Mother Jones illustration; Brynn Anderson/AP

You probably saw the cartoon that went viral before the election: A long line of women enter the voting booth wearing handmaiden-esque robes and bonnets, only to emerge in slinky black dresses and take-no-bullshit pantsuits. Or the ads in which white women accompany their obviously GOP husbands to vote, blinking each other a silent signal of solidarity behind the men’s backs: “Actually, I’m with her.” The disobedient-trad-wives trope reflected Democrats’ conviction that Donald Trump’s misogyny and temperament—not to mention his relentless assaults on reproductive freedom and the rule of law—must be deeply, albeit secretly, alienating to many Christian women. All they needed was a Liz Cheney–size nudge to cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Not only did that notion turn out to be utterly deluded, it was “a profound misreading” of how Christian women view themselves and their role in American society, says sociologist Katie Gaddini—a mistake that helped cost Harris the presidency and could resonate throughout US politics and policy for years to come.

On election night, Gaddini, an associate professor at University College London who studies Christian women in US politics, was at San Francisco International Airport, boarding a red-eye to Virginia to do research for her next book, due out in 2026. “Trump had just won Georgia,” she recalls. “It was like a funeral in that airport. Faces were drawn. It was silent.” When Gaddini arrived the next morning at the far-right Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, Trump had retaken the White House, and the mood was euphoric. Decked out in MAGA gear, women students were just as thrilled as the young men—maybe more so. “They felt like this was God’s will,” Gaddini says. “He has spared the nation by giving us Trump. Even after we’ve made so many mistakes, He’s giving us one last chance to get it right.”

These young women aren’t just relying on Trump to transform the country into a Christian bastion—this is their fight, too. “A new generation of them are entering politics,” Gaddini says, “influencing and controlling this country.” Yet many on the left, she says, dismiss Christian women “as being kind of brainwashed, just servants to the patriarchy and not free-thinking,” thus minimizing both their agency and their effectiveness. Among progressives, “there’s an inability to see how intelligence and political acumen could lead you to a place of supporting Trump,” she adds. “And yet it has for millions of women, and they’re not going away.”

Gaddini’s mission is to “disrupt” that longstanding (and, she points out, “sexist”) narrative about Christian women and “understand them a little bit more generously.” And not just in the United States; Gaddini helps run a network of scholars studying religion and politics across the Americas and in parts of Europe.

I count myself among those who’ve never understood the appeal of Trump and the misogyny-fueled MAGA movement for women, especially young, religious ones, who I imagined would find the well-documented sexual misconduct offensive. In the wake of the November election, with its vast implications for reproductive and gender justice, I was more mystified than ever. But I was also deeply curious. So I reached out to Gaddini at her home office in Northern California, where she is a visiting scholar at Stanford University. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you become interested in Christian women in politics?

I have a personal connection. My father was a Baptist minister. I have two uncles, an aunt, and a cousin who are pastors as well. The Sacramento suburbs where I grew up are known as the Bible Belt of California. There is a huge conservative presence there—it’s very Republican and very evangelical.

There wasn’t any moment where I became conservative. It’s just what happened if you were a woman in this kind of environment. Then I left the faith, and my personal politics changed, but I’ve always had an interest in who I could have been if I had remained in that world—in the women who have stayed committed to conservative politics and have moved even further to the right.

What about the Trump effect?

When Trump won the presidency in 2016, I wanted to understand........

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