(RNS) — Months after accepting an award in Miami recognizing her as one in all OnlyFans’ perfect-incomes creators, Nala Ray used to be baptized at Courageous Church, a non-denominational Christian church in Los Angeles, and quit making the whine that she says generated greater than $14 million from 270,000 subscribers.
“I made extra money than most NFL avid gamers,” Ray said. “I will also just like the rest I wished. It’s a truly giant false sense of empowerment.”
Ray, 28, left OnlyFans in 2024. She has since married her husband, Jordan Giordano, a feeble Marine whose Christian faith she credit ranking as instrumental in her have return to church, and the couple just no longer too long ago moved to Nashville, Tennessee.
“God has this detoxing job, the sanctification, and it’s a unheard of thing,” Ray said. “Customarily it hurts, and I’m going by that now.”
A video recording of her baptism on Dec. 26, 2023 generated 8.1 million views on her Instagram. Ray has since rebranded her on-line persona toward faith-focused and standard of living whine, on the whole posting label deals with Bible apps, prayer rings, a vacuum and Magnolia Cinnamon rolls. Her target market, which on Instagram is 1.4 million and on TikTok 730,000, has grown since she introduced she used to be quitting.
“My social media blew up after telling my testimony,” Ray said, the employ of a common evangelical term for the story of one’s conversion, or re-conversion in Ray’s case.
Today, Ray launched the foremost episode of her new podcast, “The Nala Ray Existing,” titled “The Secret I’ve Been Hiding for Years … Until Now.” The podcast, co-hosted by her husband, is supposed to aim conversations about Christian faith as successfully as discussions with OnlyFans creators, every these for the time being within the alternate and these which like left it.
Ray’s on-line presence is very stylized. Her Instagram spirited borrows from the influencer tradition that outlined her OnlyFans occupation and, in so much of systems, shows the cosplay-inspired investigate cross-check she used to be known for on the platform.
Her posts on the whole aim dramatic makeup, frequent hair-shade changes and professional lighting that offers her profile a knowing, nearly appealing appearance. Despite the shift she’s made in her whine, Ray said critics who on a odd foundation condemn OnlyFans models as promiscuous like accused her of converting to Christianity as a money-making design.
“That would possibly per chance well be the stupidest thing for me to terminate,” Ray said. “Going from making $300,000 a month to pondering that I would manufacture greater than that being a Christian.”
Joshua Broome, a feeble top-incomes porn neatly-known one who converted to Christianity and later modified into a pastor and anti-porn recommend, even talking about his experiences in 2022 to Tucker Carlson, told RNS that despite the backlash, he feels ‘proud’ of Ray.
“I’m giant proud that she’s willing to invite of us into her existence to put a question to her complex questions,” Broome said. “She desires of us to know in regards to the resolution to the chance that she had, which used to be brokenness, and that resolution wasn’t money or build … the resolution used to be an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ.”
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Ray’s relationship with faith did no longer, nonetheless, commence up in a pool in California. As Ray and her husband prepare to launch a podcast referred to as “The Nala Ray Existing,” the build she plans to focus on Christian formation and invite other OnlyFans models to put a question to what she calls the “laborious questions,” Ray said her route to Christianity used to be no longer linear. Her newfound faith, she said, used to be built upon a strict and unstable non secular upbringing.
Nala Ray. (Photo courtesy of Nala Ray, 2025)
Raised in Illinois in a Baptist household, Ray said she grew up in what she described as a “cage of faith.” Baptized at age 7, she described a childhood characterized by every severe principles and hypocrisy. Her mother closely controlled what Ray used to be allowed to put on, she said, whereas her father struggled with infidelity and at one level left his wife and five kids. Ray requested her household’s names be withheld from the story for privateness reasons.
“I used to be a truly alarmed child attributable to what my fogeys had went by,” Ray said. “I cried on a odd foundation, and I used to be spirited constantly looking out for consideration within the execrable systems, because I used to be very damage internal, and didn’t know that.”
She said faith all the arrangement by her childhood felt imposed in desire to understood. At age 13, after rejoining the household, Ray’s father decided to develop to be a pastor, which had a critical impression on young Ray’s relationship with God. “My dad used to be on stage to be heard — love he used to be on stage to be regarded at,” Ray said. “We would possibly per chance talk to tons of puny Baptist churches in every single plight, and he would spirited stoop preach. He used to be more or less a chameleon.”
