Christian Nightmares

“It’s like electroshock therapy: Just bombarding myself with these images until they lose their power."

Hi,

Ever since Donald Trump was elected, and then lost, and was then elected again, I’ve finally come to accept that terrible shit just keeps coming back around.

Annoyingly, my work here on Webworm reminds me of this all the time.

Back in 2022, I proudly published that the leaders of New Zealand’s biggest megachurch (brothers Brent and John Cameron) had resigned after a year of me reporting on a web of abuse under their leadership.

A huge win, and I like to think New Zealand was a better place for it.

Then, terrible shit came back around.

In 2024, I reported that John Cameron had been welcomed with open arms by some Australian and American churches.

And this week, here in 2025, I see that his somehow even more buffoonish brother Brent, who chased interns naked down the hallway while singing KISS, has found a new home in an Australian church called Kingdom Hope.

They celebrated with free donuts.

I emailed church leadership for comment on Brent joining their team, asking about what safety nets they had set up around interns and staff.

The church responded by blocking me on all platforms.

(If you want to email them, they’re here: hello@kingdomhope.com.au. Feel free to mention the independent report that spoke to hundreds of interns and further documented the abuse).

None of this is a surprise.

Kingdom Hope could never have afforded John or Brent back in the day. As in — they literally could not have afforded their speaker’s fee which would have been $10,000 minimum, plus business class flights and gifts (iPads, iPhones, clothing, jewelry) on arrival.

But since John and Brent fled New Zealand, they’re desperate and will take anything — even a relatively scrappy church like Kingdom.

Kingdom can now afford Brent, and Brent gets a shot redeeming his reputation, buoyed by a church that gives zero shits about abuse under his leadership, or that his church swept rape allegations against a congregation member under the carpet, or that an intern had to run away from a naked leader (Brent) who had his dick out.

To be clear — this is really, really bad stuff. And yet, like Trump, these men have proven themselves to be huge pieces of shit, and have then found a section of the population that welcomes them back.

And at times like this, when I find myself wanting to vent and scream, I end up going to one of my favourite social media accounts, Christian Nightmares.

For years, this social media account has been keeping me company by curating, clipping and sharing some of the craziest shit from the deranged world of Pentecostal and Evangelical Christianity. And somehow in watching the worst of the worst, it makes me feel more sane because I know other people are watching and also seeing how crazy this world is.

I mean, here is a pastor encouraging you to speak tongues into ChatGPT so it can successful interpret your gibberish (sorry, your ancient Sumerian) into english.

This knowledge — dished out via Christian Nightmare’s Instagram, TikTok and Substack — makes me feel less deranged.

And so recently, I got in touch with the anonymous man who runs the account and asked him some questions for Webworm. Despite his scary appearance, he was an absolute delight to talk to: Considered, smart, and with a gentle sense of humour under it all.

The guy who runs Christian Nightmares. I have agreed to keep him anonymous.

I’m just curious about who you are, and how you came to open this Instagram account?

I was raised in a very strict, fundamentalist Baptist Church. I went to church many hours every week. There was Sunday school, and then the church service, and then always something after church, and then back again at night for church, and Wednesday night youth group, and then something else that always ruined your Fridays that you had to do at church!

I spent my entire childhood being raised in the church.

And I was always uncomfortable with it. But I was too afraid not to believe it at the time, the things that I was taught.

A post from Christian Nightmares of a pastor balancing a cross on his chin.

What was your exit from that world?

I was slowly distancing myself. I was “born again”, quote unquote, when I was five years old. I didn’t really know anything other than the church, and what I was surrounded by.

But even at a pretty young age, there was some dissonance there. It didn’t completely make sense to me, but I was really terrified by the prospect of Hell — of maybe being wrong about this and gambling my eternity on it.

And that was a really confusing, troubling time.

A post on Christian Nightmares of a woman brainwashing her baby. Start ‘em young (and post it).

And as I got into my teenage years, I kind of broke away from the church on my own when I could. I had to hide everything that I did. I had to hide the music that I listened to. I had to hide the parties that I was going to.

But I was starting to question, and I was starting to see that there was a much bigger world outside of the church. But I was forced to go. There was no way around it.

The church is where I kind of learned how to wear a mask, as I do with Christian Nightmares, and I’m kind of anonymous - my icon is masked.

In church, I really learned how to wear a mask because I had to be two different people. I had be the person that the church wanted me to be, and then there was the me that I was when I was outside of the church and I was able to break out of my house and go be with my friends, and go skateboarding, and listen to the music that I wanted to listen to, and go to punk rock shows.

Then finally I left home and I was able to go to college - and I went to college in a big city, and then the world even opened up even more to me.

I left the church, but the confusion that it created in me didn’t leave for a long time.

