Are women ok? Many, it seems, have lost their minds. When a mother strangles her three small children in a basement, you would imagine that women, of all people, would be the most disturbed by the news. It should offend their motherly instincts.

Of course, many are rightly disgusted, but a striking number of women have taken to social media in solidarity with the killer, Lindsay Clancy.

We are watching the reveal of a Jezebel archetype that has silently possessed a certain brood of Western women for a century—a wicked spirit that has blackened their hearts. Not the scores of good-natured, valiant women who silently raise their children in holiness and fear of the Lord. They are courageous.

But the cult of Jezebel spreads still, casting a dark shadow that has invited all manner of wickedness.

On August 10th, Governor Healey of Massachusetts signed the most grotesque abortion bill in our country’s history—abortion up to the moment of birth. We are no longer debating whether a “day after” pill is ethical or not; we are killing fully-formed children and calling it healthcare.

This revelry in violence may explain the cult-like support for Lindsay Clancy. These women have a contentious relationship with their own children, and certainly with their Biblical role as helpmate, not bossbabe.

The phrase “me too, Lindsay” is trending, as women across the nation work to reframe her crime as a cry for help. Feminists have rallied around Clancy to highlight “women’s issues” and lament how hard mothers have it, as if that justifies the crime.

What are we doing here?

A Profane Revelry

I will never forget the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated. It is not just the footage that has burned into my mind, but the wolfish gleam in my neighbors’ eyes. We cannot forget that our fellow citizens celebrated the death of a man who was, all things considered, a moderate Republican. I certainly have views further right than he did—would my countrymen on the Left revel in my death as well? Almost certainly.

For many Christians, this was the moment they recognized something dark and terrible had come over the nation. We are suffering under a demonic pall that has consumed our values, none more completely than the sanctity of life. Maybe the internet has desensitized us to violence. Maybe we have replaced God with idols of comfort and prosperity. Perhaps a century of mass child sacrifice has eaten away at our souls. Or maybe it’s all three at once.

If Lindsay Clancy is a victim of anything, it is our culture of death. In one chilling evidence photo, we see a bloodied knife laid next to a wine cup with the words “Because Kids” written on it. “I drink because of how stressful and inconvenient my kids are,” is the implication. Joke or not, that our culture denigrates children even in the smallest things should worry us. 

The anti-natalist sentiment that has possessed the West runs deep, even among those with kids. It is almost as if children are not considered fully human, but property. An accessory to be flaunted for status, then tossed away when it becomes inconvenient. This is the way children in the womb are already treated. We are watching it expand to children of all ages.

Three things, I think, have fed this cult of violence.

One: Bitterness in Marriage

Lindsay Clancy’s supporters make a great fuss about an overworked mother who supposedly didn’t have the support she needed. Motherhood is a valiant effort, no doubt, but one has to wonder how much support is required. She had a nanny and a husband who worked remotely—luxuries even by today’s standards.

The Reformer William Perkins (1558-1602) laid out the natural order of the family in his Christian Economy. In it, he names four ends of marriage, the first being “the procreation of children.” The good wife has specific duties that make her an “associate” in governing the home—co-equal, yet inferior in authority. Like many Reformers, Perkins believed each sex was prone to its own sin. The sins of wives are “to be proud, to be unwilling to bear the authority of their husbands, to chide and brawl with bitterness.”

William Gouge sharpens the charge in his Of Domestical Duties (1622). He excoriates the woman who engages in this “monstrous self-conceit, and intolerable arrogance, as if she herself were above her own sex, and more than a woman.”

If each sex is naturally prone to its own sins, as Perkins argued, we are tempted to excuse those sins in one another. Women resentful of motherhood and marriage clearly see something of themselves in Lindsay Clancy—their own words testify to it. In defending her, they are defending themselves by proxy.

What does this say about the health of our nation? Our words reveal our heart, and what we are hearing is disturbing. Under the spell of the Jezebel cult, many wives now believe that a husband should fulfill both his Biblical role and that of his wife. In the year of our Lord 2026, a nanny and a work-from-home husband who does housework are not enough support. Talk about lifestyle creep. Even my six-year-old knows: if you give a mouse a cookie, he’ll want a glass of milk too.

