{"id":413607,"date":"2025-09-10T16:51:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413607\/"},"modified":"2025-09-10T16:51:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:51:11","slug":"christianitys-overlap-with-the-manosphere-and-what-it-means-for-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/413607\/","title":{"rendered":"Christianity’s overlap with the manosphere and what it means for women"},"content":{"rendered":"

The rise of the manosphere, with its call for a return to traditional gender roles, reflects a backlash to power-shifting cultural changes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

In Moscow, Idaho, conservative evangelical pastor Doug Wilson last year praised<\/a> the nomination of now-U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> for his opposition to women in combat.<\/p>\n

Then, in an interview broadcast last month, Wilson told CNN<\/a> that in his vision of a Christian America, women would hold few leadership positions beyond being “chief executive” of the home and raising children.<\/p>\n

“Women are the kind of people that people come out of,” he said. “It doesn’t take any talent to simply reproduce biologically.”<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, at Covenant Bible Church, an evangelical church in suburban Austin, Texas, pastor Joel Webbon has echoed Wilson’s view<\/a> that in a Christian nation, women shouldn\u2019t be able to vote.<\/p>\n

The manosphere<\/a> \u2014 a movement encompassing hypermasculinity, male supremacy, misogyny and traditional gender roles and driven by podcasters, bloggers and social media warriors \u2014 has become increasingly mainstream. And now, it is converging with a segment of conservative Christianity.<\/p>\n

Aspects of the manosphere weave through American culture, from Silicon Valley \u201cTechBros\u201d to the largely evangelical \u201cTheoBros\u201d typified by a number of high-profile Christian pastors and podcasters.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a version of \u2018men in charge, women in submission\u2019 that goes back as far as I can think of\u201d in conservative Christian circles, said Julie Ingersoll, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Florida. In other words, she said, most Sunday congregations would agree that while married couples more or less decide things together, the man has the ultimate say.<\/p>\n

But over the last decade, Ingersoll said, this soft patriarchalism \u2014 sometimes called \u201ccomplementarianism,\u201d the idea that men and women have distinct but complementary roles \u2014 has yielded to more transgressive hierarchical versions. The shift, she and others say, is part of a backlash against power-shifting cultural developments and a reflection of how the emergence of the so-called manosphere overlaps with certain segments of Christianity.<\/p>\n

\u201cComplementarianism now is not like it was in the 1980s,\u201d Ingersoll said. \u201cIt\u2019s harsh.\u201d<\/p>\n

Extremely Normal: <\/strong>\u2018It’s like dopamine.\u2019 Looking for role models, troubled young men find Andrew Tate.<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThey all believe society has a natural order, that some people should be in charge and others are meant to be followers,\u201d Ingersoll said. \u201cThat weaves in misogyny, because the people perceived to be appropriately at top are always men, so by definition women have a secondary position.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Wilson and Webbon rely on strict interpretations of the Bible to back up their views that husbands rule over their wives and thus their households. Both pastors said the Bible and their churches provide safeguards to curb the toxicity found in some parts of the manosphere.<\/p>\n

“The woman’s role is a feminine and domestic role,” Webbon told USA TODAY. “Her voice matters, but it is subject to her husband\u2019s authority. Women should hold no positions of authority over men in the church, neither should they hold positions of authority over men in politics.”<\/p>\n

Wilson told USA TODAY that such views “are grounded in scripture, which we believe to be the word of God, and are important for that reason.”<\/p>\n

Cultural changes in recent decades have seen advancements for women and the LGBTQ+ community, eroding conservative Christian views of U.S. identity, said Matthew Taylor, an expert on religious extremism at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore. The backlash has prompted calls for a return to traditional gender roles.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you think about what American culture was until the 1950s, it was overwhelmingly dominated by White Christian males,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cIn the 1960s and 1970s, you had the Civil Rights Movement, women\u2019s liberation, heightened immigration and Supreme Court jurisprudence that changed the balance of church and state. … What we\u2019re experiencing now is the backlash to that very rapid cultural change we\u2019ve undergone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s also religious and often racial, and it\u2019s often White men making this articulation,\u201d Taylor said. \u201cThe trend lines are toward a cultural retrenchment of forces in American society that feel like they\u2019re losing power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Christianity and the manosphere find commonality is in male entitlement, especially where Christian nationalism<\/a> \u2014 the idea that Christian people and biblical law should govern American life \u2014 overlaps with evangelicalism, said Sheila Wray Gregoire, a former evangelical whose \u201cBare Marriage\u201d podcast<\/a> explores the marital and sexual satisfaction of evangelical women in the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the idea that men are meant to have authority over women and women are supposed to serve, especially sexually,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s very little light between the two.\u201d<\/p>\n

