In Episode 1 of Season 3 of Cultish, Andrew Sunkrant and Jeremiah Roberts of Right Response Ministries discuss Taylor Swift and her cult-like worship of the Divine Feminine. They discuss the cult's obsession with the pop star, and how she became a cult icon.
00:02:07.160Yeah, this is awesome. I feel like I should have brought like a different change of clothes.
00:02:10.700You're like every three episodes I can change.
00:02:12.600Yeah, that's true. That is true. That's the thing about going back to back to back.
00:02:15.840So for you guys who are listening, the way that we do this is we each season, we select our guests, we fly them out, and we record a whole season in two days.
00:02:25.080So we are sitting in these chairs for a while.
00:02:29.120We will be here all day today and all day tomorrow.
00:02:32.640And so, yeah, if you're like, man, these guys wear the same thing every single day.
00:02:37.120It's like, well, for us, it was, you know, one day.
00:02:40.200So basically, episode one through five, we'll be wearing one thing.
00:02:43.620episode six through 10, we'll be wearing something else. That's right. I just want to say too,
00:02:47.580you've been treating us so well. So thank you so much, man. This has been just a blast so far.
00:02:52.520Awesome. Well, we are honored to have you. Let's go ahead and hop into our first topic
00:02:57.860for episode one, the divine feminine. And it's not all about Taylor Swift, but we're going to
00:03:03.520use her as a case study because everybody recognizes the name, just about everybody.
00:04:14.220Like, is there any, like, unique angles or any legitimacy to it?
00:04:18.040And so, what I noticed is that there's a lot of people sort of in my sphere of just different Christian influencers, former New Agers that were sort of asserting that Taylor Swift is a witch.
00:04:28.340And I'm trying to think, okay, well, what's the by-point of what they're trying to say?
00:04:58.880she has sort of taken this, you know, shift into where her music has gotten like a lot more,
00:05:06.220I used to say like promiscuous, but a lot of the people who are talking about her being a witch
00:05:11.420has to do with some of the songs. Specifically, she had an album called Willow, and there's sort
00:05:16.320of this archaic symbolism where it comes across like she's doing something very like spooky,
00:05:21.500she's in the woods, and there's like torches, stuff like that. But what you end up seeing is,
00:05:26.860And now, not only that, recently, there's been a lot more people talking about her, people going to her concerts and supposedly experiencing amnesia.
00:05:36.460Like going, yeah, going to one of her concerts in the Ares tour and having no memory of it whatsoever.
00:05:43.320And it's one of the things where you have to be careful because there's been a lot of, we have had eras where people would sensationalize things.
00:05:51.660You think about the Salem, a lot of like the Salem witch trials, you have that.
00:05:55.120Also, I think a big part is the 1980s satanic panic, where you did have satanic ritual abuse is a real thing for sure, but there's a lot of things that were blown out of proportion.
00:06:07.380So I think you have to say, okay, what does Taylor Swift actually represent, and what is she actually tapping into that's relevant?
00:06:16.780Because a lot of the Christian influencers who are making the point that she's a witch, I think does sort of fall under, if you look at God's law, independent lines of testimony and witness, it would fall under sort of vague, arbitrary, circumstantial evidence.
00:06:32.840Just because someone is sort of talking about spooky things and spells and, you know, and having sort of that sort of imagery as cosplaying and putting on a witch costume doesn't necessarily mean they're actually practicing witchcraft.
00:06:47.900It's very, there's a lot of people reading into things.
00:06:51.960So I wouldn't, of all that I've seen of people making that assertion, I wouldn't want to be judged by that standard of arbitrary people reading into things.
00:07:01.960You can't use, while symbolism a lot of times does have meaning, you can't use that as the ultimate definitive point to say, hey, Taylor Swift, she's practicing witchcraft.
00:07:11.260She's definitively a witch, but there's things that we'll jump into that she does represent that would represent the spirit of our age, which we're going to get into.
