Religion News reports the 2025 year was a year of skepticism and spectacle “with a seemingly endless flood of social media content, creators and AI slop,” but some faith-based influencers managed to cut through the inanity and art-barf with something better.
Rachel Griffin Accurso, 43, who recently hit the cover of Glamour magazine as one of its 2025 Women of the Year, can sometimes be seen in an upcycled dress embroidered with drawings by children in Gaza as a statement of advocacy. Religion news reports Accurso remains grounded in her Christian faith while being named to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s inaugural committee.
“Her YouTube channel … now has about 18 million subscribers and more than 13 billion views,” reports Religion News.
Meanwhile, TikTok creator Tony Vara, 24, whose family is El Salvadoran, drew nearly a million followers while broadcasting his family’s struggle with President Donald Trup’s immigration policies.
“His emotional posts in the aftermath of his mother’s deportation went viral as he documented caring for his younger siblings and navigating life without her,” reports Religion News. “On Dec. 3, a TikTok showing Vara walking through an airport with his 8-year-old brother as he prepared to send him to be with his mother in Honduras drew 6.2 million views.”
Vara also speaks of his Christian faith and how it shapes his response to grief and activism while putting a human face on one nation’s oppressive policies.
Religion News calls New York City-based Tova Sterling, 28, a “Jewish culinary creator and cultural provocateur giving the faith-sphere an influencer it didn’t know it needed.”
“With more than 300,000 followers and climbing on Instagram, she’s known for sharp, cinematic cooking videos in which she confidently wields a knife while telling bizarre stories from her life as she plates a beautiful meal. Her knife skills, humor and irreverent commentary about relationships and womanhood have kept a growing audience hungry for more.
Sterling has also built a reputation offline as the host of Sinners Shabbat, a Friday-night gathering that “mixes burlesque performance with Shabbat ritual,” according to Religion News. It also elevates Jewish comfort food and draws thousands of self-described “sinners” and the religiously curious.
Read the full Religion News report at this link.