Taylor said two major ascendant far right Christian movements in the U.S. heavily overlap with the manosphere, both of them highly patriarchal.<\/p>\n

First, he said, are traditionalist Catholics. Second are reformed reconstructionist Christians, which he describes as a basically Calvinist, largely evangelical world of pastors and preachers, many of them young with well-groomed beards \u2014 the so-called TheoBros.<\/p>\n

One preacher’s rise illustrates the phenomenon<\/p>\n

While the Christian manosphere is largely an evangelical phenomenon, it’s also taken root in conservative Catholic and Presbyterian circles, smaller denominations and independent churches, said Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University, a private Christian university in Grand Rapids, Michigan.<\/p>\n

The rise of Idaho pastor Wilson, now in his early 70s, illustrates how fringe evangelicalism has seeped into the mainstream over time, she said. By 1998, when Wilson co-founded the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches, he was still an outlier who held benign views of American slavery and mocked evangelical megachurch leaders he would ultimately parody as spineless \u201cEvangellyfish\u201d in a novel of the same name.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the surface, he was not well connected,\u201d said Du Mez, author of \u201cJesus and John Wayne: How White Christian Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation.\u201d \u201cHe had set up his own outpost in Moscow (Idaho) and started a church, school and publishing house.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s rising profile, Du Mez said, was boosted by a podcast following of homeschooling families and impressionable young men, endorsements from old-school patriarchs like Protestant preacher John Piper<\/a> and attention from commentator Tucker Carlson<\/a> and the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Canon Press, the publishing house he founded, published \u201cThe Case for Christian Nationalism\u201d while Wilson himself has criticized<\/a> women\u2019s voting rights as harmful to male-headed families.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has emerged as one of the primary spokespeople for a rightwing, highly patriarchal, politically incorrect Christianity that aligns quite closely with the MAGA agenda,\u201d Du Mez said.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s bombastic and irreverent approach are also characteristic of the manosphere, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe gives his listeners permission to set aside proprieties and civility, to say it like it is,\u201d Du Mez said. \u201cHe\u2019s famously curmudgeon-ly and combative, and that tone and mood are having a moment. He\u2019s kind of the grandfather of this in Christian spaces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson and his Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches \u2014 a network which Hegseth\u2019s Nashville-area church has since joined \u2014 have since launched a church<\/a> and school in Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey want a position from which to shape the Trump administration and exert their influence,\u201d Du Mez said.<\/p>\n

Are TheoBros really separate from the manosphere?<\/p>\n

As notions of Christianity-supported gender equality gained acceptance in the 1970s and 1980s, Ingersoll said, Piper and other conservative evangelicals formed the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in response. That led to the 1991 publication of \u201cReclaiming Biblical Manhood and Womanhood,\u201d an influential book of essays co-edited by Piper that advocated complementarianism.<\/p>\n

The principle is popular among conservative denominations like the Southern Baptist Convention, which in recent years has disfellowshipped<\/a> prominent churches that have installed women pastors.<\/p>\n

\u201cMen who want to feel important are gravitating toward evangelical churches because they\u2019re being told, this is what God wants for you and you don\u2019t have to do anything except be a man,\u201d said Gregoire, the podcaster and former evangelical. \u201c\u2026. This is the only place in society where they can find that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ingersoll said that while selective Bible verses are often used to justify patriarchy, \u201cI don\u2019t think people read the Bible and then conclude how they should be. I think people are a certain way and then read the Bible in a way that fits with how they are\u2026. Their perspective on how the world should be comes first.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why, she said, the TechBros and TheoBros have much in common \u2014 because they start from the same hierarchical worldview.<\/p>\n

Ingersoll points to Vice President JD Vance as an illustration of the overlap. Vance\u2019s political rise was funded in part by Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal whose views on women<\/a> have come under scrutiny. But the vice president\u2019s religious views, she said, align with Catholic Integralism, a political ideology that blurs the lines between church and state and frowns on religious pluralism.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see all those things coming together in him in an amalgam,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t see the Christian patriarchal TheoBro world as something separate from the manosphere; I see it as part of it. They really are the same group of people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Du Mez also cited Jordan Peterson, a secular figure with a YouTube following of more than 8 million, as someone instrumental in the rise of the Christian manosphere. Peterson\u2019s messages about masculinity<\/a> have found an audience among young men seeking direction and prompted soul-searching among Christian podcasting pastors.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was held up as an example to say, we should be in those spaces,\u201d Du Mez said. \u201cLike, \u2018he\u2019s not one of us, but he\u2019s saying real truths.\u2019 So the overlap has been around a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many of these podcasting pastors draw the line at radically misogynist figures like Andrew Tate, the former social media influencer now under investigation in Romania on accusations including of human trafficking and organized crime. Tate has denied the claims. But while they see Tate as overtly abusive, crass and profane, Du Mez said, \u201cit doesn\u2019t mean their listeners are drawing the same line.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson and Webbon told USA TODAY that scripture provides safeguards against toxic behavior. The Bible, Wilson said, “requires husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and this is a standard that we hold the men to. If a husband veered into the kind of toxicity that is on display in some of those quarters, he would be disciplined by our church.”<\/p>\n