In accordance to Ray, her father adjusted his preaching fashion looking on the congregation. In predominantly Dusky churches, she said, he would preach passionately, sweating and waving a handkerchief. In extra conservative white Baptist churches, she said he would “change into,” preaching more conservatively and sporting a buttoned-up swimsuit.
“I used to be so inflamed,” Ray said. “I felt so rebellious, because I knew it used to be faux. Fancy, no longer one little bit of it felt valid.”
Over time, Ray said her household experienced more than one church splits tied to her father’s leadership. After he used to be voted out of three assorted congregations, she said he tried to proceed pastoring by procuring a deteriorating constructing that had once housed a preschool.
“It had so many factors,” Ray said. “There used to be mould within the ceilings. There had been so many rumors. It used to be horrific.” Rumors of theft compelled her father to shut this third and final church, and Ray said her dad began attempting to ranking answers exterior their puny town. When she used to be 17, he be taught Harvest, a e book by Chuck Smith and Tal Brooke about societal outcasts who modified into Baptist pastors.
He later contacted one in all the pastors featured within the e book, who invited Ray’s fogeys to Florida for what he described as non secular therapeutic. After that outing, her fogeys decided to relocate and, in 2015, moved to Florida — a advise Ray said she “hated” — the build they attended two assorted churches.
Ray used to be 17 on the time and said now the timeline is “a blur,” nonetheless that she used to be silent residing in Florida when she started OnlyFans in 2020. That year, Ray said a manager from an OnlyFans agency, referred to as Creator Inc., scouted her by Instagram whereas she used to be working as a secretary at a surgeon’s plight of job. After she created her legend, Ray said the money started coming in snappy. She moved to Los Angeles a year later.
“I most standard the money that OnlyFans gave me,” she said. “I didn’t love OnlyFans, nonetheless I most standard feeling empowered, this false sense of empowerment that I made extra money than any men I dated.”
In accordance to Ray, her manager from Creator Inc. took 40 p.c of her month-to-month earnings in exchange for offering filming models, other models and alcohol for long, every so steadily weeklong retreats or shoots. Ray said she “modified outfits constantly,” on the whole “blacked out from excessive provocative” and labored all day.
“I never drank except I used to be at a whine condominium,” Ray said. “They’ll put you in rooms with ladies with sex toys and cameras in every single plight. My manager would put me on each person’s schedules because they wanted them to be on my OnlyFans.”
At some level of this time, Ray said she leaned into a contrivance of riot. “I positively wasn’t an atheist,” she said. “I used to be very conscious that God used to be right, nonetheless my past used to be so hurtful that it gave me an excuse to flip away from him.”
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In Los Angeles and because the COVID-19 pandemic began forcing each person indoors, Ray immediate modified into one in all her administration firm’s top-incomes models. She obtained filthy rich immediate, she said, nonetheless the emotional toll used to be critical. Despite residing in a luxury home with a heated pool, Ray said she felt an increasing number of isolated. Significant relationships had been complex, relationship felt very no longer going and loneliness modified into constant.
“You’re entirely chums with folks that adore your sin,” she said.
Within the assist of her mind, she said, she knew she used to be going to “die a Christian,” nonetheless didn’t know how she’d rep there.
“I did no longer like any moments the build I used to be love, oh, God’s talking to me. Nothing,” Ray said. “It used to be radio quiet, radio quiet.”
Then she met Giordano, her future husband, by TikTok. She chanced on his internet page whereas he used to be streaming live, answering feedback and talking with followers whereas sporting his Marine Corps uniform.
Ray said she used to be first intrigued by his gentle and earnest spirit. When she messaged him, Ray said Giordano did no longer manner her as a fan or commentary on her appearance, which contrasted with what number of other men interacted along with her on-line. “He used to be so friendly,” Ray said. “Fancy, spirited never made passes at me, never said the rest irregular. It wasn’t cringy. He didn’t simp over me.”
In accordance to Ray, Giordano used to be very delivery to talking about God. In these conversations, his optimism and the manner he spoke about his Christian faith felt assorted from her experiences rising up.
“Rising up, it used to be all compelled,” Ray said. “After which with Jordan, it came so naturally. It’s love it came factual out of his heart, you know. It used to be spirited so beautiful.”
“He used to be of course totally ecstatic,” Ray said. “And I wished that.”
