Damned Christians

[Fake Messiah]

Divorced, destitute and left for dead — the dark side of tradwife life after 35

With her husband hailed king of the castle — almost rivaling the Holy Trinity between God the Father, the Son and Holy Spirit — Templeton, who married at age 26, eagerly abandoned her dreams of pursuing a career in art to, instead, satisfy her man’s every command.

From growing the family’s produce in her private garden to gussying up in sexy outfits and cosmetics before he came home from work, the brunette’s routine became that of an extreme 1950s homemaker: obeying, baking and baby-making.

It’s a regimen that most traditional, or “trad,” wives follow based on religious principles.

Unlike housewives, women who manage their households and raise kids as equals to their working spouses, tradwives often become subservient subordinates whose sole purpose is to please their partner.

But by 36, the mother of four found herself feeling like “a prisoner” in her marriage — which ultimately ended in the once-taboo “D” word.

And Templeton shared that her biggest challenge post-divorce was navigating life without a solid education, professional résumé or real-world experiences.

The New Jersey native is just one in the rising army of former tradwives who, after saying “I Do” to a life of submissive servitude in their late teens or early 20s, are now virally warning women about the not-so-Instagrammable dark side.

“At a certain age, I got to a point in the marriage where I was like, ‘Oh my god, is this really what I want to do with my life? What comes after this?” Templeton told The Post.

Of the tradwives who do stay in their marriages, she believes they have become “dead inside, and that’s why they’re not promoting the lifestyle like some of the young popular tradwives online.”

“[Older tradwives] are keeping their heads down, gritting their teeth and waiting to die because that’s all there is left for them. That’s their only escape.”

https://nypost.com/2026/07/07/lifestyle/...lifestyle/

[Fake Messiah]

I was raised as Christian pronatalist. The movement is white supremacist.

I wanted to be a Christian wife and mother. Five years later, I’d get my chance. Mentored by the calico-dressed trad wife, I would become pregnant nine times in 10 years, with five live births and four living children. I believed our lifestyle was nurturing and wholesome—devoted to God—and that when we suffered, we were aligned with Christ.

My mentor was among the first adherents of Bill Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles (IBLP) at our Southern Baptist megachurch. Bill Gothard, now 91 and currently in the news again due to his recent heart attack and subsequent coma, never married or had children.

Gothard often preached on the holy virtues of motherhood and procreation, teaching a patriarchal hierarchy known as the Umbrella of Authority (or Umbrella of Protection): husbands make all decisions, women submit, children obey. The hidden math was all-around us, along with sermons on the dangers of the Great Replacement—when immigrants and people of color would outpopulate whites, creating instability. White men must lead and protect; white women must provide as many godly children as possible. Our country’s salvation depended on it.

The ideology manifests in every part of practical household management, from gender roles and Bible study to nutrition. Young people were simply to trust God and have babies. Refusing to do so reflected weak faith.

In short order, concerns such as maternal health, affordability, desire, mental capacity, climate impact, or maturity were swept away. Taught to obey, we did, living the realities of high-control family life with unlimited babies behind closed doors.

I escaped patriarchal domestic violence in 2007. In 2026, Gothard is old and disgraced, having resigned from leadership in 2014 following allegations of sexual abuse. But I hear echoes on repeat now.

At the 2026 CPAC conference, activist Isabel Brown urged women to “have more kids than they can afford, before they think they’re ready,” a call echoed by Erika Kirk at the TP USA conference. I shuddered to hear it. I doubt most 20-year-olds today understand the history, dangers, or context of this message.

I sat through many sermons warning us about the dangers of mixed society and crime. The pastors and visiting theologians warned us of a time when whites would no longer be the majority. America would achieve racial balance between whites and non-whites by the mid 2020s, which would induce chronic instability and poverty. Other than godlessness, no other explanation was offered for this dire economic downturn, and no other solution was offered other than rapid procreation and conservative voting.