00:07:36.980I think it comes from this innate idea that the woman is unequal or lesser than to man, and there must be certain things that need to be done, whether spiritually or in society, to make the woman of the same value of man, according to their own presuppositions, right?
00:07:52.800So Taylor Swift represents this idea of equality or equity with man.
00:07:59.340And I think that resonates with a lot of women in our society today.
00:08:03.160But in order to understand men and women, we have to have an objective standard of what
00:13:05.740And another of my favorite episodes is an entire episode devoted to The Greys.
00:13:11.720So, again, head on over to patreon.com forward slash Right Response Ministries and sign up for our silver tier, which is just $5 a month, and you'll be able to get all 10 of these episodes ad-free right now.
00:13:27.320And if you join us at the Gold Tier for just $10 a month, you'll get early access, ad-free for the full 10 episodes, plus an additional live stream that I and the guys who join me for this series, that's Jeremiah Roberts and Andrew Sunkrant, the three of us will be doing live streams where we'll be taking questions from you, our Gold Tier Patreon members, and providing for you the best answers that we possibly can from the Word of God.
00:13:55.800So don't delay. Go to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries and become a supporter today.
00:14:03.000Yeah. And I think a lot of the divine feminism, when we're thinking about their own personal presuppositions, if we're thinking more of the Gnostic realm, a lot of them believe in an androgynous God.
00:14:12.760Right. Right. That there's a spark of divine inside all humanity. And this spark of divine is male and feminine.
00:14:19.760So they have no, they have a blurred distinction between male and female.
00:14:22.800Us as people who believe in biblical Christianity and true objective standards of male and female, one created first, the other created to be a helpmeet, believe that they're different, right?
00:14:32.080Like I don't have a spark of divine feminine within me that needs to be unlocked.
00:14:36.660If there's any type of femininity inside of me, it needs to be crucified, right?
00:14:40.180I need to be a brave biblical man according to God's word.0.93
00:14:43.700But they believe in an androgynous God, right?0.77
00:14:46.320And that males in humanity need to awaken this type of feminine, even inside of themselves.
00:14:52.280Like, what does that make you think about that?
00:14:54.100Yeah, well, what I want to do is just also when we connect this together, because maybe our audience are wondering, okay, how are we connecting Taylor Swift to the roles of men and women and the New Age and paganism?
00:15:06.220And we're talking about the divine feminine or even the divine feminism.
00:16:33.880Well, God is in everything, and therefore in me, and therefore I'm one with God, and therefore I am kind of God.
00:16:39.240Yeah, and for sure. And you'll see that depicted in a movie like Avatar, where you see the divine intertwined with nature and Mother Earth and Gaia and all that.
00:16:47.120But what Paul says specifically, he talks about it's not, there's a worship, the foundation is a worship exchange.
00:16:52.480They exchange the truth of God for a lie, and then they worship the creation rather than the
00:16:59.260creator, and they worship man and reptiles and beasts. And you see aspects of worshiping
00:17:04.640humans, and you also see aspects of animism, of worshiping animal worship. But then, not only
00:17:11.880that, there's a gender and a sexual exchange, and that's what you see as it progresses through
00:17:17.180Romans 1, and then you see God giving people over. And what you see is a reversal of the
00:17:22.720created order. You see the men becoming women and the women becoming men. And it's intertwined0.94
00:17:28.240with self-worship. And so, what you end up seeing, what we're dealing with right now as far as a
00:17:34.400zoomed out picture, is that we are in a, right now, America of the West, however you want to
00:17:40.440categorize it, we're in a post-Christian neo, and we're in a full, we are in a complete freefall
00:17:46.240into neo-paganism. We have a resurgence and a rise of the old gods. And so how this ties into
00:17:51.800Taylor Swift, while a lot of the Christian influencers who are trying to make these0.79
00:17:56.680things about, or being a witch, I wouldn't adhere to that because I think that a lot of that's just
00:18:01.240vague, arbitrary, circumstantiary. What you do see historically, what a lot of these ancient pagan
00:18:07.180societies in the intro is that you see a lot of goddess worship, a lot of the divine feminine
00:18:13.500worship. And so, what you actually see depicted now with Taylor Swift and the heirs tour is that
00:18:21.460you see that it isn't just a concert of people going there listening to music. You're looking
00:18:28.000at inherent worship. She represents the divine feminine. There's videos, for example,
00:18:33.700that I would say that's not just a concert, that is goddess worship.
