during the time she was charged with assault, robbery and escape. I used to see other women going to church and I didn't think it was authentic.

"You didn't try to take Jesus to the streets or you wouldn't be here," he said of his attitude at the time. "Now everybody wants to go to jail and be pious like bible-beaters?"

Still, it was on a visit to a prison facility popular with inmates for the food and drink it brings that Randall had a raw transformative experience.

a stolen childhood

Randall was 1 year old when his mother, an exotic dancer who didn't have custody of her, took her from Florida and fled to Mexico with a man involved in the drug trade. The things he did over the next 17 months were serious enough to burn the memories into their young minds. The physical scars are still visible.

Randall remembers turning on the stove and placing the back of his hands on the boiling surface and pressing down on them with the plunger. He forced her to watch him have sex with her mother, which she shouldn't call rape. Randall hopes so, he says, because it would be worse if his mother willingly participated in what he saw.

She was placed in a bathroom, which gave her a sense of security as the door could be locked. Still, she was the scene of more abuse. The man grabbed her feet and plunged her head into the toilet. One day he burst through the door and began kicking her repeatedly in the head, slamming her against the wall and sinking until blood was splattered everywhere. Her mother showed up, threw Randall over her shoulder and rushed her to a hospital. There, Randall remembers a nurse blowing on a plastic glove and inflating her fingers to distract her while the back of her head was being sewn up.

Her mother left her at the hospital. she was 3 years old

Associates contacted her grandmother in Pensacola, Florida and met. on aVideo about the experience., Randall questions the grandmother about the consequences.

"Terrible," says the grandmother. "I mean, everyone who saw it was shocked. I mean, nobody could believe that someone would burn a 2.5 or 3 year old baby's hands on a stove because that was the kind of punishment."

"A Bad Girl"

Randall's grandmother was the only constant in a chaotic life. Behavioral problems arose early and resulted in her moving from one caregiver to another.

“And when you were a teenager, you were a mean girl,” says her grandmother in a video.

Randall was just a teenager and no stranger to the police force when her run-ins with the law landed her in a juvenile detention center. This first arrest was the result of a fight. Fights with other kids were common as she followed the beaten path of the rebellious teenager, partying with dangerous amounts of alcohol, drugs and all the wrong people.

Randall said he hit rock bottom at age 18. She was drunk at a party in a rough part of town when she got into an argument with two girls that turned physical. After a chaotic exchange of blows, the girls got into a car to leave. Randall, currently without power, he says, jumped into another car and repeatedly rear-ended his vehicle until he pushed it onto the main road.

Her friends were behind her, crying and screaming at her to stop before she killed someone. Randall said he remembers waking up and seeing the rear end "ripped off" from the other car. He fled the scene and went to another house, where he called a friend at the party to find out if anyone had been hurt.

A friend answered the phone. There was a baby in the backseat of the car who ran them over, he said. He was the son of one of the girls and a boy named Jeremy, a schoolmate of Randall's.

The baby was not hurt, but the shock at the information was profound. "I was embarrassed," said Randall. "I carried that guilt around forever because I would never hurt a child."

After another fight a few years later - in which he brandished a glass bottle - he ended up in prison with a three-year sentence. Randall was transferred to Lowell Correctional Institution, Florida's premier facility for women. she was 21 years old

During the first half of her time there, she saw women going to church. He was repulsed by the idea, she said. He looked so dishonest.

A "God Thing"

Few things represented this apparent inauthenticity as much as the clamor for a place on the Kairós list.Kairos International Prison Ministryis a non-denominational Christian group that sends teams of volunteers to prisons for three-day events. Everyone knows each other, talks, sings and loves each other. And they eat.

The food and drinks brought by the volunteers are the main attraction. For people who have spent a decade or more indoors, it's their only chance to experience food outside.

That enthusiasm is the same across all facilities, said Craig Combs, Kairos program coordinator.

To participate, you need to secure a coveted spot on the list. Thirty women in Lowell are selected for each visit. Prisoners can, and many do, give their names. Sometimes Kairos asks facility chaplains to add some names to the list. They ask about people who have some leadership status, some positive and some negative, Combs said. They want to influence people who influence others.

One day, Randall was sitting in her bunk when she heard a noise in the living room, an indoor play area. He looked over and saw that the room was full of women trying to push each other. She thought it would be a struggle. Someone told him that the form was sent out to people who wanted to submit their names for the Kairos lottery. The names were soon scribbled on every blank space on the paper except Randall's.

"I didn't care what they ate. If I had to be therechurchall day, it's the last thing I want to do," he said.

A few weeks passed. A woman he knew ran up to them, looking excited. The Kairos list was available, the woman said, and Randall's name was on it. It can't be, said Randall. A few more people came and told him the same thing.

"Eventually I went to check, and the last name on the list was my name," he said.

He continued to resist the idea as the date approached, until he fell out with a friend in his unit. Another friend encouraged her to go to Kairos, if only as a break from the drama. Randall relented.

On the first day of the event, after she and the others had registered, the prison chapel doors opened and a line of women formed. They smiled, held out their arms and walked over to the inmates, hugging each other in the middle of the group.

It was the first time Randall had been hugged by someone who wasn't trying to get something out of her, she said. I suspected this might be the case for at least a few other women as well.

Then the food came out. Randall started eating and kept eating. They all did. Pizza, cookies, sodas - it kept coming and they kept eating. Volunteers watched without an ounce of judgment, Randall said. They passed and seemed happy about it. Randall was surprised.