In retrospect, growing up in an affluent, white Southern evangelical church is what shaped me to accept the trad wife, quiverfull lifestyle. Now, in 2026, for the first time, white births are no longer the majority in the U.S., a study found.

While racial disparities and culture wars still top our headlines, the news can feel disconnected from the Christian trad wife and pro-natalist movements. But they’re not disconnected; they’re nesting, co-dependent ideologies, each needing the other to thrive. And they’re not new: what we’re experiencing today is less a regression and more of a rebrand, capitalizing on the same racist fears.

TP USA’s promotion of Head of Household voting is directly related to Gothard’s Umbrella of Authority, where the husband makes every decision for the home, including birth rate and vote. And, many of the same people pushing women toward bigger families also tend to support the SAVE Act, which would disenfrancise married women voters, the gutting of the Voting Rights Act and tough anti-immigration policies. Grow the white Christian patriarchal families, and shrink the electorate that can check them–I don’t think any of that is coincidental.

What I learned as a fundamentalist housewife in Christian patriarchy is that changing laws takes a long time; changing hearts and minds in a culture war is faster. The calico dresses may be gone. But the fear remains, and many white Christians are fighting against it by growing large white Christian families they aren’t equipped to raise or afford.

https://religionnews.com/2026/07/08/i-wa...premacist/

[Mister Agenda]

It's a diabolical plan, cunning in it's simplicity, but I don't think it will work out the way they think it will.

[Fake Messiah]

Christian church vows to fight tribal order to leave Wind River Reservation

As the Northern Arapaho Sundance ceremony was in its final day on July 5, Foundations For Nations Pastor Sarah Lucas stood before her congregation on the Wind River Reservation and suggested Native people should turn away from their traditional ways, calling them a false “idol.”

As Lucas ushered a handful of Native people up to the podium to tell their stories about how they rejected their traditional faith in favor of Christianity, she offered prayers that others do the same, that they “not be in any demonic activity.”

“The pipe cannot hear your prayers. It’s just a piece of material, right? And this is a cycle that they’re caught up in, and this is all they’ve ever known,” she said. “And the Lord is saying ‘Tear down the idols, tear down the altars, the idol worship.’”

As the video began circulating on social media, several hundred Native community members moved swiftly to protest, to demand that Foundations For Nations leave the reservation.

On Friday, church officials met with the Northern Arapaho Business Council and were told to leave the reservation.

But instead, Sunday services were held, and today, the Foundations For Nations Church had doubled down.

“We are standing firmly on the truth of the Word of God concerning idol worship. As many of you know, traditional practices here include the worship of the ‘old man pipe’ and prayers directed to ancestors,” the church wrote in a statement to its members, describing threats received since the July 5 sermon and saying the FBI and local law enforcement have become involved in the conflict.

“This brings us to a critical question: Should we compromise the Word of God for the sake of safety or to maintain peace with a people group? Our answer is clear — no.”

Backlash against the church has continued, and some have called on the tribes to invoke the “bad man” clause in their treaty with the U.S. government, which empowers the tribes to ban people from reservation land.

“As Natives we have been persecuted by these types of people since their immigrant grandparents came here. They forced that religion on us,” Chris Friday wrote on Facebook. “Talk to your grandparents who were beat, spit on, SA’d, tied up and locked in dog cages as kids. The nuns would wash their mouths out with soap and hold food from them. Starving them for days. Locking them in pitch black basements. These are some of the things I’ve heard from my late grandma. How [the] radicals would treat Native kids at the boarding schools. Their mindset isn’t far from this same mindset of beating the Indian out of the man.”

“For many Indigenous people, churches have been intertwined with colonization, cultural erasure,” wrote Lynette Grey Bull, who has been a central figure in the preservation of the Shoshone language. “If Creator made Indigenous peoples with our languages, cultures, ceremonies and identities, why should we be shamed for them? Why should an outside interpretation of Christianity require us to reject the very gifts Creator entrusted to our nations? … Sarah Lucas is repeating a traumatic history of the boarding school era, where our hair was cut, language removed and our babies were beaten if they did anything to identify themselves as their Native way of life!”