00:18:39.460So, not only that, we're dealing also with this age of, I would call the age of re-enchantment,
00:18:45.360where it's the return of the old gods.
00:18:47.560And so, now people have a longing for transcendence.
00:18:50.940And so, they're going into a Taylor Swift concert looking for that.
00:18:54.420And so, when you see videos, for example, you can look up where somebody is at,
00:18:58.180And this one lady has front road tickets to seeing Taylor Swift and she walks by.
00:19:05.040And you see Taylor Swift's top and she looks at her like right in the eyes and like points at her.
00:19:09.840And she goes, oh, oh, she stared into my soul.0.94
00:19:12.940And she just goes into a complete hysteria.
00:19:16.700And you see there's something going on in those concerts, specifically the Aeros Tour and footage that I've seen.
00:19:23.700Something deeper that's going on than just a concert, a music concert.
00:19:27.620There's a true longing for transcendence to tap into the divine, and you see that.
00:19:33.660So, it's not only that people longing for that esoteric, transcendent experience, but
00:19:39.160then you have to say, what worldview is being propagated?
00:37:33.400So, we're called to, in Romans 12, to make our, present our bodies as a living sacrifice.
00:37:38.160And you see, you see both men and women responding to Taylor Swift with worshiping with their bodies.
00:37:44.120So, you see every woman who now is obsessively into Taylor Swift, they become more, they embrace promiscuity that's normalized in very subtle ways.0.61
00:37:54.520and she's sort of graduated people into that.
00:37:57.120But also, the men who follow Taylor Swift,
00:39:10.460Oh, I know the women in their church, like this is their opportunity to white night and
00:39:15.900to come out on Twitter, not because Taylor Swift is going to see it, but because of all
00:39:19.340the women in their church that are going to see it.
00:39:20.780and guess what? At the end of the day, how do I keep families in my church? Who's the decision
00:39:25.140maker for that household in the pew that determines which church the family goes to?
00:39:30.480It's not the husband. It's the wife. So I got to keep them happy. I hear from pastors all the0.77
00:39:36.860time. They'll email me or call and ask for counsel. And one of the things that comes up
00:39:41.620regularly is, hey, we had an elders meeting. There's a difficult situation, but we prayed
00:39:46.520about it. We talked about it. We hashed it out over the course of, you know, a couple hours
00:39:49.760and we all ended up agreeing. We came to unanimous decision, but then, uh, like clockwork, you know,
00:39:55.480two, three days later, I started getting phone calls individually from each of the other elders
00:39:59.900saying, you know, after thinking about it and after more prayer, you know, you know, I've kind
00:40:03.600of thought, you know, maybe this isn't the right direction to go. And, and that phenomenon happens
00:40:08.120a lot. This, this, um, this retrospect, um, you know, hindsight, uh, the elders are, you know,
00:40:15.480they have a conviction they're in line with something and then they change their mind and
00:40:20.200um and guys ask me what is that phenomenon it's so frequent it happens all and i've been able to
00:40:25.400helpfully explain to them that phenomenon is um that's the elder's wife right they went home and
00:40:30.400they talked to their wife yeah she doesn't like it and you guys are making a masculine decision
00:40:34.980it's something that uh is you know it's tapping into some some spine some courage uh it's a hard
00:40:41.960decision, but it is the right decision, you know. And the wives don't like it. So when that elder
00:40:48.120calls you back three days later and says, well, I prayed about it and after giving it more thought,
00:40:51.560what he's actually saying is I talked to my wife and she doesn't like it. At the end of the day,
00:40:55.580she's in charge. Yeah. And that just goes to show just how deep this is already incorporated. I0.90
00:41:00.020think we've only seen the birth pangs of what it means to be now in being in a free fall into
00:41:05.780neo-paganism. And now what's interesting is that going back to like whether about Taylor Swift and
00:41:11.120other influencers saying that she's a witch there is there is a saying that while not all uh feminists
