At first glance, the crowd gathering outside a music venue in Red Bank, New Jersey, could have passed for a group of sorority rush hopefuls – or Ella Langley fans on their way to the country star’s show. Most of them were under the age of 30. They wore cowboy boots, maxi sundresses and soft, bouncy blowouts, scrolling on their phones outside the doors as they waited for friends to arrive.
But one accessory gave them away: the Bibles they toted. These women were there to pray.
Specifically, they were there to see the Girls Gone Bible tour. Hosted by two “Bible-thumping bombshells” (per the Daily Mail), the Girls Gone Bible podcast is often sold as the conservative woman’s answer to Alex Cooper’s secular, sexual Call Her Daddy franchise. The hosts have “girly convo[s]” about some of the same issues you might hear on Call Her Daddy: dating dos and don’ts, going sober-curious, or battling insecurities. But Cooper never invited an Eastern Orthodox priest on to explain why the Greek church “makes manly men” or blamed the attention economy on Satan himself.
Since debuting in 2023, Girls Gone Bible has become a brand all its own, with more than 1 million followers on Instagram and ranking 42nd for the religion and spirituality genre on Spotify. Its Revival tour began in April, bringing evenings of music, prayer and religious testimony to the east coast, as well as Alabama, Tennessee and California.
Girls Gone Bible hosts Angela Halili, 30, and Arielle Reitsma, 36, call themselves “two imperfect girls serving an absolutely perfect God”, though neither grew up very religious or married into the faith. In fact, neither host is married, earning them relatability points among listeners who are still stuck in the dating scene. Both are relatively new Christians who spent their early careers as working actors in Los Angeles, a city usually depicted by conservatives as a den of sin. To that point: Reitsma played a character called “Slutty Girl” in the jukebox musical film Rock of Ages; Halili once appeared in a Marilyn Manson music video.
Both converted in moments of personal crisis. Halili told the Christian publication Relevant that her anxiety and alcoholism stemmed from the pressures of working in the industry, and she first “met” God in 2019 when she started praying to help her through an anxiety attack. Reitsma, meanwhile, walked into a church “on a whim” after a rough breakup and “found peace like [she’d] never known”.
The success of the podcast led to guest stints on Fox News segments about gen Z seeking faith. They opened Donald Trump’s “victory rally” the day before his 2025 inauguration with a prayer that included the lines “in the life of President Donald Trump, as it is in heaven” and “President Trump … we declare that no weapon formed against you will prosper.”
This association with the ascendant Christian right, of course, makes them Maga figures. But unlike podcasters in the conservative-aligned womanosphere who regularly toe the party line when it comes to topics such as immigration, abortion or birth control, Halili and Reitsma prefer a more lobotomized hang. Speaking softly, with matching vocal fry, they dispense vague platitudes about “healing” and soothe listeners with promises they are not alone in their struggles. They stay away from explicitly political messages in the same way that a pastor’s wife would not want to offend a congregant while making small talk during a post-service coffee hour.
It’s easy to fall into the Girls Gone Bible universe. Episode titles promise juicy discussions of topics that matter to young women: “Codependency and People-Pleasing”, “Overcoming an Eating Disorder”, “Honest Convo About Anxiety”. The hosts remind listeners that they are still figuring all of this out, too. It’s a welcoming space.
Kelsey Hanson Woodruff, a scholar of American religious history and postdoctoral fellow at Wesleyan University, said that this come-as-you-are branding has deep roots in evangelism. “Evangelical Christians love a conversion story,” Woodruff said. “It can provide a lot of credibility to someone’s authentic Christian experience.”
“They’re not shoving their opinions down people’s throats like some of these other podcasts [such as] Andrew Tate and all that stuff,” Alicia Reicis, a 30-year-old stay-at-home mom told me before the show.
The hosts’ everygirl approachability belies their mission to woo women back into a faith that increasingly preaches their oppression. Adult women under 30 are rejecting organized religion at record rates; a study released this April found that 40% of female respondents claimed no affiliation – up from 29% in 2013. This is probably due in part to the very visible rise of Christian nationalism tied to Trump’s administration. (The secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, brought a pastor who does not believe in a woman’s right to vote to speak at the Pentagon; the health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, has invoked terms like “spiritual warfare” and “malevolent forces” in speeches.)
Despite this, Girls Gone Bible has found success with women who seem able to compartmentalize. Every woman I spoke to at the show declined to talk politics, or how they feel about the hosts supporting Trump. “I don’t really have a full opinion on that,” Reicis told me before politely excusing herself.
Outside the venue, Genesis Gesualdo texted her friend who was running late. Gesualdo, 33, works at a salvage yard, which she called “a man’s job”. She told me that she had converted to Christianity less than a week ago because she felt she had strayed from a more modest lifestyle. “I wasn’t walking with him [Jesus], I didn’t obey him,” she said. “The way I dressed was provocative.” Gesualdo came to the event wearing a floor-length floral skirt. She said she was looking forward to “rejoicing”.