After months of FaceTime conversations — Ray used to be in California and Giordano used to be stationed in Virginia — Ray said their relationship marked the initiating of her return to faith, culminating in her baptism in 2023. Within weeks, she told her administration firm she used to be leaving OnlyFans and started the long job of deleting her legend. Ray married Giordano on March 31, 2024.
Ray said her father protested her decision when she told him she had been saved and used to be quitting OnlyFans. He inspired her to like on the find whine.
“His response to me confirmed that he used to be very drifted from the Lord,” Ray said. “My dad said, ‘it is likely you’ll also silent like on longer. Life is costly. What are you going to terminate now together with your existence?’ Nonetheless it used to be spirited out of pure selfishness because I had been giving him money for two years.”
“I used to be love, God, you’re gonna present,” Ray said. “Fancy, whether or no longer I need to stoop rep a 9 to five, I don’t care. Fancy, God, I am right here to wait on and no longer be served anymore.”
Since leaving OnlyFans, Ray has appeared on a circuit of conservative and faith-oriented media, together with an interview on “The Charlie Kirk Existing” in June 2025 and a February 2025 conversation with On daily foundation Wire host Michael Knowles.
Joshua Broome, left, and Nala Ray, 2d from factual, pose with fellow speakers on the THINQ Summit 2025. (Photo courtesy of Joshua Broome)
One amongst essentially the most most standard videos on Ray’s Instagram — also pinned to the top of her legend — reveals her assembly Kirk at Riverside Metropolis School in California, the build she tells the conservative commentator she used to be a top-incomes OnlyFans model and asks whether or no longer he would improve a nationwide ban on pornography. After Kirk’s dying in September 2025, Ray made a memorial submit with the caption, “He believed in me, he seen that Jesus had undoubtedly received over my heart and that I quit a truly easy standard of living to live for God.”
In October 2025, Ray used to be billed as a keynote speaker, alongside Broome, at THINQ Summit, a Christian media convention. Despite her frequent appearances in conservative Christian spaces, posts criticizing gender-asserting policies and a new Instagram bio calling herself an “activist for Jesus,” Ray is no longer publicly identified with a political rep together and said her focal level is more faith-essentially based mostly than ideological.
Nonetheless, she said she hopes to proceed aligning her public label along with her Christian faith and conversion. “I desire to stoop deeper with my faith,” Ray said. “I desire to talk to of us about Scripture and what I’ve realized on this scuttle and stuff love that.”
With her next podcast project, “The Nala Ray Existing,” Ray said she hopes to create a salvage space for ladies folks focused on on-line sex work to talk overtly and to put a question to candid questions about their experiences within the porn alternate.
“I undoubtedly like this kind of giant heart for ladies,” Ray said. “I desire to like these conversations with so noteworthy adore, no judgment, nonetheless silent put a question to complex questions.”
In December, influencer Camilla Araujo said she intends to quit OnlyFans nonetheless didn’t express she used to be turning into a Christian. Ray posted a response video congratulating her.
“I judge that 2026 desires to elevate in arrangement less detest than 2024 and 2025 did,” Ray said within the video. “You make no longer like any notion what she’s viewed, what she’s heard, what she’s been put by … This year, let’s strive one thing new. Let’s stop judging other of us for the sins that they’ve committed, and let’s commence focusing on the sins that we’re steadily committing.”
Heidi Cooper is an ordained minister and recovery specialist at Covenant Eyes, a Christian accountability and improve organization that offers instrument, resources and counseling to abet of us combating pornography utilization. Cooper said she sees Ray’s story to boot-known in serving to Christian ladies folks glance their relationship to every producing and provocative pornography. “The visibility of stories love Nala’s matters,” Cooper said. “When of us talk overtly about disgrace, dependancy or be apologetic about, it helps others take into consideration they don’t like to just like the build they’re.”
The past year has brought private loss for Ray. In October, her father used to be sentenced to twenty years in penal complex in Florida after being found out responsible of assault and battery for domestic abuse in opposition to Ray’s mother. Ray is now no longer appealing with him. She’s going to seemingly be grieving the loss of her brother, who died by suicide this past July. She said she is leaning on God greater than ever, and her renewed faith permits her to gaze annoying experiences in her existence no longer as punishment nonetheless non secular formation, a level of view she said she hopes others can ranking, too.
“I judge God offers us a risk to originate one thing that’s special by suffering … patience, kindness, gentleness, peace,” Ray said. “If we’re God’s creation and we had been made in his image, what a unheard of thing to undoubtedly feel.”