00:41:16.940are witches all witches are feminists and that and that's another good point right and that and1.00
00:41:21.620that's not just that and that's not a cute like little like tweet just to kind of get some people
00:41:25.820rising that's that's an objective incontrovertible fact um and also you could even argue that warlocks0.86
00:41:31.960as a whole are generally like very gay and effeminate yeah like that that's what you want0.80
00:41:35.980that's what you end up seeing but not only that what what else is being what else is promoted0.98
00:41:40.200through her. She promotes promiscuity. She promotes abortion. She promotes the blurring1.00
00:41:46.760of genders, which is a direct byproduct of the blurring of neopaganism. That's a direct byproduct1.00
00:41:52.380of that. So everything we're dealing with. Everything's one instead of two. Everything's
00:41:55.080one versus two. So now there's no distinction of genders. Now there's these are, they, them,0.95
00:41:59.900this, that, and the other. She's now being propagated up by the World Economic Forum,
00:42:04.260who is very much has a worldview of oneness and the United Nations.0.92
00:42:07.540Right, no distinct genders, no distinct nations, just one global order.0.98
00:42:11.480And she also is very much pushing the current climate change agenda.
00:42:16.000And while Christians, we do have responsibility to take dominion over the earth and give up environmental responsibility.0.86
00:42:21.900Like the Christians in the 1970s, they gave up that responsibility and they handed it over.0.85
00:42:27.500And because of that, now it's in the hands of the pagans who are pushing a climate change agenda.
00:42:31.880And when you look at the worldview being propagated behind it, it's talking about we all have to come to this awareness that we are all one, that we are all part of this divine consciousness.
00:42:45.400And that is absolutely everything that Taylor Swift stands for.
00:42:48.120She's said it time and time and time again in interviews and even working pieces into her songs or whether it's a music video.
00:42:56.880she does believe all those and your point is saying okay so taylor swift may not own a deck
00:43:02.560of tarot cards personally right she may not you know be a witch casting spells you know in a dungeon
00:43:08.780underneath her mansion personally but everything that she advocates for um all those things are
00:43:14.940top tier issues of the divine feminine and behind that there really is a spirit yeah yes andrew
00:43:21.940Yeah. So I like to tie all things back into the gospel. And you said something very powerful earlier that the woman is the glory of man, right? So when we're thinking about the woman today and the power that she has within this divine feminism, what does it say about the man, right? And when I'm thinking about divine feminism, we can also tie asceticism into this, like man-made worship. We're innately created to worship as human beings, but false worship also brings false sacrifice and strange fire to God.
00:43:50.600So what is the man supposed to do? It says in the Bible, we're supposed to love our wives like
00:43:54.560Christ loved the church, give ourselves up for her, right? Number one, pointing her to Christ
00:43:59.800and his sacrifice, God's death on the cross for our sins, but also sacrificing our lives for her.0.70
00:44:06.280But what we're seeing with the woman today is a lack of manliness from leaders of men, right?0.59
00:44:11.240So they're looking to sacrifice themselves, their own bodies to try to have peace with God or try0.68
00:44:16.100to have knowledge in a relationship with God, but it's the wrong God to begin with because there's
00:44:20.380no men to lead them to the true and living God, right? Besides, you know, of course, the Christian0.99
00:44:25.120men that God has preserved in the church, God's elect. But it's saying something about our society
00:44:30.020today. And in forms of asceticism, we would talk about androgyny, right? Where men then, or women
00:44:36.480actually, you know, sacrifice their own bodies to awaken this spark of divine within them to find0.87
00:44:42.400their maleness, right? Where they're literally doing, mutilating their own bodies, right? They're
00:44:48.200cutting off pieces of their arms to form genitals that aren't even real. This is a form of worship0.98