For some, the statements made by Lucas about the sacred Arapaho pipes were doubly offensive; the Arapaho creation story includes a great flood, with a man holding a pipe fasting and praying for land to remake the earth. The land returned under the pipe, which is today sometimes called “grandfather” or “grandfather pipe” and one of the tribe’s most sacred objects.

"Religion for us carries complex, heavy, and negative connotations, wrought by suffering, abuse, murder, rape, and the destruction of our traditional practices and way of life. This incident has the potential to further damage that already tumultuous relationship. The ability to further trust perceived outsiders with sacred knowledge and wisdom will never be approached the same again,” Jennifer Fienhold wrote of Lucas’ statements. “There is no coming back from what she said. If she truly values her relationship with the community, she will do the respectful thing and take her leave. I don’t mean from social media or from any future ceremonies, I mean quite literally pack her things and leave … Backflip, square dance, and yodel your apology all you want, the people already see you. And you aren’t sorry. What you are is the wrong fit.”

Many called for the church and Lucas to leave the reservation. While the protests were peaceful and featured speeches, drumming and singing, and circle dances, some commentary online included veiled or outright threats against the church and its leadership.

Those protesting Tuesday said they wanted a public apology over the controversial sermon and statements against the tribe’s traditional ways. “We want a public apology from them,” said Northern Arapaho Business Council Chair Keenan Groesbeck. “They still have the same ideology of their forefathers, you know: Kill the Indian, and save the man. We’re not putting up with that anymore. They need to remember they’re visitors on our reservation.”

https://wyofile.com/christian-church-vow...servation/

[Fake Messiah]

LGBTQI+ artists have been targeted for ‘insulting Christianity’. To queer people, this feels particularly cruel

A priest and two nuns walk into a bar. In Sydney this week, this wasn’t the setup for a bad joke but for a fiery culture war.

The bar in question is within a long-deconsecrated church, and the City of Sydney is considering an application for its redevelopment into luxury apartments. Divine Playhouse, which opened to the public last Wednesday, is a year-long queer-friendly and inclusive arts pop-up, supported by the New South Wales government and the City of Sydney.

The venue was conceived as an affordable and accessible space for Sydney’s artists, promoters and performers to create, experiment and find an audience. But Christian groups met the launch party with protests outside and, since images were shared of some of the performances – drag queens dressed as nuns, for instance – campaigners have demanded the return of $100,000 in state arts funding; an open letter calling on the government to apologise to the Christian community has gathered more than 5,000 signatures; and the venue’s Instagram account has been taken down due to complaints.

Now its lease is under threat, after the venue was issued a breach notice complaining that Christian beliefs have been “insulted and mocked”, and that Divine Playhouse must cease operating on the grounds of “offensive trade” and to prevent “public protests [that] are almost certain to occur and are likely to endanger members of the public”.

But beneath the debacle is a much more fundamental debate: a question about who gets to speak and, perhaps most importantly, whose offence carries the power to silence another’s voice.

We also know what it is to be offended. I was offended, for instance, when Lyle Shelton of the Family First party – who has added his voice to the protests – compared children raised by same-sex couples to the Stolen Generations. I was offended by his talk of “rented wombs and eggs for sale”, accusations that queer people are grooming children to believe in gender fluidity, and being told, yet again, that children need a mother and a father.

These are not isolated views. Some groups now campaigning against Divine Playhouse celebrated Israel Folau after he warned homosexuals that hell awaited them. They have amplified rhetoric describing queer culture as perverted.

I find those views profoundly offensive but I have never demanded church doors be closed or tried to control what is said from their pulpits. I have never suggested Shelton should be denied the taxpayer-funded salary he is seeking in the NSW parliament because I find his politics offensive. Nor have I demanded that religious organisations return the immense tax concessions they receive because I object to the speech they enable.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...uel-ntwnfb