Webbon agreed, saying “abuses must be prevented by using scripture as our guide.”<\/p>\n

“The manosphrere is correct in much of their diagnoses of feminism, but they offer no biblical solutions,” he said.<\/p>\n

Reversal of Roe v. Wade ‘just the start’<\/p>\n

Gregoire said her research has found higher divorce rates and lower marital satisfaction among married couples with ideals of male hierarchy. Meanwhile, Sons of Patriarchy<\/a> is a podcast focused entirely on stories of intimate partner abuse in Doug Wilson-influenced churches nationally and globally.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat happens when biblical patriarchy, Christian nationalism, and a theology of authority and submission become the pillars of a movement?\u201d the podcast\u2019s tagline asks.<\/p>\n

But some see broader social dangers at work as such ideology creeps into national politics.<\/p>\n

Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an Albuquerque-based group that supports religious freedom for U.S. military members, said the misogyny of Christian nationalism \u201cwants to replace our democracy with this barbaric version of Christianity, and an essential part of that is male dominance\u2026 It\u2019s right out of Handmaid\u2019s Tale<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Consigning women to the home has socioeconomic effects, Ingersoll added, limiting their ability to act should a marriage turn sour or harmful and cutting them off from retirement benefits that reward a paid career.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s talked about as a complementary, equal contribution to the life of the family, but in monetary terms it\u2019s not recognized as that,\u201d she said. \u201cSo women are at a real disadvantage when they\u2019re older and have less Social Security because they didn\u2019t work outside the home.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ingersoll cited Hegseth\u2019s testimony when he was grilled as a nominee about his views about women in the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid he say women shouldn\u2019t be in the military?\u201d she said. \u201cTechnically not; he said women shouldn\u2019t be in combat. But if you think about it, the way you get promoted to the highest ranks, the way you get the training to go on to other jobs like being a pilot \u2014 if women can\u2019t be in combat they won\u2019t be able to get to those positions because that\u2019s the mechanism by which they get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The America envisioned by the Christian manosphere, Ingersoll said, is \u201cincredibly dangerous to the gains that women have made in terms of equality over the last half-century. Roe v. Wade overturning was just the start. These people want women having as many children as possible. They want to ban birth control…. It\u2019s putting a certain segment of society back in charge of everything and sidelining everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The rise of the manosphere, with its call for a return to traditional gender roles, reflects a backlash…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5311],"tags":[7480,323,27437,17771,142103,15350,142104,8519,142101,142105,577,5566,130755,33462,3823,142100,11672,23741,6584,14233,3577,5179,6591,457,8528,32245,602,5494,73332,285,8547,17774,32314,10022,17775,4678,133944,142107,1426,8527,142102,142106,5181,49,5178,142108,978,659],"class_list":{"0":"post-413607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-advocacy","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-baptist","11":"tag-belief","12":"tag-carlson","13":"tag-christianity","14":"tag-convention","15":"tag-enabled","16":"tag-evangelical","17":"tag-evangelical-christianity","18":"tag-florida","19":"tag-gender","20":"tag-gender-issues","21":"tag-hegseth","22":"tag-highlights","23":"tag-ideologies","24":"tag-issues","25":"tag-masculinity","26":"tag-negative","27":"tag-north","28":"tag-of","29":"tag-overall","30":"tag-overall-negative","31":"tag-people","32":"tag-people-u0026-society","33":"tag-pete","34":"tag-pete-hegseth","35":"tag-political","36":"tag-political-ideologies","37":"tag-politics","38":"tag-religion","39":"tag-religion-u0026-belief","40":"tag-sexism","41":"tag-social","42":"tag-social-issues-u0026-advocacy","43":"tag-society","44":"tag-southern","45":"tag-southern-baptist-convention","46":"tag-story","47":"tag-story-highlights-ai-enabled","48":"tag-tucker","49":"tag-tucker-carlson","50":"tag-u0026","51":"tag-united-states","52":"tag-university","53":"tag-university-of-north-florida","54":"tag-us","55":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}