00:44:52.980and it's a worship that can't save them. It's not, it's a worship that doesn't make them know
00:44:57.780who they truly are. The only way we can really know ourselves is through scripture because God
00:45:01.940tells us who we are. I'd like to flesh that out just a little bit. Like, what do you think about
00:45:07.000that, Joel? About androgyny? Phrase the question again. Yeah, like androgyny, asceticism,
00:45:13.920self-sacrifice uh instead of the sacrifice of christ like what does it say when we think of
00:45:20.440women being in the glory of man what does it say about men in our culture today yeah yeah if if
00:45:25.800woman is a reflection of man in the glory of man and woman right now is completely often left field
00:45:32.680then uh it's absolutely because men have abdicated uh that role and and they have so men have failed
00:45:39.220in large part um and in terms of like you know pagan worship and like you know like you said
00:45:44.420you know like a woman you know transgenderism and a woman who's you know taking a piece of her arm
00:45:49.620and creating you know an appendage that does not belong there um i think of you know it's it's none
00:45:56.940of this i think it's helpful for the listener just to be aware none of it's novel like none of this
00:46:01.200is new it may seem new um but there's nothing new under the sun um there may be uh you know
00:46:08.040different expressions, you know, because Romans one does talk about inventors of evil. So there
00:46:13.720is a sense in which like there are within different time periods and generations and
00:46:17.900cultures, new expressions of evil, but it's the same underlining gods, lowercase g, you know,
00:46:25.440false deities. So I think it was Gohardus Vos who said that, you know, we always compare abortion
00:46:32.380to, you know, saying like, well, that's not new. That's just worship of Molech, right? You know,0.98
00:46:36.620the sacrificing of children uh but transgenderism um uh he he said that um that that it would be
00:46:45.880likened to asherah um so i think of like tolkien you know and um the two towers and you know
00:46:52.860isengard and you know saruman one of the things you know he wants to stop one of the first things
00:46:57.720he wants to uproot and destroys the trees right and he's like take down the trees you know and
00:47:02.560right and there's like they're but they're strong their roots go deep you know but he wants to take
00:47:06.740them down and then he wants to strip them of their branches their fruitfulness and so the the verdant
00:47:12.160the greenery the you know the fruitfulness the life bearing you know essence of trees he wants
00:47:18.860to strip down and they become and this is how voss you know like what uh his you know he's not
00:47:24.380talking about tolkien but he him talking about asherah asherah was um stripped naked barren0.94
00:47:30.980pole. It was the opposite of a tree. So rather than a tree that has branches and limbs and0.62
00:47:37.360fruitfulness and leaves, it is a tree that has been stripped. It's a tree that's been castrated.
00:47:43.140All of its appendages, all of its limbs and all of its fruitfulness have been taken from it. And so
00:47:50.060Molech, abortion. Asherah, transgenderism. And so I, you know, that maybe doesn't really answer0.97
00:47:57.220your question, but just one thing that I was thinking about, you know, as you were talking,
00:48:00.240andrews i think you know one thing to understand about you know what's going on in this current
00:48:05.500moment in our culture is um and jeremiah you've already talked about some of this too but none of
00:48:10.720it is that new like it is it's the old gods returning this isn't just oh we're just secular
00:48:16.040humanists you know like secular humanism was always just a temporary placeholder it was the
00:48:21.440illusion of neutrality to to try to get people to let uh to ultimately to let go of the heritage
00:48:28.420of Christendom, right? Because we've got to get rid of Christ and nobody's going to just trade
00:48:32.820Christ, you know, straight up for Satan, you know? So let's, you know, we can't just say, hey, we
00:48:36.680would like you to let go of Christ and all the blessings that he gives for Molech, right? You0.99
00:48:41.280know, like, well, that's, that's a harder sell than to say, you know what, don't let go of Christ.
