When evangelicals talk about “radicalization,” the conversation usually runs in one direction: young men. However, a more consequential reality has been quietly taking shape in both our society and within the church. While young men are drifting to the right or holding steady, young women are racing leftward at an unprecedented pace. The result is a widening gulf not only in politics but in basic moral reasoning. If we care about the future of our society and the health of the church, we need to talk about the radicalization of young women.
The exit polling in the most recent election reveals a striking pattern: young women are often the decisive voting bloc for the most radical progressives. In multiple contests, women ages 18-29 supported extreme left-wing candidates by significant margins while young men displayed far more divided or even conservative leanings.
Consider two recent races. In New York City, 81 percent of young women reported voting for Zohran Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist with documented ties to radical Muslim activists, who has supported defunding police and closing jails, was endorsed by Planned Parenthood for his abortion absolutism, and co-sponsored LGBTQIA legislation that strips biological sex from legal identity.
Meanwhile, in Virginia, Jay Jones carried women voters by twelve points in the Attorney General race, even after verified text messages surfaced in which he fantasized about the violent death of his political opponent’s children. Multiple news outlets authenticated the texts, and yet the support from women held firm. By contrast, Jones lost among men by eighteen points.
Study after study has found that young women have become significantly more liberal, with the political differences between young men and women more than doubling in recent years. It might be tempting to dismiss this as a problem confined to secular culture. Tragically, the evidence shows that a similar ideological shift is occurring among young women who profess to be Christians.
Recent analysis from Ryan Burge highlights this trend with startling clarity. Among 18–24-year-old Christians, 54 percent of women said that “acceptance of transgender people is a positive change.” Only 29 percent of men agreed. Likewise, young Christian men born in the 2000s are slightly more conservative on homosexuality than those born two decades earlier, while young Christian women in the same cohort are dramatically more progressive. The divide appears across issues: young Christian women are consistently more supportive of abortion, same-sex marriage, and broader LGBTQ+ acceptance than their male peers. The data tells a sobering but straightforward story: the youngest generation of Christian women is being radicalized.
Femininity Corrupted by the Fall
Why is this happening? Cultural drivers are easy enough to name. However, the deeper issue is theological. God designed women with wonderful strengths: compassion, nurture, relational sensitivity, and a heightened instinct to protect the vulnerable. These are good gifts of creation. But like every human faculty, these strengths have been corrupted by the fall. Scripture warns that women are particularly vulnerable to deception and to being led astray by misplaced affections (1 Tim. 2:14; 2 Tim. 3:6–7; Gen. 3:1–6; see also Titus 2:3–5; 1 Pet. 3:1–6). When detached from the authority of Scripture and the goodness of the created order, empathy becomes a solvent of truth.
Bad actors of both genders have discovered that the natural strengths of women can be co-opted and hijacked for nefarious purposes. Simply observe the political double-speak that has become so commonplace: abortion is reframed as healthcare, homosexuality is relabeled as love, and transgenderism is celebrated as authenticity. In each case, God’s law is set aside in the name of what feels compassionate. The moral calculus becomes not whether something is right, but whether someone might feel hurt if it is named as sin.
From the push for women’s ordination to the normalization of homosexuality, the strategy has been to weaponize the empathy of women against the clarity of Scripture.
Theological liberalism has often advanced through this path. From the push for women’s ordination to the normalization of homosexuality, the strategy has been to weaponize the empathy of women against the clarity of Scripture. Once Christians refuse to call sin what God calls sin, the ground is ceded. We are living through the latest iteration of that strategy, and the stakes are higher than ever.
A God-Given Remedy
What can be done? Praise God that Scripture has already given the remedy. The answer is not a new strategy, but the old path God Himself established. The remedy is the church.
Pastors: Shepherd with Clarity and Courage
Christ charged His undershepherds to preach the whole counsel of God, to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with complete patience and teaching (2 Tim. 4:2). Scripture places upon pastors the weighty duty of warning, correcting, and guarding the flock from deceptive doctrines and destructive ideologies. That charge includes naming the sins the culture (or the congregation) insists must never be named. A pastor cannot claim fidelity to Scripture while refusing to teach the parts that offend the most influential demographic in his church.
