Editor’s Note: Matthew Chicoine interviewed Sam Nunnally via phone call on May 12th, 2025. Some of the questions have been rearranged and edited to provide the best reader experience without losing any integrity of the answers given.
Your journey from Protestantism to Catholicism is central to your story. Could you share a pivotal moment or realization during that search for “the fullness of truth” that ultimately led you to the Catholic Church?
It was kind of a series of moments. At age 20, I had an experience about the Eucharist that didn’t fit into my Protestantist worldview. Later when I was in seminary in 2004, I had to read the Early Church Fathers. After reading them, I had my head in my hands and realized I had it all wrong. Even though I was a pastor at a non-denominational church by then, I knew then that the Catholic Church was the fullness of truth. I continued to study trying to fit Catholicism into my Protestant framework. I became a Methodist Pastor for about five years hoping that would be the fix. But I was never able to settle into my feelings about the Catholic Church. After a failed attempt at church planting, I left full-time ministry and went into banking.
As God began working on my heart, I remarried in 2018. Around 2020, I began to pull the pieces together and truly consider converting. I was reading Catholic theologians like Yves Congar, Karl Rahner, plus a host of apologetical material. It was becoming clear that the Catholic way was the way to go. In 2022, I told my wife, Amber, that I was converting to Catholicism (she herself was a convert to Catholicism in 2005 from Mormonism).
Prior to my conversion, we found a way to split the difference by going to a Protestant service one week and the Catholic Mass the next. Through this exposure and this gentle approach from my wife, I felt comfortable eventually converting to Catholicism. She never put pressure on me.
Women in general are looking for strong Christian men. The whole New Evangelization approach was something that my wife was doing intrinsically. If we choose to love our brothers and sisters in Christ then we would approach evangelization like how my wife did.
The name “It’s Okay to Be Catholic” suggests there’s a certain hesitancy or shame some feel about embracing Catholic identity. What experiences led you to identify this as a problem worth addressing through your ministry?
That’s a great question! People resonate with the name. I resigned to the fact that it’s okay to be Catholic. It’s almost like an understatement. It’s obviously more than okay to be Catholic – it’s the best way to live! Sometimes it’s tough getting people to the place that it’s comfortable to explore Catholicism. It kind of requires a “veil” to be lifted. The Instagram account takes my backlog of seminary training and reading and speaks to the spiritually curious using Protestant language but through a Catholic lens.
The whole idea of It’s Okay to Be Catholic is to simply open the door. We live in a very Protestant nation which requires people to want to explore the Catholic faith. It takes time and people need grace to move at their own pace. In my Diocese of Pensacola, Florida there’s only about 3-4% Catholic population.
As Director of Campus Ministry at Florida State University, you work with young adults at a critical time in their faith formation. What unique challenges do Catholic college students face today, and how does your conversion story help you relate to their questions?
This is the way I try to mentor the students: I simply try to be open about my struggles with faith and life. I try to be personable with them and talk about the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism. Because I come from that background, I can speak to those issues directly. A lot of these students are converts. There’s a huge influx of (mostly men) coming back to the faith.
When students go home after OCIA and confirmation, they often experience criticism from their families. The students struggle with the hurt caused by this. I try to relate to their situation and lean into my experience with Protestant misunderstandings about the Catholic faith.
You’re involved in several media initiatives, including a partnership with Truthly, “the world’s first Catholic AI app.” How do you see technology and new media serving the Church’s mission, and what excites you about these possibilities?
It’s the future. As much as I love the tradition of the Church, when people talk about AI and digitization there’s a skewed view. AI doesn’t have to conflict with tradition. It behooves the Church to move quickly with this technology to help share our ancient faith.
What Truthly does is help get information like, for example, the Early Church Fathers to people in an easy to digest fashion. It’s AI that is trained to give balanced and helpful information about the faith. When I first got involved with this app, I put it through the ringer with various prompts. If you push it, Truthly will go to higher level theology.
It’s a great example of a way that the sacred traditions of the Church can be placed in a new vehicle to share the truth. The truth never changes. But sometimes the medium needs to change.
I love the fact that Pope Leo XIV is leaning towards social justice in the world of AI.
What elements of Catholicism do you find yourself most passionate about sharing with others?
On the social media front, I love uncovering the truth about Catholic history. This requires some digging and reading. I try to whittle down each reel to about a minute. I love to uncover the history of the Catholic Church and dispel myths.
The other thing I personally love is contemplative prayer. One thing that led me to the Catholic faith was the mystics. From Bernard of Clarivaux to Julian of Norwich. Those are the kind of things that drew me to the Church and those are things I am still reading. I am currently reading a treatment of St. John of the Cross (based on the Dark Night of the Soul). Before that I was reading St. Bernard of Clairvaux.
Looking ahead to your forthcoming book and other projects, what’s the core message you hope readers and followers take away from your work?
Simply that the Catholic Church is true and it’s beautiful. If you can shine a bright light on the Church, it does make mistakes of the past disappear. But the focus is on the beauty. Let’s say you are out in a dark ocean. And you don’t realize there’s a lifeboat 50 yards from you. What I find is there are tons of people struggling and wading through the stuff they heard about the Catholic Church over the years – much of it incorrect. My job is to simply show them the lifeboat by shining a light on it. Once they are in the lifeboat you can clean them up, warm them up, and get them to shore. As long as you have them focusing on the Church’s beauty – for example, like the beauty of the Eucharist – you can work on the other things they may have questions about.
For those who might be in the position you once were—curious about Catholicism but hesitant—what would be your encouragement to them about taking that next step in exploration?
My encouragement to them that if I can do it, they can, too. It took me 20 years to put the pieces of Catholicism together. Take your time and investigate it fully. Find someone that you can trust to talk to or go on the internet and look up Catholic apologetics. It’s Okay to be Catholic!
Where else can my audience find more about your ministry?
It’s Okay to Be Catholic and my Instagram account. Look for more podcast appearances, books, and speaking engagements to come!
