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 a, in a way where you don't realize your norms have been twisted. And so you think you're following a traditional conservative way of doing things, but really. Your view of the world and what you should be aiming for has become so twisted that when you apply this old way to this new world, everything begins to fall apart.

And this is what we saw happen with them, and it was Desperately sad to watch.

We could have the crumbs, just the bare crumbs of, of love and intimacy Um, for both of us and then just be like pretending like that that, that that's That's great.

Malcolm: So the first thing I would say is, is the one who's still really on, on media and stuff like that. Her marriage just seems to be both

Simone: terrible. See, let's, let's be clear. So the girl to find started out is basically two sisters who then subsequently got married and then [00:04:00] subsequently adopted slash had kids.

The, the, the sister that he is referring to is Bethany Thiel.

Malcolm: Well, and so they in one scene they were talking about With her husband. They were joking that they get in five fights a day, but like they don't fight that much, you know.

We only have, like, a couple fights a day, right? Right.

Malcolm: That's just for people who are like trying to like metric how many fights you should be getting in with your partner How many a year do you think we get in Simone?

Simone: We don't get in fights. I Any I I try to shirk out of doing something that we all collectively need to do for the greater good and then get mad at myself. And then you, you know, obviously are like the angel on my shoulder.

Malcolm: And then, you know, I might scold you'd be like, Simone, you know, you need to do this.

Simone: Yeah. And I guess people could say that looks like a fight. But it's more just like me being a coward.

Malcolm: Yeah, I, I mean, that does happen. But I'd say that we don't really have like fight fights at all. [00:05:00] And they would be having five a day and they both look like. Like they have on animosity at each other there's some

Simone: tension where they

Malcolm: talk about each other They seem to have genuine animosity towards their

Simone: partner But I think this is one of the reason why people love to hate watch girl defined Associated videos in the beginning like at first people would hate watch because it seemed like the two sisters really hated each other And and now you hate watch because you seem it seems like Bethany and her husband

Malcolm: just the question is if she's following conservative values How did she end up, because these values existed for a long time to build strong relationships.

How did she end up in such a brittle and weak relationship? How did she end up with all of this animosity if she was following the rulebook? You know, and she made sacrifices to follow the rulebook. The other thing you see is she went from this, you know, women shouldn't have to work things, to now everything's a side hustle.

You know, because she felt unfulfilled. This was another area where she began to like, go back. And I actually don't think that this... This is due to a different problem, so we'll get to it. And then the [00:06:00] final thing that you keep noticing throughout all of this is she, and this actually does great at highlighting what the real problem and where she really failed was.

She spent her entire youth preaching to people that if you wait for marriage until having sex, like this whole chastity thing, if you don't sexualize women, you can achieve better sexual satisfaction. Then even you can, if you go live life like a secular person, if you go into secular society and you do all the secular things,