Few figures capture the rise and unraveling of the evangelical blogosphere era quite like Jen Hatmaker.
The author from Austin, Texas, was part of a wave of Gen X women whose blogs about faith and family became platforms of spiritual authority. Hatmaker’s laugh-out-loud storytelling and authenticity made her a household name among churchgoing women, and her viral reach turned into publishing deals, national speaking tours, and morning-show interviews.
Now, a decade later, Hatmaker no longer considers herself part of the evangelical networks and subculture where she rose to fame. Her latest bestseller, Awake, released this fall, tells readers about her trajectory from the stages of mainstay evangelical women’s conferences to the mainstream, spiritually adjacent spaces she now occupies. Hatmaker faced pushback for her stance on racial justice and her shift to affirm same-sex relationships. She eventually stepped away from the church, divorced, and has begun to rebuild her life.
And she’s not alone. In a recent interview, Hatmaker said that among a group of six friends from the Christian blogosphere, three had ended their marriages to ministry leaders they met in Bible college. Their departure from the evangelical speaking and writing world is part of a bigger shift in the Christian media landscape. Hatmaker still has a massive following, now in a niche alongside thoughtful, spiritually curious or spiritual-adjacent influencers whose content speaks to women around midlife (think Mel Robbins, Brene Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert—Oprah Winfrey was the prototype).
But the evangelical women’s blogosphere that once launched Hatmaker and her peers no longer exists—not in the broad, ecumenical, grassroots form of the 2010s. In its place, we see Christian influencers self-sorting by ideology, and young women now face a fragmented media landscape without the shared spaces that once defined evangelical womanhood.
In the 1990s and 2000s, national events and conference stops gathered evangelical women together and platformed high-profile speakers such as Christine Caine, Patsy Clairmont, Lisa Harper, and Luci Swindoll. In the same vein, The Belong Tour, affiliated with Women of Faith, and the If: Gathering brought Hatmaker and other popular voices onstage.
That model has collapsed. “COVID sort of broke everything,” said author Hannah Anderson. “Even before that, the conference circuit was disrupted by online life.”
And as online life has turned partisan, so have the evangelical women’s spaces that have emerged in recent years. Author Allie Beth Stuckey’s conference, Share the Arrows, drew 6,700 women to Dallas last month for an event branded not only as Christian but also as politically conservative.
The 33-year-old has 850,000 followers on Instagram and hosts the popular podcast Relatable. Her recent book, Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion—a New York Times best-seller—foregrounds Stuckey’s faith and conservative politics.
Stuckey told Religion News Service that the conference spans a “pretty narrow” scope of theology and politics, unlike other Christian women’s events that “dabble in social and racial justice.”
“This is probably one of the biggest Christian women’s conferences out there, too, and it’s only our second year,” she said. “I do think that tells us a little bit about where Christian women are headed.”
Popular influencers like Sadie Robertson Huff and Madison Prewett-Troutt have managed to build big personal platforms by leveraging reality television stardom into Christian content creation (Robertson’s family is featured on the show Duck Dynasty and Prewett-Troutt was a on The Bachelor). Robertson has spoken publicly about her support for Donald Trump; Prewett-Troutt has interviewed Stuckey on her podcast multiple times.
Across the Christian internet, creators and followers alike are sorting themselves ideologically, with less exchange and collaboration among them, according to Katelyn Beaty, editorial director at Brazos Press and former print managing editor of CT.
“There is less cross-pollination,” said Beaty, who is also the author of the book Celebrities for Jesus. “If you share and promote the work of someone who occupies the other end of the political spectrum, you are either giving cover to bigotry or you’re promoting a heretic.”
This sorting seems to be driven in part by followers’ demands for influencers to speak out on political issues and distance themselves from those who hold different views. That dynamic can sometimes push other creators to demonstrate a sort of “brand loyalty” toward a political or ideological group.
Women on the conference circuit before social media had an incentive to remain publicly apolitical, appealing to the broadest audience possible and focusing on faith formation, marriage, or motherhood. Today’s internet landscape, on the other hand, rewards controversial content. A Christian writer or speaker looking for her audience has every reason to lean into more divisive subject matter.
Plus, rather than the essays and blog posts that once drew in readers, Christian women are spending more time with short-form videos and podcasts, formats that lend themselves to polarizing takes and attention-grabbing personalities. Always-on platforms like Instagram allow followers to hear from influencers anytime and anywhere, strengthening parasocial relationships. They also allow influencers to build large followings without clearing some of the traditional hurdles in the publishing world or speaking circuit.
Hatmaker’s trajectory may not be an indicator of a widespread trend toward deconstruction among women in her age group, but it does demonstrate the complications that come with persona-driven influencers.
Recent data suggest that young women are leaving the church in larger numbers than young men, but there is also evidence that Gen Z is generally spiritually curious. As young evangelical women seek voices and resources to build their faith as independent adults, they’ll navigate a more polarized and volatile landscape than the one that allowed Hatmaker to find her audience.
For women writing for Christian audiences, the pull toward more extreme rhetoric is strong, said Christian speaker and author Heather Thompson Day. Still, she remains convinced that most readers aren’t as polarized as it seems on social media.
“When I go speak at a church, I get to hear how people are actually thinking,” she said. “I think the majority of people in the church are largely in the middle.”
While it may be the case that most readers don’t land in the extremes, it’s still getting harder for writers and content creators to find an audience without picking an ideological “side.”
Cultivating a more vibrant ecosystem of such resources may require evangelical women to intentionally give their attention to people who bridge differences and allow disagreement, but the current online climate fights against that.
“There is a quiet middle space with people trying to occupy it, but they are having a harder time than people who choose their camp,” said Beaty. “‘Living in the tension’ isn’t a great brand. There’s no incentive to say ‘I don’t know.’”