"I judged these ladies," he said. "I've been trying to find something wrong with them so I can make it all make sense as to what they want."

One of them sat next to him and they started talking. The woman looked so nice, Randall thought. I envied everything he had done. Later, everyone went to another part of the chapel where everyone started to sing and applaud. Randall did not interfere. He sat looking around and judging everyone.

"And I felt these tears well up in my eyes and I thought, oh, fuck no. I don't know what this is. I didn't even cry when I was sentenced to prison. I'm not... what's going on?" she said.

He closed his eyes to try and stop it. Tears grew stronger and streamed down his face. She continued to struggle, but soon she was hyperventilating, caught in a tsunami of emotions as her mind raced to try and regain control.

"And I was literally like, please God, don't let anyone touch me," she said. As soon as the thought came, she felt a hand touch her back. "As crazy as it sounds, I felt a shock go through me."

Randall still didn't want that, he said, but more hands started rubbing his back. He avoided eye contact with anyone. When the chant ended, everyone returned to the first area and she went to the bathroom to recover.

Every Kairós event has a theme, and that was "Faith is as big as a mustard seed", a phrase I heard all day long.

“I thought, 'God, if you're real and you're saying all I need is faith the size of a mustard seed, you've got to show me why that's all I have: faith the size of a mustard seed. .' 🇧🇷

After joining the group at a table, she continued to cry. She felt as if all the emotions she had suppressed in her life up until now were gushing out, she said. By the end of the day, she was exhausted but felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Returning to her bunk, he picked up the packet of Newports she had left there and handed them out.

After the conclusion of the Kairós event, he began to attend all the services that took place during the week. She doesn't know anyone in the organization, but she hopes they realize the importance of her work. He never found out how her name got on the list.

"It was a godsend, that's all I can think about," Randall said.

Kairos volunteers receive about 35 hours of training before attending an event, Combs said. It's about telling them what to expect: being amazed at how much they have in common with people in prison and how much they'll enjoy the experience. They are told to be themselves and to avoid intervening too much; Allow inmates to process things together when emotions arise.

Intense expressions of emotion are common, Combs said. The simple act of listening to traumatized and distressed people is a powerful icebreaker. "That doesn't really happen in prison," he said. "Nobody cares what they say or do."

transformation stages

Alex Launius, 34, was held at the same facility. She often saw Randall walking around and was intimidated by her, she said. One day, Launius was on the phone with a detective when Randall approached him.

“Hey Lexi, you gave your life to the Lord, right?” Randall said.

Launius thought Randall was making fun of her. She replied yes. That conversation was the beginning of a great friendship. They worked together in the chapel and studied the scriptures. True friendships are hard to find in prison, Launius said. "It was a really sweet moment."

Randall had read the Bible before, but "it was like trying to read Chinese." He was beginning to understand, she said. One verse was especially true: Ezekiel 36:26.

I will give you a new heart; I will put a new spirit in you; I will take your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. - Ezekiel 36:26.

Those words described the transformation Randall felt. His hardness was replaced by a tenderness that continued to expand. She always said what she wanted and called him straight and honest, "but really I was just being rude and inconsiderate," she said. Thought of her now spun on its own axis; He cared about what he said and how he treated people.

Randall was released after 31 months in prison. She went to a women's shelter and kept going to church. As she delved deeper into religion, her newfound confidence leaned toward self. The church people she looked up to judge other people and their actions, so she allowed herself to be like that.

One day, while sitting with Launius (they were released within a few weeks of each other), Randall criticized a member of one of his focus groups. Launio intervened.

"I don't want to judge people," he says. "I'm so tired of doing this. I'm so tired of judging everyone. I just want to love people. That's all I want to do."

It hit Randall "like a ton of bricks," he said. It was another defining moment. After that it got even smoother.

After that, Randall bounced around, working several menial jobs at once, becoming disheartened by his career prospects as they were limited by his criminal record. She wanted to be a social worker, but that seemed unattainable. Who would let a convicted violent criminal near children or vulnerable people?

On the way, she received a friend request from Jeremy, the man whose one-year-old son was in the backseat of the car that hit her. She accepted nervously and they struck up a conversation. She told him that she was the one who hit the car. He knew that, she told her. He was most angry with the boy's mother for having him with her in such a place.

They kept in touch and got to know each other better. They finally got married. Randall ended up helping Jeremy raise their son, who is now in college. They had another child together.

Randall thought YouTube was silly when he saw his oldest son watching videos of things like kids unboxing new toys. Still, she thought her experiences might reach someone who could learn from them, so she created an account and started posting.

When its ratings peaked a year later, it was as if "God had just opened the floodgates of love." People who watch and comment on her videos are more than just fans, she said. She feels spiritually connected to them. People of other faiths share how they relate to her faith journey. That level of attention is still overwhelming for someone who isn't used to people caring about what they have to say, Randall said.

"You can curse me, you can mistreat me and in a really weird way, that's my comfort zone because I've been through so much of my life," he said. "But when I get love from people, it's such a strange feeling in my life that it makes me really emotional."

Her transformation continues to impact those who know her, on YouTube and in life.

"She's one of the most grateful people I've ever met," Launius said. "It's great to have someone like him who always sees the bright side of things and is always happy to be alive."

Micah Danney is a member of Poynter Koch and an associate reporter and editor for Religion Unplugged.