00:48:46.080You do you, boo, right? Do your Christian thing in your home, you know, in private, but in the
00:48:51.500public square, just out of tolerance and sensitivity and compassion towards others, which is a
00:48:55.780Christian principle, by the way, let's not, you know, embrace Satan, but let's just embrace
00:48:59.660neutrality, right? But then secular humanism, like clockwork, and I would add classical liberalism in
00:49:05.540this as well, was only really just a temporary placeholder, because at the end of the day,
00:49:10.520as you lose Christ, you don't, you're not left with neutrality. Something fills the void. It's
00:49:15.620not Christ or neutrality, it's Christ or chaos, and what is filling the void is what has always
00:49:20.720filled the void, very real deities, lowercase d, lowercase g, gods, and they're the same ones
00:49:28.380from long, long ago. Asherah, Molech, these kind, and these things are coming back.
00:49:34.540Yeah, and just if we can divert from Taylor Swift for a moment, I'll kind of approach it0.96
00:49:38.280from another angle. And it's very interesting because, you know, I'm somewhat of a movie nerd
00:49:42.560and I really, I love, I'm a big connoisseur of film and love analyzing film and all that stuff.
00:49:48.340I'm probably going to eventually be doing my own podcast and eventually, but I think even a lot of the culture, even when it comes to people who are nerds and movie critics and different YouTube and influencers, they're more aware of what's going on than even a lot of Christians as far as how the rise of the divine feminine has taken over entertainment.
00:50:06.220And so, you mentioned a moment ago, Tolkien, and just how he articulated that world, that there's so many underlining Christian worldviews and perspectives that are given throughout Tolkien's work.
00:50:19.420We look at definitive good versus evil and just all the different, everything that represents good and virtue in the world.
00:50:25.720And there's a reason why those stories and like just the music, like you hear Howard Shore's music and it stirs our hearts and emotions.
00:50:34.600And like now there's even new generations that see those movies and they're moved by it.
00:50:41.200But how do you go from a point where you have Tolkien who depicted Galadriel where Gimli says, oh, if I could just get three strands from her hair, that's all that I want.
00:50:51.420And so you see this nobility, this beautiful nobility between men and women.
00:50:55.420And even those, even like other worldviews and people who aren't Christians, they understand that there's a beauty and mystique and lore that's a distinctly Christian perspective between masculine and feminine.
00:51:05.200But then what you now see in the whole – even in film now, you have this era of the girl boss era where the same zeitgeist behind Taylor Swift is now depicted in modern entertainment where every single girl is a girl boss where she is basically – she's insufferable.0.99
00:53:36.960I do think that there is a very real and objective
00:53:40.460and final sense in which, like disarmed,0.71
00:53:45.540like Christ, I think, so that's an objective,
00:53:47.180definitive, and I think indefinite thing.
00:53:49.060I think that these powers, these princes over principalities, demonic princes, fallen angels, that they really were stripped and disarmed by Christ and that they're not ever going to be able to attain their former glory.
00:54:07.940But I also do think that it's not just make believe or people pretending or hysteria, you know, that's conjured up and manufactured by man.
00:54:16.600I think there really is dark, sinister, nefarious spiritual energy that we've seen post-Christ
00:54:23.560and his resurrection and glorious ascension that we've seen these last 2,000 years of0.54
00:54:29.000this gospel age throughout church history in places that are uniquely unchristianized.
00:54:36.200So, you know, like places I think, you know, in Africa or places in the South Americas
00:54:41.200or places in Asia, places that have not been thoroughly Christianized, when Christians0.91
00:54:48.480eventually did go there, they were usually witch doctors, and they had some kind of power.
00:54:54.640It wasn't just like the Janus and Jambres, the magician henchmen of Pharaoh.
00:55:04.900I don't think that it was just smoke and mirrors.
01:02:00.140And they might be taught not to blaspheme any longer.
01:02:02.740So you're articulating that Satan and other powers, dark powers, disarmed but not dead and utilized by God in the same way in church discipline.
01:02:17.920Handing over to Satan is not a final handing over to Satan in terms of hell, but it would be handing over to Satan in this life temporarily that Satan might be used as a teacher to demonstrate how good God is.
01:02:32.740and calls the person to return to Christ.