The backlash towards Chip and Joanna Gaines’ new Magnolia Network reality series “Back to the Frontier” has put a spotlight on the couple’s sprawling lifestyle empire.
The couple was criticized last weekend after Chip promoted the new series, which features three families living like pioneers.
People flooded his post promoting the show with frustrations over a same-sex couple being cast as one of three couples on the reality series.
Reverend Franklin Graham, president of Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, called the casting decision “very disappointing.”
CHIP AND JOANNA GAINES SAY THEIR ‘AWKWARD’ NEW HOBBY HAS REIGNITED THEIR 22-YEAR MARRIAGE
“While we are to love people, we should love them enough to tell them the truth of God’s Word,” he wrote on social media. “His Word is absolute truth. God loves us, and His design for marriage is between one man and one woman. Promoting something that God defines as sin is in itself sin.”
Chip was quick to respond to the criticism, writing on X: “Talk, ask qustns [sic], listen.. maybe even learn. Too much to ask of modern American Christian culture. Judge 1st, understand later/never It’s a sad sunday when ‘non believers’ have never been confronted with hate or vitriol until they are introduced to a modern American Christian.”
The Gaines first gained fame more than 10 years ago when they were cast on the HGTV series “Fixer Upper” in 2013, which showed the couple revitalizing dilapidated homes through their Magnolia Homes business in Waco, Texas.
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After five seasons, they decided to leave the show, and then signed with Discovery + and started the Magnolia Network in 2022.
Along with the network, the couple also have the five-acre Magnolia Market at the Silos, which includes the shops at the Silos, the Silos Baking Co. bakery, the Magnolia Press coffee shop, and they also own the Magnolia Table restaurant several miles away.
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They also own the Magnolia Journal magazine, have written a series of lifestyle books, including Joanna’s “Home Body” and Chip’s “No Pain, No Gaines,” they have their own Magnolia Home, furniture and accessories line, and a home line created by Joanna called Hearth and Hand for Target.
The couple also opened a boutique hotel, Hotel 1928, in 2023, after renovating a historic hotel in Waco with 33 rooms. The pair also offer vacation rentals in Waco, including Hillcrest Estate and Hillcrest Cottage, the original carriage house for the estate.
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“TV shows impact the culture, but Chip and Jo impact people’s lives,” Discovery CEO David Zaslav told The Hollywood Reporter in 2021. “They provide something very rare in America today: a sunshiny hopefulness that you can make things with your own two hands and your life will be better for it.”