I don't know how to put this really. I don’t know if I'm still fully over it — even many, many years later.

When I was younger, I was really afraid of the rapture, this idea that Christ could come back and I could be left behind. On one hand, it sounds completely ridiculous, but when you’re eight years old, it’s not so ridiculous.

I think a lot of that shit sticks when you put that stuff into a young brain — there's this deeply annoying thing that happens when you are older, there’s like this weird little part of you that’s still fearful. Like a weird little stain that you can never quite reset, I think.

Yeah, and I’m much farther away from it now. And I’ve gone to years and years of therapy, which has really helped.

But there are still things that I do that I think are directly related to that. You know, I’m still pretty OCD.

I still check the stove in the kitchen before I leave the house, even if I haven’t used it in two days. Just this need for control, or to try to control things, or have some sense of order from a time that I felt like I had absolutely no control — from when there was something much bigger that I couldn’t even grasp that was going to decide my eternal fate. That’s still there to some degree.

But I think, I actually think doing Christian Nightmares has helped me a lot. At some point, I wouldn’t call it an accident, but I knew I always wanted to talk about it in some way.

And then the technology kind of became available. You know, Tumblr came along and I said, “Oh, I can just easily throw something up here.”

Once I was able to do that, I just started researching these characters from my past, and these old rapture movies that I used to have to watch at church. When I was able to just post those and look at them again through adult eyes and to see how other people reacted to that, and to kind of find a community, it made me feel a lot less alone.

A Christian influencer (horrible) posted on Christian Nightmares.

I mean, fuck, that is what you’ve done for me. What was the feedback like, early on?

I got a lot of hate mail and negative reactions, and it pissed a lot of people off, but then I got a lot of really nice messages and emails and notes from people saying, “Oh my God, this reminds me so much of the kind of stuff I grew up in!”

And I mean, that really surprised me and that was really nice. And that really made me want to continue.

As more time has gone, I’m able to kind of have a wider lens on it. I think for so long I had to sit in the church and be subjected to really crazy teachings, and to be yelled at on Sunday and told that I was a terrible person. And then doubting it, and then being told that if I was doubting, it was because my faith wasn’t strong enough, and just being gaslit constantly. If I was doubting, then maybe you weren’t praying enough — there’s always an answer to put you in the wrong.

And I think Christian Nightmares allows me to now respond to this stuff. I had to sit there and keep my mouth shut, and now I can kind of put it in the context that I think it deserves to be in.

What you present to us is the best of the best — or worst of the worst. But I also realise you have had to trawl through so much crap to bring us this stuff.

Yeah, I don’t know if I’d recommend it, you know? Although the end result has maybe been positive. Maybe it's more like electroshock therapy or something, just bombarding myself with these images until they lose their power or meaning.

Again, I wouldn’t recommend it for anybody, but it kind of helped me. Enjoy isn’t the right word, but it was fascinating to me to look at this stuff with fresh eyes.

And then over time, Christian Nightmares grew and the community grew. People send me stuff constantly now. So I’m kind of filtering through that.

I am still trying to get my head around this world to be honest, do you feel the level of insanity out there is more, or less, or just taking on different forms?

I think about that a lot, too. I don’t know if it’s crazier. I think it’s just more visible now with the internet and social media. These things have always happened. There have always been crazy, there’s always been crazy preaching going on. There’s always been scandals. There have always been really extremist ideas.

They’re just way more out in the open now.

Do you ever see an end for this project, or do you think you’re going to be in it till the day you die?

I think about that a lot. I feel like if I didn’t do it I would implode. I feel I have to react to this stuff.

Some of that’s left over still from my childhood, feeling like I had no voice and I had to be quiet, but I was screaming inside. I think I'm still working some of that out. I have to respond to it — especially now with the politics in America and the way all of that evangelical Christianity has creeped into all of it in such a terrible way.

It's cathartic for me.

Still, I don’t get the same things out of it that I used to. I feel like I've worked through a lot of the things I was trying to work through, which was kind of looking at this crazy stuff through adult eyes, and processing it.

And I feel like I’ve done a lot of that.

Honestly what keeps me going now is the community that has built up around Christian Nightmares. It’s really smart, funny, engaged people that seem to get something out of it.

And that maybe once in a while will write me a really nice note saying, “Hey, this is helping me in some way.” And that feels really good.

So, yeah, I’m going to keep it going for a while, but I think at some point... it is grueling, too.

---

So much of what Christian Nightmares (as in, the man who runs the account) said resonated with me incredibly hard. Including the benefits he gets from watching this stuff:

“Maybe it’s more like electroshock therapy or something: Just bombarding myself with these images until they lose their power or meaning.”

You and me both, you weird masked man! You and me both.

Can’t wait to see John and Brent Cameron make a future appearance.

David.