'Loyalty to God': Former MAGA 'tradwife' unravels her 'religious psychosis'

An evangelical MAGA mom from Michigan truly believed that God would provide for her, but then the affordability crisis hit.

The International Business Times pointed to an interview with Stephania Messina, who joined the so-called "trad wife" movement. A world created on social media in which women live "traditional wife" roles such as homemaking, child-rearing and support for their husbands. They post videos romanticizing cooking and homeschooling children. So much of it comes from evangelical Christianity, and in the case of Messina, that's where hers began.

Speaking to The Guardian, Messina explained that she was in the throes of postpartum depression when she got deeper and deeper into her faith. She said that she truly believed, "I don't need to work. I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford these kids, because God's going to figure it out."

"I took that 100 percent seriously. I was a tradwife," she said.

As a child, her family attended an Assemblies of God church, which she described as reminiscent of Pentecostal, where she saw parishoners speak in tongues. Then the pastor embezzled a lot of money and her family ultimately left the church. When she first voted, it was for President Barack Obama, but then she pivoted to former Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas).

Her logic was that if she fully submitted to her husband's control, then God would provide financially.

"I don't need to work. I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford these kids, because God's going to figure it out. If I'm obedient, if I surrender to the leadership of my husband, then God's going to bless me," she said that she believed.

She also started to avoid politics.

"They don't want you knowing about politics. It wasn't my job to vote or to know who to vote for. I was just supposed to submit to my husband and do what he thought was necessary," Messina explained

While she was a supporter of President Donald Trump, it didn't come from him, it came from God. "I never wore a red hat. I never went to a Trump rally. My MAGA was 'Make America Godly Again.' My loyalty wasn't to Trump. My loyalty was to God and the church."

She was taught not to even look at independent media, "because it's demonic."

"I was so deep in what I can only call a religious psychosis," she said that she now understands.

It isn't a formal diagnosis; rather, it's an informal phrase describing a detachment from reality as a result of delusions, hallucinations or when intense fears take on religious or spiritual themes, explained the mental health organization AMFM.

For her, everything changed during the pandemic. Before her tradwife lifestyle, she worked as a respiratory therapist. So, her years of training and expertise, compared to what the president and church leaders were saying, was in complete conflict with everything she'd known.

Then her spouse died in a motorcycle accident. Her pastor's wife called it a "blessing in disguise" because her children wouldn't grow up with a non-Christian influence in their lives.

"After that, I was done," she said.

"I was afraid to speak out because I thought everyone would hate me. But it wasn't until my perspective became more progressive that I felt like my empathy came back," she said, noting that she began rebuilding her worldview.

"I don't care how long it takes. I will be deconstructing the rest of my life," Messina estimated.