Creeped out by Katie Britt’s voice in her rebuttal to the State of the Union? Then the speech wasn’t for you. But it signals the Christian Nationalist future she wants for you and for America.
Who is Katie Britt?
Katie Britt is the junior Senator from Alabama and is the first woman to be elected to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Currently age 42, she is also the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate. And on March 7, she delivered the rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, an emblem of “a new generation of conservative leaders,” as she touted in the ad announcing her 2022 campaign.
The ad announcing her candidacy for senator foreshadows what we saw on March 7.
With country guitar music strumming in the background, the video portrays a wholesome, White woman in sunny scenes of Alabama’s fields, lakes, and porches talking with farmers, business owners, and parents. There’s her diamond-encrusted cross tantalizingly displayed on her chest, one button open at the top of her open-collar shirt. She wears that cross in almost every picture, a clear signal to her base that she is a conservative Christian.
And, yes, there she is in her kitchen, now infamous as the setting of her SOTU rebuttal speech.
In her ad, Katie Britt unabashedly proclaims her belief in “faith, family, and freedom” – the alliterative phrase that evokes feelings of both nostalgia and warm fuzzies for White conservatives nationwide. This is, of course, a cornerstone of White Christian Nationalism. She’s “fighting” for the freedom to impose radical authoritarian policies under the guise of conservative Christianity in order to protect the ideals of White families in America.
And it’s all delivered with a saccharine smile and a practiced voice intended to convey sincerity and authenticity. To many, however, Katie Britt’s voice sounds fake, performative, and over-the-top. In fact, there are videos showing what her actual voice sounds like without the Evangelical overlay.
But if Katie Britt’s voice creeps you out, that means it wasn’t meant for you. It was meant for a specific audience of White Christian Nationalist women and men who see her as the future of America.
I teach homiletics at a seminary, so I listen to students and pastors deliver sermons almost daily. I’m trained to listen to preachers’ voices, their use of language, and how they construct their rhetoric to convey a message. So, I listened to Katie Britt’s voice with an analytical lens to hear the subtext conveyed by her tone, her inflections, and her very specific vocal techniques.
What I heard in Katie Britt’s voice is the signature siren song that I’ve heard from white, conservative, Evangelical women leaders for decades.
I’ve heard it in the syrupy condescending voices of Evangelical pastors’ and elders’ wives as I grew up in proximity of Fundamentalist extended family members. I heard it in the sugary patronizing voice of the female minister of a large, well-to-do conservative Christian church in the small town where I once served as pastor. You can hear it in the voice of Michelle Dugar, wife of Jim Bob Duggar, and mother of 19 children, one of whom, Josh Duggar, is currently in jail as a convicted sex offender. You can hear it in the voice of Kelly Johnson, wife of House Speaker Mike Johnson.
It’s what Jess Piper calls the “Fundie Baby Voice.”
The Fundie Baby Voice
That breathy quality and deliberate cadence with the soft, child-like pitch is deliberate. It’s meant to convey that this good, Christian woman is sweet, obedient, and subservient to her male relatives and church leaders. The voice signals that she is a good wife, mother, and servant of the Lord.
How does one produce such a voice?
The key is to speak from one’s throat and not to use one’s diaphragm or full lung capacity. Because when women speak with their full voice and use the lower pitches of their vocal cords, they are accused of sounding “manly,” of being too assertive. So, to prove that they know their place, they must shape their voice into something that fits the ideal of what white Fundamentalist Christian men want from their women.
For those like Piper, a former Southern Baptist who has escaped Fundamentalist Christianity and now serves as the Executive Director for Blue Missouri, the voice sends chills down their spine. For those who did not grow up in that world, the voice makes them feel uncomfortable, but they can’t quite explain why.
That discomfort you feel with Katie Britt’s voice should raise red flags and alert you that this is what lies in store for America if Christian Nationalists have their way.
“It’s my love for the Lord and for my family that gives true purpose to my life,” Britt reminds the viewer in her campaign ad. This is coded language that her base will understand to mean that she takes her orders from the male church leaders and her husband – just as any good Christian woman should. She and her husband, Wesley Britt, a former NFL football player for the New England Patriots, and their two children are shown fishing, walking through the woods, and standing together in an empty church. They are paragons of conservative Christianity – fresh-faced, heterosexual, churchgoing, and White.
But then the ad, like her SOTU rebuttal speech, takes a dark turn.
