Jeremy Alder is in on the joke. Not just the one about growing up homeschooled in Texas with no TV and a mom who warned him not to answer the door in case “the men in suits” showed up—but the bigger joke: that he somehow stumbled from the pulpit to the punchline and found himself more spiritually grounded outside the church than inside it.
“I think I’ve always felt more comfortable out in the world than in the church,” he tells RELEVANT. “Bars, breweries, comedy clubs—those are my people now. And honestly, I don’t think I’d go back.”
It’s a surprising admission from someone who used to preach regularly, but Alder’s whole career has been a string of unexpected turns. A decade ago, feeling creatively stuck after stepping away from ministry, he typed “stand-up comedy near me” into Google and wandered into a North Carolina open mic.
“I didn’t even know weekly comedy open mics were a thing,” he says. “I just wrote a few jokes, came back the next week and didn’t stop.”
His new comedy album Almost a Grown Man is a retrospective of sorts. It touches on everything from fatherhood to evangelical purity culture to accidentally being mistaken for his own child’s older brother. “We were crushing it in basketball at recess, and this kid yells, ‘Of course they’re winning. They’ve got Elliott’s brother on their team—he’s almost a grown man.’ I was in my 30s.”
If you’ve seen Alder’s Instagram series Christians Who Don’t Suck, you’ve already gotten a taste of his vibe: thoughtful, hilarious and unflinchingly honest about his religious past, but not cynical. He’s not here to burn bridges. He’s here to light them up just enough so you can actually see the architecture.
“I think the gospel, when it’s described rightly, is inherently provocative and unsettling,” he says. “So is comedy. That’s probably why the two felt so connected when I was preaching.”
Still, Alder’s style isn’t confrontational. He doesn’t cuss. He doesn’t pander. He doesn’t punch down. But don’t confuse clean for safe. His material about growing up in a fear-based Christian subculture—no secular music, no television, heavy on the end times—walks a tightrope between biting critique and sincere love for his family.
“My parents are wonderful people,” he says. “The jokes aren’t really about them—they’re about the culture. They’ve come around now, even if they had some feelings about the early stuff. And my kids know they’re fair game.”
Comedy became a tool for Alder to process things he wasn’t always allowed to question growing up. He talks about the isolation of early homeschooling—when it was barely legal, barely understood and barely connected to anything outside his own living room. But instead of becoming bitter, Alder became curious.
“I went to a big public university, and it just cracked my world wide open,” he says. “That was my first real classroom experience. I was so hungry for knowledge. I felt like I had to spend the rest of my life catching up.”
That curiosity shaped his faith, too. Alder doesn’t talk about deconstruction in buzzwords, but it’s clear he’s done the work.
“I had seasons where I wasn’t even sure I believed anymore. But I kept coming back. Just—differently. With more questions. More perspective. More awareness of the church’s role in injustice, and also its potential to be something good.”
That tension—between faith and doubt, past and present, culture and counterculture—shows up everywhere in his comedy. It’s not therapy, he says, but it does help him figure out what he really thinks.
“If something feels off to me, I write about it,” he says. “I’m not trying to write for a specific audience. I’m trying to write what’s funny to me, and hopefully it connects. And if it doesn’t, well… I’ve still got my mom liking my posts.”
Alder’s online presence hasn’t just been a stage for jokes. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, he went unexpectedly viral after offering his own savings to strangers who needed help paying rent or buying food.
“I wasn’t rich. But I had a little in savings. And the church and the government weren’t stepping up fast enough,” he says. “It felt like something I could do from my couch in my underwear while watching The Office. Something that actually mattered.”
In an age when Christian social media often feels like a feedback loop of hot takes and bad theology, Alder’s two most viral moments—giving away money and spotlighting faith-based justice heroes—feel like a small rebellion against all that.
“There are so many Christians out there doing incredible work, but we rarely hear their names,” he says. “So instead of ranting, I thought, what if I just celebrated the ones who give me hope?”
Now, with Almost a Grown Man out in the world, Alder is leaning into this next phase of his career. He’s not trying to be famous. He’s just trying to be faithful to what he finds funny—and make space for people who see the world a little differently than they were told they had to.
“I think there’s real power in laughing at the stuff that used to scare you,” he says. “And maybe if we can laugh at it, we can finally let go of it, too.”