In contemporary evangelicalism, there is an unspoken rule that male-coded sins must be confronted aggressively, while female-coded sins are to be swept under the rug. The result is a selective silence that trains young women to assume that their feelings are inherently virtuous and that Scripture is concerned only with the sins of men. Pulpits thunder against the besetting sins of young men, and rightfully so. But the same level of concern is almost never directed toward the growing number of young Christian women who have embraced extreme progressive positions that reject biblical authority and reshape the moral imagination of the church.
Many pastors barely whisper about the very sins that young Christian women have come to embrace, such as homosexuality, abortion, and transgenderism; calling this pastoral abdication “winsome third-wayism.” Other pastors refuse to address what Scripture explicitly warns that women are susceptible to, including being deceived and led astray by passions (1 Tim. 2:14; 2 Tim. 3:6–7). In both cases, the silence is cowardly abdication. The result is predictable: young women are catechized more thoroughly by cultural narratives than by the church, and when their instincts of care are at odds with biblical teaching, the culture wins.
Shepherds who will not warn are neither gentle nor lowly. Rather, they show a cruel lack of concern for the souls under their care and an arrogant refusal to do what Christ has commanded of them. The call before pastors is to proclaim the whole counsel of God—not softening sermons to avoid offending women, but declaring the only truth that liberates them. When the pulpit is clear about God’s Word, women are protected from ideological captivity. Pastors must recover their courage and lead.
Husbands and Fathers: Disciple Your Households
God charges men to wash their wives with the water of the Word (Eph. 5:25–26) and to raise their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). God expects men not merely to lead, provide, and protect, but to teach. A man is responsible for the spiritual formation of those under his care, including and especially his wife and daughters. He cannot pawn off this responsibility on women’s conferences or the latest book from LifeWay.
Yet in many Christian homes, men have indeed ceded spiritual leadership. The unspoken assumption is that women are spiritually safe by default, morally intuitive, and self-corrective. Meanwhile, the world is discipling our wives and our daughters relentlessly. When men do not disciple their households, someone else will inevitably do so.
A man who leads like Christ, opens the Scriptures, prays with his wife and children, guards the home from corrupting influences, and refuses to let the world shape his family’s affections becomes, by the grace of God, a fortress.
A man who leads like Christ, opens the Scriptures, prays with his wife and children, guards the home from corrupting influences, and refuses to let the world shape his family’s affections becomes, by the grace of God, a fortress. Young women do not need men who stand back and admire their independence. They need men who love them enough to lead them into truth.
Older Women: Embrace the Titus 2 Mandate
God has given older women a beautiful and necessary calling: to train younger women in biblical womanhood. Titus 2:3-5 is not a suggestion; it is a command. Older women are to teach younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their husbands, so that the Word of God may not be reviled. This kind of discipleship is intensely practical and profoundly theological. It is women embodying and commending the beauty of God’s design to the next generation.
Yet, in many churches, this mandate has been neglected or distorted. In some cases, older women have abdicated their God-given responsibilities to their younger sisters. In other cases, older women assume that their sole ministry to younger women must be leading a Bible study. While women’s Bible studies can be fruitful in the proper context, Scripture assigns doctrinal instruction in the church primarily to the elders who labor in preaching and teaching, and it places theological responsibility within the home under the husband’s leadership (1 Cor. 14:35; Eph. 5:25–26). Titus 2 does not move the teaching ministry from men to women. Even better, it gives older women a distinct realm of formation that only they can provide: modeling and imparting the lived shape of Christian womanhood.
The church needs something far richer than another book study or event. Younger women need older women who open their homes, not just their workbook. They need to see husbands honored, children loved, hospitality practiced, and joy in submission displayed. They need living examples that say, “This is what the beauty of holiness looks like in the rhythms of ordinary life.” A woman who quietly embodies the goodness of God’s design does more to destroy the lies of expressive individualism than a thousand podcast episodes. When older women take up the Titus 2 calling, they become spiritual mothers. And when younger women receive that ministry with humility, they inherit not merely information but a way of life.
