Taylor Swift is Satan’s handmaiden? Who knew?

Hank Kunneman, a self-proclaimed prophet who claims Trump won in 2020 and markets prophetic merch, claimed recently that Taylor Swift practices “Satanic rituals and witchcraft.” No examples, he just says it’s obvious in her performances. And right-wing twit Jack Posobiec blames Swift’s influence for the pro-choice wins in the election because she mobilized “a childless, unmarried, abortion army.”

I think Fred Clark at Slacktivist nails it: “‘witch’ is just the word folks like Kunneman use for any woman who is not under their control. Swift is talented, famous, richer than even Kenneth Copeland, and doesn’t have to care what people like Hank Kunneman say about her. This terrifies them. If she scares them, and witches are scary, then she must be a witch. That’s just logic. I suspect Taylor lives in their heads for another reason as well — for the same reason that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez does. Because she’s pretty.”

In another post, Clark discusses an evangelical’s worry that Taylor Swift’s concert film is outperforming most evangelical movies because the single woman demographic is larger than married churchgoing women: “And who is to blame for all of that? For the fact that more people went to see the Eras Tour than God’s Not Dead XXIV, or for the fact that white evangelical churches are shrinking, or for the fact that the White People’s Party keeps losing elections? Single women are to blame for that. Unruly, disobedient, uppity single women. And who stands as a representative for all of those single women and the threat they pose to church and to state and to every God-ordained hierarchy? Taylor Swift.”

Single women do indeed upset lots of people on the right. Not just on the right, but as I’ve mentioned before, misogyny has become fundamental to conservative Christianity. They’re women without masters — er, husbands — and for some men that’s insufferable. Men must give commands; women must submit. Misogynist John Piper, for example, thinks women giving men directions when the man’s lost is a spiritual crisis — the man has to do what the woman says, which could destroy his soul! According to Jesse Lee Peterson, even listening to women talk about their feelings is a mistake (more of Peterson’s misogyny here).

Or consider Bill Shannon of the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors. The association has removed him from the approved counselor list because of accusations including:

• Instructing a woman to cosign a $50,000 loan for her husband without knowing what it was for.
• Refusing to believe the woman’s claim of her husband’s adultery despite her presenting credible evidence.
• Reprimanding the woman for attempting to remove her husband’s parental authority by wanting to call the police after he stuffed their children’s mouths with tissues to a degree that hindered their breathing.
• Refusing to assist the woman after her husband left her to live in a home she didn’t know he had.
• Threatening church discipline on the woman after she filed for divorce.

The minister at Shannon’s church says “God has designed that men be given the position of authority, and women the position of submission. … A woman, whether she is married or single, must recognize the fact that in general, as a woman, she must have a spirit of submission to all men.” As with Bill Gothard’s church in Shiny Happy People, it’s easy to see how this could lead a man in a position of authority to abuse it. Ditto when the minister, John MacArthur, says flat out that they won’t respond to claims of abuse: “When someone comes to bring a formal public accusation against an elder or a pastor, we are not to listen to that. We are not to entertain that. We are not to investigate that” (sound familiar?).

Complementarians insist and may genuinely believe that they’re assigning women and men their rightful roles based on serious Biblical study. But as I pointed out recently, there is no single, obvious, clearly right biblical worldview. And just possibly having a group of men review gender roles and decide they get all the power and authority while women handle the cleaning and childcare is not an objective approach to analyzing god’s will.

For more examples of Christian abuse, there’s The Lord’s Ranch and Young Life. Though to be fair this isn’t unique to Christian institutions. Sure, church rhetoric can make it worse when it comes to institutionalizing the abuse but judges sexually abuse their staff and prisons are a breeding ground for rape and abuse. What matters is the system’s willingness to make abuse, harassment and assault unsafe in any station.

All organizations are fallible this way; lots of organizations fail to do the right thing. I think religious organizations that fail are particularly bad because like MacArthur above they can institutionalize tolerating abuse as not only standard practice but morally the right choice. And then pat themselves on the back for being holier than thou. But the problem isn’t confined to them.For more on both secular and religious misogyny, Undead Sexist Cliches is available as a Amazon paperback, an ebook and from several other retailers. Cover by Kemp Ward, all rights remain with current holders.