Is the culture downstream from religion, or is religion downstream from the culture? This question feels increasingly difficult to answer as each year passes since I left Christian fundamentalism.

There’s undeniable synergy between the two. We are seeing firsthand Christian language being mainstreamed in a way that it hasn’t been for decades. Ads about Jesus are running several times during sporting events like the Super Bowl. Hell, even the Secretary of War Pete Hegseth is quoting Bible verses during Pentagon worship services (what a sentence!). Of course, sometimes those verses are written by Quentin Tarantino, but that’s neither here nor there.

The rise of Christian vernacular is perhaps most noticeable in discussions surrounding masculinity. It is in this area, first and foremost, that I see the “fringe” perspectives of my youth being mainlined.

I was raised a Christian fundamentalist. In a technical sense, to be a fundamentalist means to affirm “the fundamentals” of the Christian faith, such as the inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, and the deity of Christ. In practice, though, the version I grew up in had an entire culture and lifestyle that went beyond basic Protestant theology. We went to church three times a week, craved old-fashioned “fire and brimstone” preaching, fought culture wars, and intentionally kept separate from the world and its temptations. We didn’t drink, didn’t dance, didn’t go to movie theaters, didn’t allow women to wear pants, and would never be caught using playing cards—for fear that someone might walk by and think we are gambling. We wanted to be “set apart.” A “peculiar people” as 1 Peter 2:9 says. And peculiar we were, indeed. 

Growing up surrounded by pearl-clutching, puritanical fundamentalists who preached against the “movie-house,” the “tap-house” and the “whore-house,” it feels strange to say that there is any similarity between the messages I grew up in and the messaging of the “manosphere.” Yet, there is.

In most of fundamentalism, patriarchal theology could be crudely summed up with the playground taunt “boys rule, girls drool.” This is not to say that women do not have their place in Christian fundamentalism, they do, but that place is underneath a man. In the umbrella of protection popularized by Bill Gothard, a minister and the founder of a particularly harsh fundamentalist Christian organization, the ranks within the chain of command were simple — God, then Pastor, then husband, then wife, then children. Those last two have little distinction between them. Women have little, if any, opportunities to act autonomously, pursue careers, or make decisions for the family. Men are inherently more valuable than women and hold all the power, simply by the merit of — as influencer Monte Mader put it on my podcast — having penises. By contrast, women are valued simply by their ability to be desirable yet chaste, and then to marry and birth children.

When I started hearing clips from podcasts featuring manosphere influencers, I felt like I was back in a church pew again. Sure, there is more profanity, more cigars, and more supercars, but the core doctrines remain the same. Hearing talk about high value women (code for attractive virgins or low body count “females”), avoiding 403s (slang for hoes), and men needing to lead because they are evolutionarily superior is just more of the same.

Let’s compare two messages about women, one from one of the biggest names in the manosphere, and one from an Independent Fundamental Baptist megachurch pastor.

In 2023, influencer Andrew Tate shared a post to Twitter that seems to sum up his view:

“Women are born with innate power. A form of magic. But every time somebody fucks them… they give some away. He takes it. That’s why the most powerful men have slept with endless women. And the least magical women have slept with endless men.”

Almost a decade earlier, Pastor Paul Chappell shared a similarly misogynistic message from behind his pulpit.

“One wonders whatever happened to purity. Whatever happened to that? Whatever happened to the days when girls said, ‘I’m not going to be touched by every guy. I’m not going to walk down the aisle like a filthy dishrag on my wedding day.'”

Sex educator Erica Smith pointed out on my podcast “Preacher Boys” that “dishrag” is a particularly harsh example because it doesn’t even refer to something that was pretty to begin with — unlike other common purity culture examples like crumpled roses, chewed gum, or licked cupcakes. All brutal metaphors for the supposed loss of value women experience when they have sex.

Ironically, in both the manosphere and fundamentalist christianity as much as women are vilified for having, let alone desiring consensual sexual intercourse, women are also expected to be willing vessels for their husbands 24/7. They are to be the ones who allow their husbands to take out their lust on them, lest they stumble.

One of the clearest examples of this in my religion came when I confessed to my youth pastor that I was struggling with the “sins” of lust and pornography. His advice to me was to try my best to avoid temptation, but that I would turn 18 soon and could get married, so then “I could use my wife” instead. This unnamed future wife’s role was reduced to being a human sex doll I could finally use for my non-sinful sexual release. 

It’s a confusing message for fundie men to digest: women are the cause and cure for all that ails you.

With this messaging being so popular in both camps, two things feel unsurprising to me. First, that young men are experiencing a “loneliness epidemic” in secular culture. I can’t imagine many girls grow up hoping to live a life that feels like a cross-over between The Stepford Wives and The Handmaid’s Tale. For many, they’d rather avoid the headache—can you blame them? Second, I am unsurprised that young men are being drawn to religion at a much higher rate than young women. As a former fundie, I can’t help but notice that Gen Z men seem to be drawn to Christianity more for the alpha, aggressive, patriarchal aesthetic of its religious offshoots than they are the teachings of Jesus — a humble and compassionate Savior — himself.

In an April 2026 New York Times article, Ruth Igielnik and Ruth Graham report, “A new Gallup survey adds muscle to those anecdotal reports. The poll finds a sharp rise in the share of men under 30 who say that religion is ‘very important’ to them: 42 percent in 2025, from 28 percent in 2023.” This stands in stark contrast to women in the same age demo, where only 29 percent responded that religion was “very important” to them.

I have spoken to hundreds of disenfranchised women as part of my research for my podcast and the commonalities among those who have left the church are difficult to ignore. Many have been abused at least emotionally — but often also financially, physically, and sexually as well. If they have not themselves, they know someone close to them who has been. Rather than the church offering solace and protection, it quickly revealed itself to be little more than a boys club that protects abusers and shovels shame onto their victims. While Christian pastors speak against woke Hollywood (or “Hell-ywood” as it can be colloquially labeled), there are plenty of Harvey Weinstein-esque peers preying on vulnerable women while other male leaders turn a blind eye.

In fundamentalist spaces, stories of men doing the right thing are, unfortunately, few and far between.

I spend a lot of time reporting on fundamentalism and hearing about its abuses, so much so that I can’t help but ask an age-old question: where have all the good men gone? The answer slaps me back across the face. They spend Monday-Saturday consuming red pill podcasts, books (like “Why Women Deserve Less by Fresh” and Fit’s Myron Gaines), and social media posts featuring bald muscular influencers surrounded by bikini-clad women talking about “leveling up” as men. On Sundays, they shuffle into church pews where the messaging is repackaged with Biblical language — declaring the subjugation of women to be a God-ordained truth.

So, is the culture downstream from religion, or is religion downstream from the culture? I don’t believe one can honestly affirm either theory.

As countercultural as religious leaders might claim to be, their messages fuel those of the red-pill community, and vice versa. It’s a match made in hell.