How Feminism Turned Spirituality Into Performance

Summary

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Episode Overview

Title: How Feminism Turned Spirituality Into Performance
Host: Kristan Hawkins
Date: May 29, 2026

In this episode, Kristan Hawkins and her guests dissect the intersection of feminism, pop culture, and spirituality, using Florence and the Machine’s latest album, Everybody Scream, as a case study. They explore how modern feminism and its promises of empowerment and bodily autonomy have influenced spiritual narratives in pop music, leading to a form of ritualized performance that may ultimately leave women feeling empty in times of real grief and loss.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Florence and the Machine: Female Empowerment or Emptiness?

• The panel critiques Florence and the Machine’s album for failing to fulfill the promises of feminist empowerment.

• Memorable Quote (Social Commentator, 00:28):

  "Feminism's real promises about how we can control our own bodies... how we find happiness. It's all lies."

• The album’s themes reportedly focus on self-doubt, longing for peace, and chaotic spirituality rather than fulfillment.

2. Personal Grief and Occult Practices

• Florence Welch’s decision to step back from touring for family led to personal tragedy with the loss of her child, fueling the album’s spiritual themes.

• The podcast notes Florence’s turn to witchcraft and ritual as a means to find meaning amid suffering.

• Notable Quote (Cultural Critic, 01:56):

  "Everywhere I looked, I found stories of witchcraft. No one could tell me why this was happening..."

• Florence’s public discussion of buying a "literal cauldron" is highlighted as an example of seeking control via the occult.

3. The "Shadow Religion" of Modern Feminism

• The hosts argue that the spirituality depicted is centered on autonomy, ritual, and self-expression—a "shadow religion" that fills the void left by a lack of traditional faith.

• They cite author Carrie Gress’s work, Something Wicked, and propose that pop culture spreads this framework, especially among secular-raised women.

• Memorable Quote (Cultural Critic, 02:43):

  "This dark spirituality places the self at the center of the universe, like a God... autonomy, ritual, and self expression become the new sacraments."

4. Performance, Ritual, and the Search for Meaning

• Florence’s concerts are described as "modern liturgy," where ritual replaces traditional worship and the pop star becomes a “priestess.”

• Notable Quote (Cultural Critic, 06:53):

  "She is a performer, a priestess, and even a symbolic offering. The fans aren't just attending a concert, they're participating in a synchronized ritual."

• The cultural need for ritual and meaning is contrasted with secular approaches, which are seen as ultimately unsatisfying.

5. Emotional Costs: Modern Feminism and Young Women’s Wellbeing

• The speakers reflect on rising levels of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among young women, arguing that "empowerment" does not deliver wholeness.

• Quote (Social Commentator, 03:31):

  "Are they finding happiness? Are they finding peace in this occult-like spirituality? I don't think so... young women have higher anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation rates. It's overwhelming."

• They contend that modern feminism leaves women exhausted, confused, and unfulfilled.

• Powerful Moment (Social Commentator, 05:33):

  "Feminism promised us freedom and fulfillment, but instead it's left women... exhausted, feeling like they can't ever fill this longing in their heart."

6. Analyzing Happiness: Father Spitzer’s Four Levels

• The episode references Father Robert Spitzer's four levels of happiness: pleasure, ego, love/contribution, and transcendence.

• The show argues that modern feminism, as depicted in Florence's music, is stuck in the first two levels.

• Breakdown (Cultural Critic/Social Commentator, 07:53–08:20):

  • Pleasure & Ego: Explored intensely in the music.
  • Love & Transcendence: Longed for but out of reach due to focus on autonomy and self-definition.

• Summary Quote (Social Commentator, 08:20):

  "Autonomy alone cannot help us heal from grief, and self expression can't make us feel whole."

