Advice like this is overtly provocative—but Prewett Troutt says she doesn’t want to spark discord with her words. “I don’t want there to be hatred and division and violence and loss and brokenness and sin,” she says. “I mean, those are things that are really hard to see and to witness. And I love everybody, so I want everyone to love everyone.” To her, a religious revival seems like the solution to the country’s woes. “I don’t think we have a political problem. I don’t think we have a racial problem. I don’t think we have a gender problem,” she says. “I think we need Jesus.”
Prewett Troutt grew up in a fairly cloistered world before she took a limo to The Bachelor’s crowded mansion in 2019. Raised in Alabama by her father, a coach for Auburn University’s basketball team, and mother, a Bible teacher, she was involved in her family’s Assemblies of God church community and the wider evangelical subculture. After leaving The Bachelor, she was hurt to see how other conservative Christians responded to her choice to participate in a reality dating show.
“It was really hard for me after I came off the show,” she says. “There were some months where I really struggled with wanting to be a part of a church, because I felt so judged and hurt by the church.” For months, Prewett Troutt says, she kept her distance.
But marrying Troutt brought her back into the fold—and into a more modern church, where conservative theology goes hand-in-hand with athleisure and Nike Dunks. “My husband and I moved to Waco, Texas, right after we got married, and he was working at a local church called Harris Creek,” she says. She credits their pastor, Jonathan Pokluda, with helping her develop as a public speaker.
Prewett Troutt’s plan to present an aesthetically attractive Christianity to the wider world is not without its challenges. In July, a video of the Troutts laughing about their eventual intention to spank their daughter—they’re currently parents to Hosanna, who was born in January 2025—inspired widespread outrage on TikTok and YouTube. Over 500 commenters on The Bachelor’s subreddit weighed in on the incident, and most of their remarks were strongly negative.
For Prewett Troutt’s detractors, the spanking video was a reminder that despite her large reach, she is still firmly ensconced in a bubble. Even other evangelicals complained that she and Troutt were repeating old, debunked ideas about how Christians should raise their children, without having the experience to know that their advice could be harmful. Because she gained her audience through The Bachelor, she may be less equipped to navigate the challenges of sharing unpopular views online as she’d be if, say, she’d spent those years debating atheists instead.
In the meantime, Prewett Troutt says that she and her husband are “learning” from the negative reaction to the spanking video. “I always want to listen before I speak. I always want to take it to God and ask him to lead me and guide me,” she says. “We take it to wise counsel and just say, like, ‘Hey, where did we mess up? Where did we fall short? Can y’all be praying for this?’ And so that’s what we’ve done.”
And for now, the criticism she’s gotten for remarks that seem out of step with modern culture are only making her more determined to stay the course. “I think there’s always something to learn anytime you get backlash,” she says. “It doesn’t make me want to shrink back or speak out less. It actually just makes me want to be even more bold, and be even more unashamed of God’s truth that I believe is the only thing that’ll set us free.”
