High school valedictorian who gave faith-filled speech reveals motivation: ‘Jesus told me to write that'

Lydia Owens, a South Carolina public high school class president and valedictorian, stepped out in faith while addressing her classmates in her commencement speech — and her words of Christian belief quickly went viral.
 

Owens, 18, recently graduated from Woodmont High School in Piedmont, South Carolina. She told Fox News Digital in a recent phone interview that she found out right after Christmas that she was "kind of in the running for class valedictorian."

After her first semester of senior year, it was solidified, she said. 

She said she "debated for a long time … how to approach talking about my faith in my speech."

She told Fox News Digital, "I definitely always knew that I wanted to [speak about faith], because my faith is who I am. It's the center of my life, so I knew that I wanted to mention it, but I didn't know how to do that."

It wasn't until a conversation Owens had with some friends that she decided to say what she did.