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with timestamps)

• Female empowerment as “flat”:
  "Why does this album about female empowerment come up so flat?"
  — Social Commentator, 00:15

• Seeking meaning through witchcraft:
  "Everywhere I looked, I found stories of witchcraft. No one could tell me why this was happening..."
  — Cultural Critic quoting Florence, 01:56

• Feminism and fulfillment:
  "Feminism promised us freedom and fulfillment, but instead it's left women... exhausted, feeling like they can't ever fill this longing in their heart."
  — Social Commentator, 05:33

• Concerts as ritual:
  "The fans aren't just attending a concert, they're participating in a synchronized ritual."
  — Cultural Critic, 06:53

• Four levels of happiness:
  "Because modern feminism places autonomy above all, it doesn't have a framework to move past the first two levels of happiness, pleasure and ego."
  — Social Commentator, 07:53

• On transcendence and healing:
  "Autonomy alone cannot help us heal from grief, and self expression can't make us feel whole."
  — Social Commentator, 08:20

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:00–01:05: Introduction & context for Florence and the Machine’s album; personal tragedy and artistic response
• 01:05–02:43: Analysis of album’s spiritual worldview; exploration of specific song themes
• 02:43–03:31: Discussion of dark spirituality and pop culture’s role in spreading the "shadow religion"
• 03:31–05:00: Emotional wellbeing of young women and critique of empowerment narratives
• 05:00–06:25: Contradictions in feminist promises, discussion of grief and meaning
• 06:25–07:53: Comparison of concerts to ritual worship; longing for meaning and spiritual fulfillment
• 07:53–08:20: Application of the “four levels of happiness” framework
• 08:20–end: Concluding reflections on spirituality, autonomy, and healing

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Tone & Style

Throughout, the tone is critical, passionate, and laden with cultural analysis. The speakers use evocative language to argue that modern feminism and “spiritual self-reliance” are insufficient for true healing and fulfillment, particularly in the face of suffering and grief.

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Summary

"How Feminism Turned Spirituality Into Performance" uses Florence and the Machine's latest album to critique the promises of modern feminism and its influence on spirituality in pop culture. The episode suggests that, despite promises of empowerment and fulfillment, young women are left searching for meaning and healing in a landscape stripped of traditional faith, with ritualized pop culture unable to fill deeper spiritual needs. The discussion blends cultural critique with personal reflection, ultimately challenging listeners to consider what truly satisfies the human longing for love, meaning, and transcendence.

Transcript

[Cultural Critic]

Why does a pop album about female

[Social Commentator]

power sound so much like witchcraft? Guys, we gotta talk about Florence and the Machine's latest album, Everybody Scream. Now, I know liking Florence and Machine, I've been told it's kind of like Gen Y or Millennial, but just Google her. Look her up on Apple Music. I'm sure you've seen her music in movies and on the radio, if you still listen to the radio. But this is the deal. Why does this album about female empowerment come up so flat? Because what I think when you listen to it, it will show you that feminism's real promises about how we can control our own bodies and how bodily autonomy and empowerment are the pinnacle of success and how we find happiness. It's all lies.

[Cultural Critic]

The album was inspired, or maybe compelled by Florence's decision to step back from constant touring to to pursue a family in her late 30s. But that longing ended in the loss of her child in a terrifying near death experience with an ectopic pregnancy.

[Social Commentator]

When we look at the album's lyrics, we find a very specific spiritual worldview. There are songs on this album with names like Sympathy, Magic, Witch Dance, the Old Religion, and my personal favorite, you can have it all, which is a huge lie. Florence reveals a spirituality that's rooted in ritual and self doubt, definition. And the songs are actually revealing a woman desperate for peace. But the spirituality that she turns to is chaotic. At one point, she talks about reaching to the ancestral plane, and the witches that she's communing with say, how should we know? As if they don't have any wisdom. For her, it doesn't rely on the natural transcendence or the objective moral order of any kind.

[Cultural Critic]

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Florence shared that she was looking for meaning regarding the loss of her child. She said, quote, everywhere I looked, I found stories of witchcraft. No one could tell me why this was happening when no one can tell you why. You're looking to find meaning, you're looking to find a way to understand it and also some kind of control.

[Social Commentator]

Florence Welch became famous in a world that told women they could have everything. The career, the freedom, the money, the self definition, the whole you go girl package. Florence has talked about turning to the occult and witchcraft practices in her larger search for meaning and to process grief and to have some control. She even said she got, quote, a literal cauldron.

