(RNS) — Celebrities are routinely judged for everything from their fashion choices to the way they cook their eggs. But for those who are both famous and publicly Christian, that scrutiny often broadens to encompass their religious beliefs — even if they’re implicit.
The latest case is the Waco, Texas-based home renovation duo Chip and Joanna Gaines, who faced backlash in recent weeks over their decision to feature a gay couple on their new reality show, “Back to the Frontier.” While the Gaineses haven’t said anything directly about being LGBTQ-affirming, many conservative Christians condemned the move as a betrayal of Christian values and an attempt to normalize queer relationships. On the flip side, some progressive Christians called out what they view as hypocrisy of conservative leaders who are holding the reality stars to a higher moral standard than the president of the United States.
“The Venn diagram of Christians who voted for a rapist and Christians who are outraged over Chip and Joanna Gaines being nice to gay people is a circle,” April Ajoy, author of “Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith,” wrote on X on July 14.
The Gaines debate is among a string of situations that highlight the difficulty of catering to both mainstream and Christian audiences. From the backlash faced by Christian pop musician Amy Grant in 2022 after she agreed to host her niece’s same-sex wedding to the way Christian author Jen Hatmaker’s books were pulled from LifeWay Christian Stores shelves in 2016 after she voiced support for the LGBTQ community, this pattern is nothing new. And in a polarized political climate, some argue the balancing act is becoming increasingly unachievable.
At first glance, “Back to the Frontier,” which debuted on July 10 on HBO Max and the Gaineses’ Magnolia Network, seems catered to evangelical Christians — especially those inspired by modern tradwife, homeschooling and homesteading movements. Chip and Joanna Gaines are executive producers on the eight-episode series, which follows three families spending a summer living like 1880s homesteaders in the grassy Canadian plains west of Calgary, Alberta. The families forgo running water, flushing toilets and electricity, learning to travel in covered wagons and harvest their own crops.
One of those families is the Hanna-Riggs household, which includes husbands Jason Hanna and Joe Riggs, along with their 10-year-old twin sons.
The Hanna-Riggs family on the “Back to the Frontier” show. (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Network)
“Joe and I, we’re both the head of our household, like, it’s equal,” Hanna said in episode one. “Coming back to the 1880s, there were no two-dad families.”
The pushback was swift. On July 12, Franklin Graham, son of the late famed evangelist Billy Graham and president of evangelical humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, called the Gaineses’ decision to feature the Hanna-Riggs family “disappointing.”
“While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s Word. His Word is absolute truth,” Graham wrote on X. “God loves us, and His design for marriage is between one man and one woman. Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin.”
Conservative Christian commentators such as Allie Beth Stuckey and Megan Basham joined the call for the Gaineses to repent, as did the evangelical pastor Mark Driscoll, apologist Frank Turek and Joel Berry of the Babylon Bee, a Christian news satire website.
In a statement to RNS, Ed Vitagliano, executive vice president of the conservative evangelical advocacy group American Family Association, said that previously, the Gaineses “stood firm on the sanctity of marriage.”
“We aren’t sure why the Gaines have reversed course,” he wrote, “but we are sure of this: ‘Back to the Frontier’ promotes an unbiblical view of human sexuality, marriage, and family –– a view no Christian should embrace.”
In response to the outcry, pastor and public theologian Kevin M. Young wrote a satirical headline on X: “BREAKING: Christians furious over Chip and Joanna Gaines famously forget they pray to a man with two dads,” referring to Jesus, whom the Bible depicts as having a heavenly father (God) and an earthly father (Joseph).
In a conversation with RNS, Young said the backlash is evidence of the kinds of litmus tests the Gaineses and others are subjected to.
“We see within evangelicalism the same thing that we have seen over the last century or so in America society in general, and that is a loss of the middle. People who try to speak to both sides of the ideological spectrum are increasingly unable to do that tenably,” Young said. “And a lot of good, well-meaning folks with great content, like the Gaineses, are getting caught in the middle of that.”
Made famous by their HGTV home-improvement reality TV series “Fixer Upper,” the Gaineses have historically not been shy about their Christian faith. They are both graduates of Baylor University, the world’s largest Baptist university, and discuss their faith in their October 2016 book “The Magnolia Story.”
In November 2016, the couple faced criticism from progressives after a Buzzfeed story highlighted their membership at Antioch Community Church in Waco, a nondenominational megachurch whose pastor, Jimmy Seibert, has publicly stood against homosexuality.
More recently, in 2021, the Gaineses donated $1,000 to the school board campaign of Chip Gaines’ sister, Shannon Braun, who ran on a platform of opposing critical race theory and discussion of gender identity for the Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District in Texas. As school board president, she has helped pass policies that require students to only use bathrooms that align with their sex assigned at birth, that provide more oversight over library materials and that allow teachers to reject students’ preferred pronouns.
Now, though, the couple have drawn fire from Christian conservatives. As the blowback accelerated on social media last week, Chip Gaines on X encouraged people to ask questions, listen and learn.
“It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian,” he wrote.
When conservative commentator Jon Root asked on X why Gaines was “promoting homosexuality as a Christian,” Gaines responded by quoting 1 Peter 3:15: “But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”
The question of how to welcome LGBTQ folks, and to what extent, has led to clashes within Christian circles for decades, and disagreements continue to trigger splits and fractures within denominations. In the media, these clashes have made it difficult to appeal to both secular and Christian fan-bases. After Hallmark began featuring gay couples in their popular Christmas films in 2020, Christian and Hallmark star Candace Cameron Bure left the network after 13 years. Instead, she opted to join the Great American Family network, a much smaller but fast-growing network which promotes faith-based programs and what Bure called “traditional marriage.” Being seen as LGBTQ-affirming is so provocative in certain circles that even popular Christian TV shows such as “The Chosen” haven’t avoided the crossfire; in 2023, it drew calls for a boycott after a small pride flag was glimpsed on the set.
Today, these divisions are playing out on a larger scale in the political arena. While roughly 67% of Americans still agree same-sex marriage should be legal, according to a 2024 report by Public Religion Research Institute, small but influential conservative constituencies — many of them motivated by their faith — have begun strategizing to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court ruling that in 2015 legalized same-sex marriage across the U.S. Last month, the Southern Baptist Convention, which remains the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, adopted a resolution calling for the overturning of Obergefell.
Ajoy, a content creator who left conservative evangelicalism, said that in the Gaineses’ case, being too welcoming toward a gay couple seemed to signal to conservative evangelicals that the Gaineses are “no longer on the right side of the culture war.”
“Evangelicalism today in America has traded the red letters for red hats, and we are known for what we’re against, not for what we’re for,” Ajoy told RNS, referring to the words of Jesus in the Bible. “We have traded love for bullying and kindness for cruelty, and it’s all in the name of God.”