QAnon and Evangelicals
Yesterday I posted a video on Twitter in response to the prompt “do you want to know why Christians are susceptible to conspiracy theories?” The reaction to it shocked me, but was a good reminder that my childhood wasn’t exactly mainstream.
I grew up evangelical in the 90s, raised on the Left Behind novels and Frank Peretti kids' books, attending a private religious school, and eagerly listening to Focus on the Family’s Adventures in Odyssey. In every corner of my world there lurked demons — sometimes metaphorical, other times quite literal.
Hear a noise in the basement when you’re home alone? Tell Satan you rebuke him in the name of Jesus; his demons will have no choice but to leave.
Do you love your friends? Make sure they accept Jesus as their Lord and savior, otherwise they are doomed to burn in hell.
With every advancement in technology, I was told that humanity was getting closer to being branded with the Mark of the Beast.
I was taught that Democrats wanted an evil globalist government, planned to use our tax dollars for free abortions, and ultimately had a plot to outlaw Christianity. They had even created the hoax of global warming to make life more difficult for everyone, just so they could raise taxes and control us.
We were always the victims, never tiring of preparing for the battle against white Christianity that was sure to come. Like Daniel, cast into the lion’s den for defying the government mandate to only pray to King Darius, and instead continuing to pray to God, we would soon be forced to stand up to our tyrannical government as it tried to outlaw our religion.
When you’ve spent your entire life believing you are living in the end times, equipped with a blueprint for the inevitable, horrible path the world is on, it’s exciting and vindicating to believe you are standing up for good. It also makes it easy to switch from acting as apostles of Jesus, proselytizing strangers on the street and drawing back nearly every conversation to religion, to bringing everything back to the “COVID is a hoax and we have to save the sex trafficked kids” narrative.
In April 2021, a woman at a Roger Stone event told me a story about demanding a convenience store clerk take off his paper mask, claiming she heard they were full of fiberglass (they aren’t). She explained he wasn’t really happy with her, “but you know, we need to tell people the truth so they don't hurt themselves, right? Even if they hate us for it.”
This concept is the ethos of my upbringing. When we speak the truth about the Lord, about grace, we will be targeted and punished for it. “Will you stand up for the Lord?” our pastors and teachers constantly asked us, “or will you deny him like Judas did?”
Undercover, I heard, “when we speak the truth and said that COVID-19 is just the flu, that the vaccines are deadly, that this is a globalist plot to oppress the church and subdue the Lord’s faithful servants, people will hate us. But we have to do it."
In June 2021 I attended Clay Clark’s Health and Freedom Conference in Tampa, Florida. While Clark’s Health and Freedom events would end up becoming a traveling circus, Tampa was only the second conference, and the first outside of Clark’s home state of Oklahoma. The Health and Freedom tour is very QAnon heavy, full of conspiracy theories, election denying, and religion — multiple people prayed in tongues over my broken arm over the 3 day convention.
I spent most of my time at the Tampa conference in the media room, where I got to know some of the small, rightwing live-streamers that were covering the event. I listened as a group of them complained that the pastor of the church was “living in fear” because he wouldn’t let them act as media at the event. Comparing Tampa to the prior conference Clark hosted in Tulsa, one explained:
“The devil had like a month to figure out ‘how are we going to stop this message from getting out in Florida?’…[Tampa] was gonna be a greater blessing, a greater outpouring…As the media, our job is to get that message to you. That we are changing the world, you are changing the world, that God is moving, and don't let anybody stop you from doing what God has called you to do. God gives you a message, God tells you to do something, you do it, because greater is He who is in you, than he who is in the world.”
Like lady, are you a disciple of Christ, or are you trying to live-stream Roger Stone passing out a trash bag for donations?
If you believe that speaking the truth about Jesus is met by social pushback because Satan is trying to sabotage you, why not apply that same logic to spreading misinformation? It’s not hard to apply the mindset of “the people who laugh at me when I try to teach them about the Bible will learn their lesson when I am raptured and they are not” to another conspiracy.
I often talked with people about the friends and family that had cut ties with them because of their dedication to conspiracy. For some, this was because their loved ones had safety concerns over their refusal to acknowledge that COVID is real, but for others it was because their inability to stop talking about the 2020 election was too annoying. I met one woman in Tampa whose husband was leaving her because she refused to accept that Joe Biden won the election — but she was positive that one day he would see she was right and regret his decision. After all, every instance of pushback or persecution is an indicator that she’s absolutely correct.
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I am very tempted to ask "Are You a Turtle?" but I'm going to restrain myself. You stated that you grew up in the evangelical movement of the 1990s. OK, I predate you by better than 20-25 years. My family were pretty staunch Methodists because some fool in a Presbyterian Church besmirched my Great-Grandmother who was not a Presbyterian. Grandpa muttered some under the breath imprecations and marched out the door of the church, walked down the street to the Methodist Church and said "Howdy". But I'm getting lost in the history of the family beliefs.
In the late 1960s, the charismatic movement (evangelicals) started to infiltrate the mainline Methodist Church. And BTW, John Wesley took most of his theology from William Barkley and the Quakers. The evangelicals with their zeal pushed aside any semblance of reality in their fervor to make sure that everybody that they came in contact with were converted to think and believe like they did. When you see some poor sinner prayed (preyed?) over by teams of fanatical fundamentalistic evangelicals you begin to think of the Spanish Inquisition.
Today, the christo-fascists (the spawn of the Moral Majority) are doing their best to create a theocracy in this country. The pejorative 'christo-fascists' has been around since the 1970s. Do you want someone to tell you what you HAVE to DO lest being condemned to damnation? I sure don't. Unfortunately, Trump is acting exactly as an Anti-christ would or Benito Mussolini. His followers/sycophants are way too wrapped up in the thrill of doing his work.
Be afraid, very, very afraid. God (or his minions) are watching you.
You know who was most responsible for the Religious Right? Jimmy Carter.
Carter was our first "born again" president. He won in 1976 a broad, multi-racial coalition as a moderate (the Dems hurting from the 72 shellacking of McGovern). At the time most evangelicals shunned secular politics. Pro-Life was largely a Catholic issue.
Enter Jerry Falwell and Paul Weirich. They wanted to turn evangelicals to the Right. They knew Nixon's Southern Strategy and wanted to put it on steroids. But their real issue wasn't abortion. It was tax exemption for religious schools that were segregated. That wasn't going to really fly, so they needed an issue they could push for religious reasons.
Jimmy Carter united North and South, Black and White, Country and Rock and Roll. He was a man of deeply held religious beliefs but did not bring that into the public sphere outside broad Christ-like ethics. And the Right HATED him for it.
The person taking the Falwell's bait was Ronald Reagan. He lost narrowly the nomination to Gerald Ford running on a Fire and Brimstone conservative that alienated the country still reeling from Watergate but reactivating the old Goldwater coalition from 1964.
In 1980 Reagan toned down his rhetoric into the familiar grandfatherly persona we now know him for. He launched his 1980 bid from Mississippi in a place known for lynching, talking about States' Rights. The Dog whistles were blaring full volume.
The election of Jimmy Carter brought into the mainstream evangelical religion but for some reason that SCARED some evangelicals. Like they NEEDED to be seen as persecuted. Carter's tolerance and openness drove them to Reagan's barely shielded bigotry.
Carter gave them a vision of a New South. Reagan gave them another. They chose Reagan.