Christianity

Christianity has had a lot of influence over centuries of American (and global) culture and politics, including on sex education, contraception and birth control, gender roles and ideas of marriage.

Trump’s Pronatalist Agenda Weaponizes Motherhood to Push Women Out of Public Life

The Trump administration is using one of the oldest tools of patriarchy—promising rewards for compliance—through a wave of proposed pronatalist policies designed to push women into motherhood and encourage them to give birth to more children.

A recent report by the National Women’s Law Center warns that these proposals are not random: They stem from an “obscure, dangerous, and increasingly influential movement of ‘pronatalists’” that are now dictating the Trump administration’s family policy. 

According to NWLC, there are two major groups of pronatalists: Silicon Valley tech elites, such as Elon Musk, who claim that “high-IQ” people like themselves should be having more children; and traditional conservatives, who advocate for pushing women back into stay-at-home motherhood.

Tradwives and ‘The People That People Come Out Of’

For the first time in years, the number of U.S. mothers with young children in the workforce is shrinking—over 212,000 women left between January and June 2025 alone.

Childcare costs, in-office pressures, and a cultural nudge toward traditional gender roles are pushing moms out, while men in power nod along.

Meanwhile, the tradwife movement parades its perfect, baked-from-scratch, filtered-life versions of domesticity online, making the impossible look effortless.

It’s absurd. It’s dangerous. And it’s time we stop letting the economy treat raising kids as invisible labor.

Of Course Trump Threatened Ballot Access on the 19th Amendment’s Anniversary

The 19th Amendment turned 105 this week. Instead of marking progress, we’re watching Trump officials entertain the idea that women’s right to vote is negotiable. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth amplified a pastor calling for repeal of the amendment, and when pressed, his office issued a half-hearted “of course” women should vote. We’ve seen this playbook before: Roe was safe, contraception wasn’t at risk—until both were.

Trump himself piled on this week, vowing to eliminate mail-in ballots and voting machines ahead of the 2026 midterms. He can’t legally do it, but the threat is the point. Combined with the SAVE Act, which could disenfranchise married women who changed their names, the message is clear.

The anniversary of women’s suffrage is not just history—it’s a warning flare. The right to vote is under attack, and the fight this time is for all the marbles.

Hegseth’s Tacit Endorsement of Disenfranchising Women Should Alarm Every American

Pete Hegseth’s church’s doctrine is clear: It teaches that wives should submit to their husbands and allows male church members to cast church votes for the whole household. Its co-founder Doug Wilson says that adopting the 19th Amendment—which granted women the right to vote—was a “bad idea.” 

When Congress returns in a few weeks, lawmakers should reject the SAVE Act—or be prepared to answer to millions of American women.

A Trump Cabinet Member Endorsed a Pastor Who Wants the 19th Amendment Repealed, and the Danger Is Growing

Once a fringe warning, the threat to women’s right to vote is now out in the open—and in the halls of power.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video on Aug. 7 with the endorsement “All of Christ for All of Life,” in which a far-right conservative pastor, Doug Wilson, co-founder of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), argued that women should not have the right to vote.

As Wilson told the Associated Press, “He was, in effect, reposting it and saying, ‘Amen,’ at some level.”

But a deeper dive into CREC reveals troubling gender politics where women cannot hold church leadership positions and married women are expected to submit to their husbands.

Sacrificing Women for the Church of Men: Medical Conscience Rights and Christian Hypocrisy

The Woman grew up in a small Christian town in northeastern Tennessee. Community values—kindness, compassion, love—are deeply cherished. She’s never moved; why would she? She enjoys the simplicity of her little community.

But the tide turns with a growing political movement seemingly predicated on bigotry and punitive, hypocritical morality. The news cycle churns frenetically, each day bearing more distressing confusion.

Her state representatives are unresponsive to your concerns, and she has a serious one: She’s pregnant and unmarried in post-Roe America, and cannot get care in her state. Legally, a doctor can decline to provide care for you.

She’s not trying to cause problems. But she’s terrified and she wants answers. How did we get here as a nation? And can we ever go back?

A grave truth transcends: Christian fundamentalism has insidiously inserted itself into American policy, perverting its own values to legalize discrimination.

Bigotry doesn’t always present as a Unite the Right rally or violence in our nation’s capital. Sometimes, it comes with a demure smile and a sweet, “It’s just my personal belief.” It’s still bigotry.

Biting, Throwing, Burning and Whipping Children Is Still Legal in Many Parts of the U.S. Why?