There are legions of women who have been embittered to the holy calling of motherhood. The media portrays parenting as a low-status trap that snags the poor and the religious in its teeth; one the so-called enlightened have learned to avoid. Three generations have consumed content that defies God’s order and devalues the life of children. It is no wonder that motherhood is seen as a barrier to living a good life, rather than the good life in itself.

Two: True Crime and the Communion of Death

True crime is one of digital media’s more insidious corners. These podcasters wax on about gruesome murders in explicit detail, and often work to “solve” the case themselves. That is, they consider the public evidence and draw wild conclusions based mostly on vibes. This trains listeners to spot patterns and mistrust the official story (there is always a twist at the end!) even when the case is airtight.

Women are twice as likely as men to tune in—44 percent of female podcast listeners follow true crime, compared to 23 percent of men. Even now, TikTok is full of internet sleuths picking apart the Clancy trial for inconsistencies, sure that they will be the ones to crack the case. This is not healthy. We are looking at a sort of mass psychosis, in which a large portion of American women aren’t even living in reality. Content like this spreads through social media like a plague. Instagram and TikTok are crawling with these clips, pulling in women who never went looking for them.

True crime content is defiling in two ways. For one, it encourages women to split from reality. Powered by the Dunning-Kruger effect, well-meaning homemakers can be rewired to see everything as a conspiracy. Second, it is a buffet of violence. The gory details of these crimes are more than our ancestors would have heard in a lifetime. The church is quick to correct the besetting sins of men, of which pornography is the most corrosive. Can we pluck up the courage to hold women accountable for what they listen to? These shows maim and numb the spirit. Tiny cuts, each and every episode, week after week, slowly desensitizing the soul to evil.

These podcasts are not solely responsible for the state of the world, but their popularity is a manifestation of the demons many women have chosen to commune with.

Three: A Gentler Slaughter

Feminism’s true goal is to gain the benefits God gave to men, while avoiding all of the responsibilities attached to them. There are many flowery ways to put it, but rebellion against “The Patriarchy” is, at its root, enmity with God. It is an insatiable lust for power.

It is no surprise, then, that abortion is the headlining issue of the feminist movement. Taking a life is the ultimate form of human power, and pro-choice advocates hold this “right” as sacred. They will defend it with more zeal than they defend the child in their own womb.

Growing up, I often heard that a world run by women would know peace. Men are inherently violent and cruel, as it went, so the government could use a lady’s touch. Reality could not have been more inverted. A 2017 report from The Christian Institute estimates that 1 billion children have been aborted in the last century. Today, roughly 73 million children are aborted annually.

But surely this is nothing compared to the suffering men have inflicted upon the earth, right? Not so. William Eckhardt, of the Lentz Peace Research Laboratory, counted 151 million war deaths across all of human history; other historians put it near a billion. In one century, more children will have been slain by their own mothers than every soldier felled since ancient Mesopotamia.

Feminists promised a gentler world. They got it right in one respect: it certainly looks more peaceful on the outside. But the slaughter of our children is done quietly now. Whether in a private hospital room or a darkened basement, the killing persists.

A Torrent of Souls

For their part, the Jezebel cult has played its hand well. Their followers are enraptured by the allure of violence and power—they gleefully perch upon the bones of their offspring and call it freedom. Lindsay Clancy’s trial is a grim portent of what a people become when they desecrate the sanctity of life.

One must imagine the streets of heaven overflowing with a torrent of our children’s souls. Pouring through in their hundreds of thousands, day after day. Not in all the days since God crafted Eve from Adam has mankind visited such a tragedy upon itself.

This is the principal issue of our time, and the church must find the courage to stand up against this culture of death. Pastors must find the spine to not only rebuke the sins of “angry young men” but also those of the “loud and murderous feminists.”

And if pastors won’t do that, they don’t deserve the pulpits they stand in.