It’s not uncommon for a concert to feel more akin to a religious rite than mere musical artistry. But Florence + The Machine’s latest tour makes the quiet part unmistakably loud, featuring songs strewn with mysticism, witchery, and incantation.

That isn’t just edginess. Behind the smoke and mirrors of the performance lies lead vocalist Florence Welch’s true theology  —  one rooted in all the right questions met with all the wrong answers.

In an op-ed for The Federalist Thursday, Kristan Hawkins describes Welch’s search:

Welch’s album serves as a compelling case study of the modern feminist woman — filled with grief, mystical language, and an unmistakable sense of longing she doesn’t try to hide…. When no one could explain her suffering, she sought control through spirituality rooted not in transcendence but in self-definition.

Hawkins continues, “It’s a spiritual framework, one where ritual replaces truth, and the self becomes the ultimate authority…. But it is religion with a fatal flaw: It places self at the center of the universe.”

Hawkins concludes,

We need more — a culture where women are not just seen as capable but protected. Not just successful but supported. Not just expressive but loved. The tragedy is not that Welch is searching for hope and a future. The tragedy is where she has been told to look.

Read the full op-ed here.