From vaccines to gender: How Christian 'momfluencers' are reshaping the American right

(RNS) — Years before she became a homeschool influencer in western Arkansas, Taylor Moran was a liberal Dallas mom who voted for Bernie Sanders.

But when the pandemic hit, Moran, now 34, was struck by the government’s inability to provide for her family.

“It was a lot of rules, a lot of hysteria, a lot of things that didn’t make sense,” Moran told RNS.

In early 2021, after what she described as an “overnight spiritual experience,” Moran embraced Christianity and moved her family to rural Arkansas. As her faith grew, so did her skepticism of the pharmaceutical industry, rigid school curriculums and gender as a construct. Today, while her social media content isn’t overtly political or religious, her convictions surface in posts about organic whole foods, her family’s nature school and how to raise sons.

“I hear it’s hard to be a man right now — but I (asterisk)know(asterisk) it’s hard to be a boy,” she wrote in an October Instagram post. The accompanying video features her young sons running barefoot through the woods, whittling, and bounding over hay bales. “There’s this widespread cultural effort to erase boyhood, to pretend there’s nothing different about it, nothing special about it.”

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