Read the full transcript of Rev. Billy Cerveny’s interview on The Tucker Carlson Show, August 17, 2026.

EDITOR’S NOTE: In this conversation, Tucker Carlson interviews his longtime friend Rev. Billy Cerveny, an Episcopal priest, writer, musician, and founder of Redbird Ministries, on the realities of spiritual warfare. Cerveny explores how Satan aggressively targets what God values most—particularly marriage, the family, and human identity—while addressing transgenderism, pornography, addiction, hearing God’s voice, and encounters with the supernatural. Drawing on Scripture and personal experience, the discussion offers a biblical perspective on navigating cultural confusion and reclaiming spiritual clarity.

TUCKER CARLSON: We’ve been close friends for almost 40 years, 39 years since the mid-’80s. And I would say you were the— I didn’t imagine you as a priest.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: I would say that makes two of us.

TUCKER CARLSON: Then about a month ago, you’re godfather to one of my children. You performed the wedding ceremony for that child.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: Awesome.

TUCKER CARLSON: One of the great moments of my life. How did you get here? Like, I don’t really know anybody who’s had more jobs. I thought you were going to be a philosopher, a country music star.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: Yeah, well, brother, if you had told me when we met and we first started hanging out that I’d end up doing what I’m doing now, I’d have told you you got hit in the head.

TUCKER CARLSON: Oh, I’m aware of that.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: But, you know, God has a sense of humor and a profound sense of irony, and it’s a picture of his grace. I spent a lot of my years as a journalist, and most of my professional life in the music business. But I was living in Atlanta years ago when I just started playing music. You remember those years? I was living in this sort of converted greenhouse, a 400-square-foot apartment where the floor was still slanted to where they’d water the plants and the water would still run out. I remember I had just gone into the music business. I’d given up a lot to do it, and I was not in a good place, really asking a lot of questions like, “God, what is this? Who am I? What is this supposed to be?” And I remember that room became a monastery in my life, and God sort of grabbed me by the throat, as I like to say, and just began to reveal things to me about who he was and who Jesus was — things that I’d heard my whole life, but they just never made sense. I mean, I grew up in the church. My father was a priest.

TUCKER CARLSON: He was a bishop.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: He was a bishop. He was a bishop of Florida. And it’s like walking around your parents’ house and seeing fine pieces of furniture that you just walk by so many times you don’t notice them anymore. That’s kind of what faith became to me as a young person — at least the language of faith, and words like grace and forgiveness. I had just heard it so much, I couldn’t understand the implications of them until I went off into college. That’s where we met. Those were the prodigal years, man.

TUCKER CARLSON: Fair. Very fair.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: The prodigal was a wimp. We really went for it. But God was faithful in all that time. Through the journalism and back up to Atlanta, I remember living in that apartment and falling on my knees and just saying, “Lord, either you are who you say you are, or this is the biggest lie perpetrated on humanity. And I’m going to go with — you are who you say you are.” And he began to teach me the truth of forgiveness and the truth of grace, and what it meant to walk in Jesus, and what it meant to be saved, and what it meant to have a relationship with him, and to have a soul that was worth far more than trying to satisfy it with success in music or success in whatever field. I remember sitting there thinking to myself, “God, you’re this good? Are you this good?” And just feeling him in my heart nodding silently with me. I knew in that moment my life was different. I didn’t know what it was going to look like. Then when I moved to Nashville, I played music for a bunch of years after that. But during that time, the Lord just kept taking me deeper and deeper, and I started getting involved, using music to go into ministry. I did a lot of work with a ministry called Young Life, talking to kids about the gospel. And during that time, I met my wife out in Colorado, and it was obviously a life-changing experience — she’s wonderful. We began asking a question: “What does God have for us? Where is he taking us?” And the idea of seminary for me — like I said, you knew me — that was completely not in the cards.

TUCKER CARLSON: No. And the context is even bigger from an outsider’s point of view. You are the son of a great man, of a well-known man, a big figure. I was at his funeral this winter. It was packed — a packed cathedral. He was a big, big man. You look exactly like your dad, which is also kind of weird.

REV. BILLY CERVENY: I hear that.

TUCKER CARLSON: And now you are dressed exactly like your dad. It’s weird to be the son of someone like that and not think you’re going to wind up being that thing, right?

REV. BILLY CERVENY: Yeah. He was a great man, and that is part of it — to grow up in that and to watch my dad.