Growing up in an Orlando suburb, D remembers being stripped naked, bent over his parents’ laps and spanked with a plastic spatula that had “tough love” written on it in black Sharpie. This punishment persisted through D’s childhood, at times making it uncomfortable for him to sit the next day.

“Spanking evolved into things like grounding and taking things away, taking meals away, replacing meals with bread and water, kneeling on rice in a corner facing the wall,” says D, who asked to remain anonymous because he is afraid of retaliation from his mother for speaking out. Now 29 years old, D has permanent nerve damage and walks with a cane.

And while this abuse was emotionally and physically devastating, it was legal. This is because corporal punishment is legal nationwide inside the home and in public schools in 17 states. According to the World Health Organization, corporal punishment includes hitting, smacking, slapping and spanking children with a hand or an object such as a whip, stick, belt, shoe or wooden spoon. But it can also involve kicking, shaking, throwing, scratching, pinching, biting, burning or scalding children, as well as pulling hair, forcing children to stay in uncomfortable positions or forced ingestion.

Corporal punishment is illegal in 68 countries, with Thailand being the most recent to ban it. And since 1989, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has advocated for the end of the practice. But on American soil, it is estimated that over 160,000 children are subjected to these punishments at school every year.

Multiple studies suggest LGBTQ kids experience violence and emotional abuse from parents at a higher rate than their counterparts. “[Many parents] have this perspective that they don’t want their child to be LGBTQ, and that somehow this violence will help prevent them from becoming gay or trans.”

Built on Magic: Black Women’s Spiritual Legacy in American History

The “Black Feminist in Public” series continues with a feature on Lindsey Stewart, an associate professor at the University of Memphis, whose latest book, The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic, released this week. A native Southerner, born and raised in South Louisiana, Stewart draws on the literary and cultural traditions of Black women in this region, also highlighted in her first book, The Politics of Black Joy: Zora Neale Hurston and Neo-Abolitionism (2021). With our popular culture now learning to celebrate “conjure women”—from Beyoncé to HBO shows like Lovecraft Country and recent films like The Exorcist: Believer (2023) and this year’s Sinners, The Conjuring of America could not have come at a better time.

Ms.’ Janell Hobson spoke with Lindsey Stewart earlier this summer to discuss her latest book.

“So many of the things that we interact with in our daily lives have hidden origins. And Black people are not just Black people, but magic. … I’m interested in how Black women used magic, used conjure to create a sense of safety in their communities. It was a type of luck management.”

“One of the things I’m trying to do with this book is to debunk the scariness and the association with evil that comes out of conjure, because when you look at Black culture, it’s present in so many of the sayings, superstitions, and practices that we use everyday, even though it’s been rejected in these Christian spaces.”

“There’s another lineage of Negro Mammies, another story about Negro Mammies that’s powerful. They were amazing women. And one of the things I wanted to do with this book is help Black women get closer to their ancestors and release the shame about how we survived. These women were powerful.”

Why Is the Vice President Sitting Like That?

That awkward posture isn’t accidental. When Vance spreads his legs and plops down for an interview, he is directly addressing young men. He wants to prove that he’s just one of the guys, while also issuing a dire warning. “The boys,” he asserts, are under attack.

Advancements in women’s rights have always been followed by countermovements, each one lamenting, “But what about the boys?”

In reality, the cure for loneliness can’t be found in calling your friends the f-word or finding a “trad wife” who will stay in her place. It requires genuine relationships. It’s about having your feelings valued but with the equal expectation of emotional reciprocity. Behold and be held. That’s the deal.

Guys: You all, like all people, deserve to be loved. The problem is, the messengers who claim to be your friends are lying. Those guys don’t love you. They love their power over you.

Inside Liberty University’s Secret Maternity Home

Imagine you’re a pregnant teenager in 1972. Abortion isn’t an option, and you’re not ready to get married… so you might turn to a maternity home for unwed mothers. You’ll live there until the baby is born, then give it up for adoption to redeem yourself from the so-called sin of premarital sex.

On June 23, podcast studio Wondery released the new series Liberty Lost, which investigates the well-kept secret of Liberty University’s Godparent Home, which opened in the 1980s and is still operating today. In the podcast, reproductive rights journalist T. J. Raphael explores the history of the maternity home on the campus of Liberty University, a private evangelical college in Lynchburg, Va. There, staff members coerce young girls into surrendering their babies for adoption by affluent Christian parents in exchange for a full-ride scholarship at Liberty. 

“Maternity homes are on the rise,” Raphael told me. “There might be one near where you live, and maternity homes play a larger role within the wider antiabortion movement.”