Young Women: Take Responsibility
One of the most enduring lies of feminism is that women are simultaneously omnipotent and innocent. On one hand, feminism insists that women are autonomous, self-defining, and accountable to no authority but themselves. They need neither headship nor instruction—and certainly not from a man. On the other hand, the same ideology insists that women are perpetual victims who bear no moral responsibility for the consequences of their beliefs, actions, or desires. If they sin, someone else is to blame. If they rebel, the system made them do it. Women are told they are powerful enough to overthrow the created order, and yet too fragile to be held responsible for rejecting it. Scripture affirms neither lie.
The Word of God does not suppress feminine gifts; it orders them toward righteousness.
Young women must understand that they are not passive objects being acted upon by the world. Scripture never portrays women as exempt from moral accountability. From Genesis onward, God addresses women as responsible image-bearers whose obedience glorifies Him and whose disobedience has consequences. Christ calls every disciple—male or female—to deny self, take up a cross, and follow Him (Luke 9:23). The modern narrative treats young women as impressionable victims shaped by forces beyond their control. Scripture treats them as moral agents who must choose between truth and deception, between obedience and self-will, between the voice of Christ and the voice of the serpent.
In practice, many young women have accepted a secular anthropology that elevates feelings to the level of authority. Intuition and emotions become substitutes for revelation. But obedience to God’s Word is the only place true freedom can be found. The Word of God does not suppress feminine gifts; it orders them toward righteousness. A heart submitted to Christ learns to distrust fleeting emotions and cling instead to what God declares good, true, and beautiful.
A young woman taking responsibility for her discipleship means choosing teachers who tell the truth rather than voices who flatter. It means turning away from the algorithm and turning toward the ordinary means of grace. It means choosing the shepherding of pastors, the leadership of fathers and husbands, and the wisdom of Titus 2 women. A young woman anchored in this way will not be swept away by the currents of her age.
The Whole Church: Practice Covenant Accountability
A congregation is not a loose collection of private spiritual lives; it is a covenant body, called to build one another up in maturity so that we are not tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine and human cunning (Eph. 4:14). When Scripture commands believers to “exhort one another every day […] that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Heb. 3:13), it assumes active vigilance and mutual responsibility.
Yet modern evangelicalism treats any confrontation as inherently unloving. We have adopted the therapeutic creed of this age: never make anyone uncomfortable. The result is that many churches will watch young women embrace destructive ideologies and remain silent to preserve peace. We fear awkwardness more than apostasy. In practice, this means the most formative voices in a young woman’s life are on her phone, not in her church.
But covenant membership means shared responsibility. When a sister begins to adopt beliefs that contradict Scripture, or to approve of sin God condemns, the church must not merely “pray for her.” It must speak to her. Admonishment is love that refuses to let someone walk willingly toward danger. In a world that mistakes affirmation for grace, biblical correction is an act of courage.
The Church Must Fight for Her Daughters
The way forward is neither easy nor optional. Churches must speak plainly about what God has revealed, and Christian families must disciple their daughters with the same urgency often directed toward their sons. We need to teach with clarity that God’s design for male and female is not negotiable, that natural law is not malleable, and that compassion without truth is cruelty. Young women need to be shown that their instincts for nurture and care are not liabilities but gifts—when directed by God’s Word rather than by the spirit of the age.
This urgent problem is not simply about political divides. It is about the integrity of Christian witness and the future of orthodoxy. A generation of young women is being radicalized before our eyes. The church must recover its courage: teaching young women to embrace God’s good design for men and women, govern their compassion by Scripture rather than emotions, and remain loyal to Christ rather than the spirit of the age. The fruit of such faithfulness will be generations of women who do good, fear nothing frightful, and display the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight (1 Peter 3:4-6).
