(RNS) — “My iPhone started capitalizing the G in God again without asking me,” Taylor Tomlinson says in her latest Netflix stand-up special, gripping a mic beneath the ornate ceiling of Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “The robots are coming, and they love the Lord.”
Wearing a cross on her necklace and a long leather jacket, Tomlinson looked right at home in the vaulted sanctuary. But the comedian’s set, filmed in November and released on Feb. 24 with the title “Prodigal Daughter,” would be regarded as irreverent at best by most nondenominational Christian congregations. Filled with sexual themes, f-bombs and jokes about everything from foreskins to the crucifixion — “I hope I die in a way that looks good on jewelry,” she quips — it would rate as blasphemous in many.
But Tomlinson’s edgy content is exactly what made Fountain Street the perfect venue, church leaders say. The historic congregation is known for its support of abortion access, free speech and LGBTQ+ rights. It’s also an interreligious community that rejects specific doctrines.
“The charge that has been leveled against Fountain Street Church since the 1890s is that it’s not really a church,” said Fountain Street’s leader, the Rev. Nathan Dannison.
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Founded in 1869 through the merger of two Baptist congregations, Fountain Street has cultivated a reputation as a radical liberal outpost; women have always been voting members, Dannison said, and the church’s historic stained-glass windows celebrate humanists such as Charles Darwin and Erasmus. That reputation is especially noteworthy in Grand Rapids. While the city’s religious landscape has become increasingly diverse, it’s known for its historic ties to theologically conservative Dutch Reformed Christian traditions.
The congregation dropped its Baptist affiliation in the 1960s under the leadership of the Rev. Duncan E. Littlefair, its longtime, University of Chicago-trained pastor, and solidified its non-creedal identity. Local chapters of the American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood were organized at the church during Littlefair’s tenure, as was the establishment of the church’s Choice Fund, which provided funds for emergency abortion care in Michigan; Recently, the church has made headlines as a hub for immigrant rights activism.
Fountain Street’s 1,507-seat auditorium has welcomed speakers such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Angela Davis, Winston Churchill and Malcolm X. The church has been hosting comedians since at least 2011, when it welcomed acts that were part of Gilda’s LaughFest, a community comedy festival. So when Tomlinson’s team reached out to Fountain Street in spring of 2024 as the place to record her fourth Netflix special, the church leadership listened.
“This show that she was putting together was heavily focused on her conservative Christian upbringing and her struggle with what it means to be religious,” said Kayle Clements, director of audio and visual technology at Fountain Street. “She was looking for a church setting where she could film this.”
Tomlinson has made comedic and serious points about her religious upbringing in her set for years. Her uncle is a progressive Christian pastor — “We’re both out here on weekends changing lives,” she joked in her recent special — and she got her start in comedy on the evangelical church circuit.
But these days she’s no longer religious and is upfront about the negative experiences she says she suffered in her childhood. “I have religious trauma. Anybody else have religious trauma?” she asked the crowd. “It just means you grew up in church, you’re not religious anymore, but now when you kind of feel good, you feel kind of bad about it.”
The critique didn’t faze Fountain Street. “We have a significant population of reconstructing Christians, refugees from the toxic theologies of Christian nationalism or right-wing Christian fundamentalism,” said Dannison. “They hear in Taylor’s comedy a lot of the same frustrations and values and radicalism that has been a part of Fountain Streeters’ lives growing up in this part of the country.”
Once Tomlinson’s team settled on Fountain Street, it took months of preparation to tape the Netflix special. The church was still in the process of restoring its historic bell tower and scrambled to finish it in time. The week of the recording, the church was beset with production assistants, security, Netflix employees and cases of AV equipment.
“They landed with, like, 12 people, and by the time they were done, we had 135 people there,” said the church’s governing board chair, J. Spalding Wall. “It was a major undertaking.”
Tomlinson performed four shows the week of Nov. 1, 2025 — the Netflix special is an amalgam of the best moments. Clements said he worked nearly around the clock to pull it off. “I think my shortest day was a 17-hour day. My longest was 23. But I would do it again tomorrow,” he said.
The special includes exterior shots of Fountain Street’s neo-Romanesque structure and begins with Tomlinson exiting the church’s choir room onto the stage.
Some of the set works in her bygone church basement routines. She jokes about the “decaf” Christians who only attend church on Easter and Christmas, and she gets a big response from the crowd when she mentions Veggie Tales, a cartoon show that has been a staple of evangelical Christian childhoods. But she soon gets progressively edgier, riffing on why the show never depicted Jesus’ death on the cross — VeggieTales characters have no arms, she points out. She questions how the story of Noah’s Ark, which she calls “dark as hell,” ever became the Bible’s most popular children’s story.
She says her biggest issue with church is that it “wouldn’t let you make a good point.” Difficult questions, she adds, were met with the unhelpful response, “We can ask God that when we get to heaven.”
Despite growing up in a “scary Christian house,” she credits her loving grandparents for modeling Christianity done right. “There are a lot of people who are using religion correctly, people like my aunt and uncle, my grandparents, the people at this church,” says Tomlinson. “There are a lot of people who are using religion as a tool for community and connection and comfort.”
The night of the special’s release, dozens of Fountain Street members gathered at the church for a celebratory viewing party, including a “thank you” video from Tomlinson.
“This is Fountain Street Church at its very best,” said Dannison, “living out its values of liberalism, free speech, progressive values, sanctuary, freedom to share your story, freedom to share your hurt without fear of censorship.”