Man, Fundies Are Not Having A Good Month

Christian musicians and Christ-fluencers are both caught up in major criminal cases.

Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash

Author’s Note: This is not intended to be an anti-Christian article. This is intended to show and highlight the horrible people who stole a religion, took a good message, and turned it into a hate machine. Support the teachings of Jesus, not the teachings of hypocrisy. (Jesus actually hated hypocrites.)

It’s always the ones you expect the most, ain’t it?

If you’re like me, you follow Christian fundamentalist culture quite a bit—primarily because it’s something you’ve been victimized by. Watching what fundies are doing helps me keep an eye on what kind of damage they’re doing and also helps me (in a weird way) heal by seeing I’m not alone.

Lately, quite a few fundies had major trip-ups with their reputations, their time in the spotlight, and even the law. It might be time to talk about what’s up.

Carver Bowers, a Christian fundie musician and online personality, was just arrested for child crimes.

via r/Fundiesnarkuncensored

For those not in the know, Carver Bowers was a popular Christian musician who had strong ties to the Evangelical influencer movement. He’s married to Haley Bowers, who also works as a tradwife/fundie influencer.

I think the charges say enough, right? Dude’s a creep.

His wife isn’t taking it too well. After putting her social media on private, she went public and spoke out in support of her husband. Haley did basically everything possible to blame Carver’s actions on anyone but himself—including victim-blaming and saying that it was the work of the devil.

via r/FundieSnarkUncensored

Somehow, I don’t think this public statement is going to go over as well as she thinks it will. (Author speaking to Haley: Girl, you know God might want you to run away from this dude, right? Martyrdom isn’t sexy, and it’s not something a loving god would expect of you.)

Most people don’t recognize Carver as a media personality, but you have to remember that this guy was an associate of the Duggar family. Yes, the same Duggar family that had that OTHER CSAM arrest.

It’s quite telling that Haley made it seem like this was so common among families when you think about it. After all, Carver was rumored to have been courting one of the Duggar girls before he married her. Perhaps there was something that went a little awry there?

Another major name in the Christian music scene has been outed as a creep, too.

Michael Tait, one of the other major names in Contemporary Christian music, was also just outed for sexually assaulting people. However, there’s another (totally foreseeable) twist here: he was into males.

Tait openly admitted that his time as a DC Talk singer and Newsboys frontman was a double-life filled with cocaine and alcohol online. Apparently, it was an open secret in the music industry.

I am not surprised.

I mean, he’s been photographed praying with Donald Trump and was known for calling Jerry Falwell his “white daddy.” Both of those characters are sketchier than an artist’s notebook. Birds of a feather, and all that.

As yet another blow to the fundie world’s reputation, the Minnesota congresspeople killer has been linked to the Evangelical world.

The man who killed those two congresspeople has been identified as Vance Boelter, a man who acted as a reverend of a right-wing, religious, conservative church. So, he obviously followed the teachings of Jesus when he killed two Democrats and compiled a hit list of 45 other politicians.

(Wait, isn’t that what Jesus said? Am I misremembering or did Jesus say, “Thou shalt not kill as long as it’s a GOP politician. Like, if it’s a leftist, a Democrat, or a brown person, it’s totally okay, dude.”?)

By now, the sheer number of conservative attacks carried out by “Christians” is starting to make it hard for Evangelical churches to maintain the appearance of being peaceful. This crime, in particular, may have serious consequences for our society as a whole.

These scandals are starting to pile up at breakneck speeds, each more damning than the last.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: good Christianity was hijacked by the worst type of people and it shows. For a very long time, the Evangelical world was able to cover up its scandals pretty well but that’s been changing.

When major names like DC Talk and Newsboys get dragged into the mud, it’s hard to cover that up. When groups like the Duggar family, who were held as the most wholesome Christian extremists ever, keep getting into horrific sex crimes that make most of us recoil in horror (and Haley say it’s common), that starts to sink in.

You can’t play holy and keep doing stuff like this and expect people to keep believing that you’re a moral authority. The mask is slipping. Victims of these people are starting to speak out more and more—and even if the media is reluctant to discuss it, social media is in an uproar.

Christian Evangelical culture has had a fall from grace in recent years, but this is different.

Lately, I’ve noticed something a little strange about the entire fundiesphere in general. In the past, fundies were able to create social media posts that showed a fairly plush lifestyle, subtle plastic surgeries, and a marketable, squeaky clean image.

In recent months, I’ve seen more and more signs of financial struggles in the Christian influencer world. The same can be said of the tradwife world. Even when they post content, it feels like they’re struggling behind the scenes.

Generally speaking, it looks like their brand deals are starting to drop. Some influencers even posted their earnings, showing a massive decrease in paying subscribers. Fundies are trying, harder and harder, to push ebooks, meetups and retreats—but I’m not seeing many people buying them anymore.

The reason why fundie influencer money seems to be slumping is pretty clear.

I’ll say it. The entire Christian fundie movement lost a lot of credibility. The fans who wanted to emulate them are starting to turn away from them. I mean, who really wants to hear how to be a doting mother from a woman whose husband assaulted a kid under 12?

This entire influencer circuit’s baseline was funded by right-wing organizations who wanted to recruit more “true believers” via social media. The fan money and brand deals only came because right-wing fundie groups pushed those influencers to fame and helped them market themselves as relatable, clean, family-oriented people.

Fundie (and Mormon) influencers were pushed heavily by GOP operatives because they made themselves look like perfect role models, or people who others should want to be like. They made giving up women’s rights look cool to impressionable young girls and made misogynistic Christofascism look appealing to certain men.

Their victims are speaking up. People who have been hurt by Christian extremism and Christofascist groups are warning others about these influencers. And with every warning, arrest, and discussion we get, more and more impressionable people start to see through their grift.

If influencers can’t keep people engaged and trusting in them, they literally have no value to their clients. In other words, the right-wing groups funding them won’t keep paying them if Christian influencers aren’t doing anything for their causes. No influence, no money.

It’s looking like many of these fundie influencers and Christian musicians are going to be out of a job soon.

So now that people are seeing the proverbial “man behind the curtain,” we’re going to see a lot of influencers struggle. Not for nothing, but even Jesus warned about using religion as a way to make money. Maybe those influencers should have read the bible a bit more.

I am so crispy.