Writer Tabby Kibugi dismantles the viral claim that modern Christian womanhood is just strategic husband-hunting. Through personal reflection and cultural critique, she reveals a far more honest picture of why women return to God.
If, like me, you spend a lot of time on Christian TikTok (or honestly, on the internet in general), you’ve probably come across videos claiming that young women in their late 20s and early 30s are suddenly becoming hyper-religious in the hope of finding a husband. Every other week, there’s a new TikTok or podcast clip insisting that Christian womanhood is basically a romantic strategy. It’s exhausting watching strangers flatten Christian women who return to church into a punchline.
Whether she intends to or not, her content often gets repackaged across TikTok and YouTube as evidence that Christian womanhood is just a pathway to marriage
I understand why it circulates. Creators like Talitha Jane, who shifted from being a beauty influencer to a Christian influencer, have amassed huge followings by sharing parties on abstinence anniversaries, femininity content, modest dressing, and videos emphasising submission and purity. Whether she intends to or not, her content often gets repackaged across TikTok and YouTube as evidence that Christian womanhood is just a pathway to marriage. And then you have shows like Pop the Balloon, where some Christian women go on TV specifically to find husbands and pop balloons if a man doesn’t attend church weekly, can’t quote scriptures, or doesn’t read the Bible every day.
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If that’s your only exposure, it’s easy to reduce everything to a formula: women plus performative Christianity is equal to husband-hunting. But that narrative is far from accurate. Yes, TikTok is now full of Christian-wife edits, modesty reels, and biblical femininity aesthetics but that doesn’t mean we should assume the motivations behind everyone’s faith.
This whole “women become religious at 30 to find husbands” narrative didn’t come out of nowhere. I remember coming across a Reddit thread from four years ago about how churches are supposedly full of women using God to trap a good Christian man. It’s condescending and almost never applied to men doing the exact same thing. Because let’s be honest, men return to church for their own reasons too. But the internet rarely talks about them.
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Anyone who’s actually been in a real church community knows that’s not how faith works. It actually complicates dating. Most of the Christian women I know at church are single because it’s genuinely hard to maintain a romantic relationship while being fully committed to God. Putting Christ first has ended more relationships for them than it has saved.
I turned 29 this year and it was also the season I fully committed to my journey with God after a brutal year where I lost almost half my extended family on my mum’s side, spent months worrying about my health, and realised I needed something stable to anchor me, and that became God.
I’ve lived that myself. I turned 29 this year and it was also the season I fully committed to my journey with God after a brutal year where I lost almost half my extended family on my mum’s side, spent months worrying about my health, and realised I needed something stable to anchor me, and that became God. That decision had nothing to do with wanting a husband. Ironically, that’s the season I met my partner not because I was performing godliness to attract someone, but because prioritising God reshaped my habits, my mindset, and how I showed up in my own life.
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And here’s what no one online likes to admit, being a Christian woman doesn’t guarantee you anything. Sometimes God asks you to surrender the thing you want most and that might be marriage. Sometimes you serve him faithfully and remain single for years, even though the desire is still there. So when people say women are only becoming religious to secure husbands, I challenge them to look a little deeper. Women are turning to God because life is heavy and they want an anchor in their life. If marriage comes, it comes. But if not, it was never the prize. For most of us, it’s God.
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