For nearly six years, Haley Furst says she lived a life that felt increasingly distant from the Christian faith of her childhood.
She identified as a transgender man, underwent hormone treatment, had a hysterectomy, embraced political ideas she describes as anarchal communism and eventually rejected belief in God altogether.
Today, Furst describes that period very differently.
The Alberta, Canada, woman says her life changed after a coworker shared a passage from the New Testament with her—Romans 8:38–39. She says the verses prompted her to reconsider beliefs she had developed over several years and ultimately led her back to Christianity.
In an interview with Fox News Digital published in September 2026, Furst described the experience as a “radical perspective change” and said she eventually surrendered her life to Jesus Christ.
Her story has since attracted attention because it combines several subjects that are intensely debated in contemporary culture: transgender identity, faith, political ideology, education, sexuality and the role of adults in conversations about gender with young people.
But Furst's account is fundamentally a personal one.
Her descriptions of her childhood, education, transition and return to Christianity come from her own recollections. Her conclusions about what caused those changes—and her current criticism of gender and sexual-identity discussions involving minors—are her interpretations of her experience rather than findings established independently by the available reporting.
That distinction is important.
It is also what makes her story worth examining on its own terms.
A Christian Childhood
Furst says she was raised in a Christian environment and attended a private Christian school before eventually entering Canada's public-school system.
According to her account, the transition represented a major cultural shift.
She told Fox News Digital that her earlier education had been shaped by a Christian worldview and that she considered faith an important part of her upbringing. Her move into public education, she said, exposed her to ideas about gender, sexuality and personal identity that were unfamiliar to her at the time.
Furst describes that transition as a turning point.
She recalls encountering discussions about what she calls “gender liberation” and “sexual liberation” and says such subjects appeared frequently in classroom conversations.
Her characterization of those discussions is her own account, however, and the available reporting does not independently establish that these subjects were discussed “in almost every class” or that teachers broadly encouraged students toward a particular identity.
That distinction matters when recounting the story.
There is a difference between reporting that Furst remembers an educational environment in a particular way and claiming that the entire Canadian public-school system operated according to that description.
Alberta's education system itself is more complex than that.
The province has public, separate and independent school systems, with different curricula and educational philosophies. Some Christian schools also operate within Alberta's broader publicly funded education landscape, meaning that the distinction between “Christian education” and “public education” is not always as simple as two completely separate worlds.
For Furst, though, the personal contrast was clear.
She felt that she had entered an environment with values different from those she had previously known.
And she says that experience contributed to a gradual departure from the faith of her childhood.
Losing Her Religious Identity
Furst says her questioning did not happen overnight.
Instead, she describes a gradual process in which the religious beliefs she had once accepted became increasingly difficult for her to maintain.
Eventually, she says, she rejected Christianity altogether.
She also describes becoming an atheist.
At the same time, her political worldview moved sharply away from the one she had known growing up. She says she embraced what she calls “anarchal communism,” along with other positions that she now characterizes as part of a far-left worldview.
The political labels are Furst's descriptions of her own beliefs.
They should not be treated as a comprehensive description of any political movement or ideology.
What is significant for her story is the degree of change she says occurred.
The Christian teenager she remembers herself as became an adult who no longer believed in God and who embraced a very different understanding of society, politics and personal identity.
Her gender identity became an especially important part of that transformation.
Living as a Transgender Man
Furst says she eventually began identifying as male and lived as a transgender man for approximately five to six years.
During that period, she says she took testosterone or other male hormones and underwent medical procedures related to her transition.
Fox News Digital reported that Furst described undergoing a hysterectomy and said that her uterus and one ovary were removed.
She now looks back on those years through the lens of her current religious beliefs.
That does not mean, however, that every transgender person's experience resembles hers.
Gender identity and medical transition are deeply individual experiences, and people who transition can have very different reasons, outcomes and perspectives. Furst's story represents one person's account of a particular path through gender identity and later detransition.
The terminology itself can also be complicated.
People who once identified as transgender but later no longer identify that way may use different terms for their experiences, including “detransition,” “desistance” or simply describing a change in identity.
Furst's own preferred framing is strongly connected to her Christian conversion.
She says that returning to her faith fundamentally changed the way she understood her past.
A Search for Something That Was Missing
Furst describes her years as an atheist as a period in which she believed she had rejected Christianity permanently.
Yet according to her account, the questions surrounding meaning and identity never completely disappeared.
That tension eventually became important.
She says the decisive moment began with a coworker.
The coworker, according to Furst, shared a passage from Romans with her while they were together at work.
The verses were Romans 8:38–39.
The passage comes near the conclusion of Paul's Letter to the Romans and focuses on the enduring nature of God's love. It lists forces—including death, life, angels, rulers, things present and things to come—and declares that none can separate believers from the love of God in Christ.
For Christians, Romans 8:38–39 has long been understood as a declaration of God's enduring love and the security of believers in that relationship.
For Furst, however, the significance was intensely personal.
She says hearing those words forced her to confront questions she had spent years trying to resolve without Christianity.
The Bible verse did not function as an argument in a formal debate.
It became, in her telling, a moment of recognition.
The Verse That Became a Turning Point
Furst has described the moment as the beginning of what she calls a “radical perspective change.”
According to her account, she went home and prayed.
She began reconsidering her rejection of Christianity and eventually returned to the faith.
Importantly, Furst has said the transformation was not simply an instantaneous conversion.
She described the process as gradual—a “slow and steady” change that developed after the initial encounter with Romans 8.
That detail is significant because conversion stories are often simplified into a single dramatic moment.
Furst's own account is more complicated.
The verse may have been the moment that captured her attention, but the changes that followed involved her beliefs, relationships, understanding of herself and interpretation of her past.
In that sense, the story is less about one sentence magically changing a person's mind and more about how a single experience can become a catalyst for a longer period of reflection.
What Romans 8:38–39 Means in Context
The passage Furst says changed her life appears at the end of one of the most important theological sections of Paul's Letter to the Romans.
Romans 8 discusses suffering, hope, the Holy Spirit, God's purpose and the relationship between believers and Christ.
Verses 31 through 39 form the concluding section.
The central question in verse 35 is whether anything can separate believers from the love of Christ.
Paul then provides a series of examples—trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger and violence—before concluding that none of these things can ultimately separate believers from God's love.
Romans 8:38–39 expands that argument to include the powers of existence itself.
The passage has consequently become one of the most recognizable expressions of Christian assurance in the New Testament.