I couldn’t know the political leanings of every person in attendance. Yes, there were a lot of women sporting what’s become known as “Republican face” – heavy makeup, plumped lips, fake tans – but there were others I would not feel comfortable pegging as such. I lost track counting the number of full-arm tattoo sleeves I saw; I watched a young woman hit her vape while waiting in the concessions line.
I wondered if these fans – maybe new converts themselves – would soon find themselves evolving into what the hosts consider to be “godly” women: conservative in appearance, faith and political ideology. “One of the tactics of the Christian right is to narrow the definition of what it means to be a Christian,” Woodruff said. “[Girls Gone Bible] may not talk directly about policies, but they may put forth a certain definition of what it means to be a Christian woman, which is inherently political.”
***
Girls Gone Bible touts a regressive ideal of femininity, encouraging women to be “modest” and abstain from sex before marriage, which Halili once called “demonic oppression”. Harsh, but both women often insist that they’re not trying to shame anyone for prior transgressions – after all, both have pasts of their own. And their audience is perhaps already comfortable with the idea of celibacy. More young women, religious or not, are going “boy sober”, as voluntary abstinence is sometimes called on social media, due to their dismal dating pool and past bad experiences with men.
In fact, Girls Gone Bible’s message about dating gets very close to pop feminism. “It’s been genuinely the greatest joy of my life to enter into complete purity,” Halili said on a recent episode taped after she returned from a trip to Miami, a party city synonymous with bikinis and bottle service. “Living a life where I’m not seeking that sort of validation from men, for men to think that I am hot or to think that I’m sexy.”
At the New Jersey tour stop, Halili continued preaching girl power. “Marriage isn’t the reward,” she said, as groups of friends cheered and nodded along from their seats. Then she veered back: “Jesus’s presence in your marriage is the reward.”
Melissa, a 58-year-old woman grabbing a drink at an Italian restaurant before the show, told me that she wanted to bring her son in hopes of finding him “a Christian girl”. He couldn’t make it; she brought her hairdresser instead. Two college friends, Grace Colucci and Taylor Garvey, might have been just who Melissa was looking for in a potential set-up. Both are 22, and first encountered Girls Gone Bible through TikTok clips. Colucci has never had a boyfriend, but she still appreciates the hosts’ dating advice. “They just make [abstinence] so normalized,” Colucci said. “It’s very inspirational and it makes you feel good.”
But Colucci and Garvey were most interested in what Halili and Reitsma say about their mental health struggles. Halili has spoken extensively about living with OCD and disordered eating; for Reitsma, it was suicidal ideation. Colucci listens to their podcasts on stress and burnout. “What they go through is similar to us, and they’re good at [talking about it] in a way that’s fun and easy to learn from. It’s not too heavy.”
At the top of the show, Halili and Reitsma led a group singalong of worship music. When the pianist riffed that the “power in the name” of Jesus is “stronger than depression”, the crowd burst into the loudest cheers I heard all night.
It makes sense that members of the most depressed and isolated generation in history would gravitate toward this subject matter. In her book Esther’s Army: The Christian Women Who Power the American Right, sociologist Katie Gaddini calls this audience “a post-pandemic female populace eager to hear ‘the truth’”. A recent Pew survey found that 44% of 18- to 29-year-olds listen to “religious audio programs”, which they overwhelmingly digest as podcasts (as opposed to radio programs). Thirty-nine per cent of Americans of all ages who consume this content say they listen for “life advice or guidance”.
A young woman who posted on the subreddit r/Christianity seeking recommendations for podcasts geared toward “girls in their 20s” received this answer from another user: “Girls Gone Bible may not be the most theologically deep but they are a good starting place … Treat them [like] a source of relatability (a lot of their topics are highly relatable).”
Evangelicals have long touted the Bible as a cure for mental anguish, and many pastors view depression as a spiritual attack. Reitsma told the audience she “met Jesus on the bathroom floor” during a time in which “everything in the world was telling me to end [her] life”. She explained needing “healing beyond what medication can fix”, meaning antidepressants. She quickly added, “there’s nothing wrong with medications,” but this felt like a concession.
In general, the hosts speak of burnout without addressing the economic forces behind their generation’s collective exhaustion and despair. They detail their mental health struggles, but fall short of interrogating the institutional roadblocks women face when they do try to get help. The intended takeaway: Jesus alone will cure you.
The night ended with Halili praying for “sexual sinners” (that’s anyone who has sex outside of marriage) and women struggling with infertility. Reitsma hugged audience members who lined up at the foot of the stage. Women cried, holding up their Bibles. Some wore newly purchased tour merch, sweatshirts with phrases such as “Keep the Faith” and “Thank You Jesus.” They would bring home a sense of validation: they were not alone in their pain.
The tour has two more stops remaining, both in Florida in September, but there was something about the New Jersey show that especially delighted the hosts: it wasn’t happening in the Bible belt, or even a red state. “I feel such a hunger in here tonight,” Halili said. “It must be the east coast in ya.” Clearly, they believe their message is spreading.