“When I look at what’s happening in Washington, I don’t recognize our country,” she says. Sinister music replaces the happily strumming guitar. A darkened image of churches appears with the words “Attacking Religious Freedoms” followed by a picture of the White House, “Advancing Socialist Agenda.” She then launches into an attack on “Joe Biden’s America” with the familiar tropes against “leftists.”
“I’ve spent a lot of time praying for America, and now I’m stepping up,” she announces with that breathy, smiling voice that has since garnered her much derision after using it in her SOTU rebuttal.
That Fundie baby voice is a smoke screen for abuse, violence, and toxic secrets.
I know this because I have encountered it in my own extended family. Behind that finely made-up mask and beneath that practiced fake voice is a venomous anger and hatred. That self-righteous rage is directed outward toward the unholy “others” such as those who are LGBTQIA+, or immigrants, or Democrats. But this is misdirection. Because the anger actually stems from an authoritarian patriarchal system that rules by fear, manipulation, and violence – all ensconced within religious rhetoric that gives divine sanction for such abuse. Just watch the documentary Shiny, Happy People. You’ll see what I mean.
Katie Britt’s voice spewed that venom not just in dog-whistle attacks on Joe Biden, but by lying in a key story she told in her speech.
In her breathy, tremulous voice, she said that she had spoken to a woman in Texas who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times. The story was intended to illustrate the supposed failure of the Biden administration’s border control policies. But reporter Jonathan Katz did some digging and found that the woman in question was raped in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration, not in the U.S. under the Biden administration.
The woman, Karla Jacinto Romero, an advocate for trafficking victims, recently spoke out about Britt warping her story and using it for political purposes. “I work as a spokesperson for many victims who have no voice, and I really would like them to be empathetic: all the governors, all the senators, to be empathetic with the issue of human trafficking because there are millions of girls and boys who disappear all the time. People who are really trafficked and abused, as she [Britt] mentioned. And I think she [Britt] should first take into account what really happens before telling a story of that magnitude,” Jacinto told CNN.
To some, Britt’s lie illustrates the lengths the GOP and Christian Nationalists will go to in order to gin up the base and get them to vote against Joe Biden in November. (Though, oddly, Britt never mentioned Trump’s name once in her speech, or directly called on viewers to vote for him. But, then, she didn’t need to. Propaganda works best when it can persuade people to do its bidding by giving the person the illusion that they are making the connections for themselves.)
But the fact that this was a lie doesn’t matter to Britt.
Katie Britt’s story was directed at the same people who watched the movie The Sound of Freedom with horror, not realizing that the movie traffics in sensationalism about child sex trafficking spawned by Q-Anon conspiracy theories. It’s the same people who defend the Duggar family, even after the truth of their abuse has come to light. They are the same people who want women as pure and white and subservient as Katie Britt and Michelle Duggar and Kelly Johnson.
Piper urges people to “pay attention to the voice” when it comes from people in power like Katie Britt. “I am jolted awake when I hear the voice dripping sugar from a mouth that claims to love all while stripping rights from many.”
Don’t let the Fundie baby voice fool you.
Like the treacly-voiced, kitten-loving Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter series, these women will watch you, judge you, punish you, banish you, and torture you, smiling all the while. They will lead an inquisition against all their enemies while sipping from their “My Heart Belongs to My Husband and Jesus” mugs at their pristine kitchen tables.
This is what White Christian Nationalists want for America. So, do more than mock it.* Take it seriously. Because they are telling you exactly who they are.
*(See this hilariously cringey SNL video with Scarlett Johansson as Britt.)
Read also:
Countering Misogyny & Toxic Masculinity in Christian Nationalism
Is Your Pastor Preaching Christian Nationalism? 8 Red Flags
It’s Okay to Be A Progressive Christian. Here’s Why.
The Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade is the Associate Professor of Preaching and Worship at Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky and ordained in the ELCA. Dr. Schade does not speak for LTS or the ELCA; her opinions are her own. She is the author of Preaching in the Purple Zone: Ministry in the Red-Blue Divide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019) and Creation-Crisis Preaching: Ecology, Theology, and the Pulpit (Chalice Press, 2015). She is the co-editor of Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a Time of Climate Crisis (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019). Her newest book is Introduction to Preaching: Scripture, Theology, and Sermon Preparation, co-authored with Jerry L. Sumney and Emily Askew (Rowman & Littlefield, 2023). She is also the co-founder of the Clergy Emergency League, a network of faith leaders supporting each other in their resistance against Christian Nationalism.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In