Podcast Episode Details
Back to Podcast Episodes
The Dangers of "Pop" Religion (Girl Defined Case Study)
Malcolm and Simone discuss the downfall of the Girl Defined sisters, who preached conservative Christian values but ended up disillusioned and unhappy. They argue this shows the risks of "pop religion" - churches promising secular pleasures rather than meaning. They say this led the sisters to see their unmet expectations as a betrayal. Simone and Malcolm advise religious communities to explain the emptiness of secular values rather than try to "out-compete" progressive culture. They believe this outrage marketing approach backfires by making congregants obsessed with what they're denying themselves.
[00:00:00]
Malcolm: When they're protecting their kids, you're not just protecting your kids from you know, if you're in a conservative religious family, you're not just protecting your kids from these, these secular influences. Right. You also need to watch out for pop Christianity.
The people who come in, it was their live, laugh, love signs. And Well, you know what I'm talking about, right? They, they are just, and they can be just as negatively seductive of your kid's expectations as any other group, which then leads them to turn against the family.
Would you like to know more?
Malcolm: Hell, hello, Simone. So I walked in on my wife, Steve, when she's working, she likes to listen to stuff in the background. And one of the things that she loves to listen to is drama. She loves to listen to progressive like far progressive YouTubers comment. On conservative YouTubers or conservative personalities in [00:01:00] negative ways because she, I guess, fantasizes about one day they pick up us and the part
Simone: of me, I want to preemptively understand how people will critically view our.
Lifestyle and choices and stances. I think it's helpful to
Malcolm: understand that. And I saw one that really interested me because it was on people who even I used to be aware of. As girl defined. Yeah, I was like, oh, I remember these guys. These were the hot young people who were all about, you know, chastity and waiting till marriage for a guy and everything like that.
And and, and, you know, the sexualization of young women and how to fight against that. And. A lot of those are messages that, you know, actually resonated with me a lot. Yeah. I mean, they were, they were Fundy Christians and, and I identify with Fundy Christianness, you know, fighting back against the man in society today because they're definitely not the group in power right now.
But you know, when I was younger, as a lot, I was consuming their, their video as well from like early secular atheist YouTube, because that was like the big thing on YouTube, the atheist[00:02:00] whatever debate, and they were always ragging on Girl Defined, so I also got their perspective from that end back then, and people didn't really seem to have anything on them, not, not that, that I thought was super bad.
Back
Simone: in the day, you mean. Yeah. Back in the day, back in the day. It was just, how very dare they. Yeah. How
Malcolm: very dare you say women should live by conservative values. So anyway this documentary we'll, we'll post it here cause they go into like enormous depths. Their lives got sad, like really sad when I, when I follow, when you follow what happened to them afterwards and they got sad in a way that I wouldn't have.
predicted, but in hindsight makes perfect sense. And it really highlights a problem. You know, a lot of people, when they look at what we're doing and they're like, well, you can just go back to the old ways of doing things, right. And that will protect you because that used to work. But unfortunately we are dealing with memetic viruses that are even specialized at spreading within churches now.
And the [00:03:00] secular world can twist norms that you don't realize in
Published on 2 years, 2 months ago