[Cultural Critic]

You see, this dark spirituality places the self at the center of the universe, like a God. It's a spirituality that believes we can define reality through the sheer power of our own will. This framework is no accident. It follows a pattern identified by author Carrie Gress in her latest work, Something Wicked. Lawrence's album is a perfect case study about how this shadow religion uses pop culture to spread. It's a framework where autonomy, ritual, and self expression become the new sacraments used to navigate a world without traditional faith. Modern women who are often raised in secular families, largely lack a framework to grapple with their deepest questions about life, death, and suffering. Many of them are following their feminist foremothers from history into the occult, seeking to fill the void.

[Social Commentator]

Young women aren't just looking for aesthetics. They're looking for a way to hold their life together. And right now, their greatest hope is in a pop rock concert that's posing as a satanic ritual that's literally being sponsored by my arch nemesis, Planned Parenthood. The greatest killer, the largest killer of human life in the United States of America. But how's this working for young women in this generation? Are they finding happiness? Are they finding peace in this occult like spirituality? I don't think so. I mean, look at every single statistic that comes out showing that young women have higher anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation rates. It's overwhelming.

[Cultural Critic]

But throughout this album, we see a raw, competing desire breaking through almost every song. And it's the desire to be loved, chosen, pursued, and protected.

[Social Commentator]

The natural tension that is there between this ideal of the invincible woman. Yet the longing of the human heart is impossible to ignore. And it's actually why this cultural moment matters so much right now. It reveals the cracks in the whole feminist promise that this bodily autonomy gives us happiness, that it's enough for us as humans or as women.

[Cultural Critic]

Ultimately, this music isn't just ideological. It's a cry of pain based on feminist cultural expectations. Florence Wells should be the pinnacle of female happiness. She rose to the top in a female dominated industry. She has the cultural power to shape the views of millions of young women. And her fame and success give her the freedom to decide what she wants her future to look like. Instead, though, her album exposes how modern culture celebrates freedom, productivity, and achievement, but often fails women when they're in the midst of grief and suffering.

[Social Commentator]

And we can't just blame men who want to use our bodies for pleasure, who want to profit off of our despair. Because it was feminists who told us that achievement and productivity would lead to happiness, fulfillment, feeling powerful. Feminism promised us freedom and fulfillment, but instead it's left women across America and really across the world feeling exhausted, feeling confused, feeling like they can't ever feel this longing in their heart. But freedom without meaning doesn't make you hold, doesn't heal your grief. It just leaves you searching, exhausted, confused and empty.

[Cultural Critic]

This album serves as a reminder that the language of power and autonomy can feel incredibly hollow when your body is breaking and your heart is mourning a loss that material success and productivity simply can't fix. This experience extends beyond the album and into the live tour, which functions as a kind of modern liturgy or congregation. On tour, it seems that Florence's fans

[Social Commentator]

don't simply view her as a pop star.

[Cultural Critic]

To her audience, she is a performer, a priestess, and even a symbolic offering. The fans aren't just attending a concert, they're participating in a synchronized ritual. Some have said that there is a God shaped hole in the heart of every human. For centuries, ritualistic liturgical worship of God provided spiritual release and filled that hole in hearts. Throughout Western civilization, secularization may have stripped these acts of worship away from our civilization. But hearts haven't changed. They still search for ritual, liturgy and worship. And if Florence Welsh is offering that to young women, they will come. To understand why this spiritual experimentation often feels so incomplete, we can apply Father Robert Spitzer's framework. Of the four levels of happiness. These are 1 pleasure, 2 ego, 3 love and contribution, and 4 transcendence. Because modern feminism places autonomy above all, it doesn't have a framework to move

[Social Commentator]

past the first two levels of happiness, pleasure and ego.

[Cultural Critic]

Florence's album cycles intensely through pleasure and ego, and she reaches for love desperately, but because of her worldview and her

[Social Commentator]

work remain rooted in self definition rather than the higher moral order. She can't quite get a hold of

[Cultural Critic]

love and contribution, and she could never arrive at the fourth level of true, lasting transcendence.

[Social Commentator]

In the end, we've been left with a pretty sobering truth. Autonomy alone cannot help us heal from grief, and self expression can't make us feel whole.