Waking Up After QAnon: How Can the Church Respond?

Christianity Today seems to have unpublished this one. Hopefully, that’s just temporary. There was some interesting information and analysis there, but maybe there was a factual error or something.

While we wait to see if the article comes back, I have a question for anyone who cares to answer…

Has anyone actually encountered QAnon or similar conspiracy theories in their pastoral ministries? Before Jan. 6, the only reason I even knew it existed was because people kept telling me how important it was that I denounce it. All the real, flesh-and-blood Trump supporters that I know had either never heard of it (again, pre-Jan. 6) or dismissed it as non-sense.

To be clear, I think it’s a real and dangerous problem. I just have never had to deal with it.

So, has anyone actually had to deal with this outside of the Internet and if so, how did you handle it?

Honestly, I’m not sure how QAnon conspiracy theories are different than the “election theft” conspiracy theories. If they are one in the same, then yes, there were several people in my congregation who believed the election was stolen from Trump. They even asked for prayer that God would expose the election fraud and punish the democrats.

I categorize these conspiracy theories similarly to what Paul warns about with Jewish myths and genealogies.

It’s truly hard to tell where QAnon ends and ‘stolen election’ and various other narratives begin. The core idea of QAnon is that there is a group of powerful evil elites who are secretly plotting to (… various things) and that Trump is the world’s only hope for defeating them. The belief that evil elites are driving an evil agenda for the world is very widespread.

… and not entirely false.

It’s just that this is not anything new or anything to get particularly excited about. Most of the world’s power has always resided in a relatively small number of people. With so much democracy in the world in this age, it’s more distributed than in the past, but still relatively few. And do these engage in some secret deal making? Almost certainly.

But QAnon taps into the spirit of hostility and suspicion that dominates the mindset of many on the right, so they’re tapping into the belief that the world’s ruling elites must be…

a. Up to extreme evil
b. Do lots of cooperating with one another in secret
c. Have a grand plan to make extreme evil happen in the world

All three of these are square in the non-rational, non-falsifiable conspiracy theory thinking camp…. even if they don’t buy the QAnon distinctives, which involve stuff like the belief that these evil elites engage in ritual pedophilia … and that only Donald Trump can save the world from them.

(I probably don’t have to point out to most readers how unlikely all three of these are!)

Maybe there is something like “5 point QAnonism,” with many right wing Christians being 3 or 4 pointers, and a smaller number being five pointers.

I’m persuaded that for many right wing Christians, this kind of conspiracy thinking ties in with a faulty understanding of the New Testament concept of “the world.”

QANON is a kook theory about a secret cabal of child traffickers

The Election problems are obvious. In the six months before the elections Democrats went to court all over the country to get election rules changed “because of COVID.” These are factual events, not conspiracies. The idea was to loosen the restrictions on voting by mail and absentee “for public health.” The result was that many ballots were accepted this time that NEVER would have been counted before. That is what Trump was mad about, and what he talked about from the start of the COVID panic. This QAnon stuff was internet kookism that had nothing to do with Trump’s key argument. I honestly don’t think Trump even knows what QAnon is. Some people took Trump’s obvious points about election concerns and mixed them with QAnon and things like the militia movements, and that’s who broke into the capitol. The regular Trump supporter didn’t do that.

Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Christ Plante… none of this is QAnon.

Let me say it stronger. It is a flat out LIE to say election fraud belief equals QAnon. Period. I would appreciate an apology for saying that.

Link is working now, by the way. A bit more…

We can’t just believe everything we hear the media shouting in our ears; instead, we must think both carefully and critically about what we read at news sites, watch on the news, and hear our peers discussing. We need to consider our sources and, when situations like this arise, be careful to seek out answers from people who actually know what they’re talking about.

It is fair to suggest that Christians have failed in this task. We have not properly modeled or taught godly media habits, helping our people understand how these behaviors are shaping their souls for good or ill. Moreover, we have failed to confront those in our congregations who disseminate falsehoods or slander through social media.

Much awaits further investigation, but I think we may eventually find that many of those who stormed the capitol Jan 6 were 3 to 5 point QAnoners.

Fact: ‘stolen election’ is a conspiracy theory, it is a shared belief among QAnoners, and its association with QAnon is strong (e.g., actively promoted by many of the same people.)

[Aaron Blumer]

Fact: ‘stolen election’ is a conspiracy theory, it is a shared belief among QAnoners, and its association with QAnon is strong (e.g., actively promoted by many of the same people.)

No matter what you believe about either the “stolen election” or QAnon, the logic doesn’t change. The fact that the “stolen election” theory may be held by many or most (or even all) QAnon followers neither makes those equivalent, nor requires those who believe that the election was “stolen” to have anything to do with QAnon. (And although this should be obvious, it also doesn’t mean that those who firmly believe there were election issues that still need to be investigated believe that the election was “stolen.”)

Mormons hold some of the same beliefs that orthodox Christians do. The fact that those beliefs are shared in common does not make the Christians Mormon either. This is kind of the same thinking the mass media uses to declare that all evangelical Christians are essentially equivalent to people like Jerry Falwell Jr. and believe and practice the same excesses.

A church (IFB) that I was in in the 70’s had quite a bit of Illuminati conspiracy theorists. It was never preached from the pulpit, but some leaders believed in it.

I have encountered QAnon and studied it extensively. There is a lot of overlap between conspiracy theories and faith. It tends to suck those from our congregations into these theories. We preach from the pulpit that the world is against them, there is a war between good and evil that cannot be seen, the world is against God….. Some preachers and news hosts and websites espouse that the liberals are against them. There is a secret war from the far left, the world is against Trump….. So you can see how this plays out amongst many in Christendom. I am not saying they are the same, but they play on the same elements. There are mature Christians and weak Christians, and this plays on certain elements of some congregations in churches. One way that you can see what is taking place in your church is to look at the social media feeds and see what type of current is taking place. If you have someone posting about child trafficking a lot, than they could be drawn to QAnon. While not all those who believe in the “stolen election” narrative are QAnon supporters, it is a key theme of QAnon. They believed that on January 6th they were to storm the capital, so that Trump could execute on the coming “Storm” and seize power and expose the cabal of pedophiles. That believe it is this group that stealing the election. Many christians are pulled into much of the stolen election unknowingly not realizing that much of the proofs and concerns that they have are created from the QAnon groups.

I’ve encountered Illuminati stuff too in IFB . It seems to rear its head more in hyper-fundy churches.

[Joeb]

Mark in PA it’s the PA Republicans who instituted it and more Republicans voted for it than Democrats. It was upheld by the PA Supreme Court. In the Texas Lawsuit the US Supreme Court said we have no standing to get involved because it’s a State matter. Arizona has had Mail in voting for 70 years. I don’t know about the other states in question. So where was the big Democrat conspiracy to institute voting by Mail.

Mark the only voter fraud with Mail in voting on record in the last two elections was done be Republicans in a NC Congressional Race and in PA race. So Mark where is your basis to throw stones at the Democrats other than repeating the usual Trump Baloney that’s just like the Qnon Baloney. It’s all BALONEY. Trump is a big lying comman period.

Mark I suggest you watch the interview on CNN of Congressman Cauthorne no matter how you thinks it’s Fake News. Can’t say it’s fake news because you can watch him speak yourself. Cauthorne tries all the usual Trump mass voter fraud fraud baloney and the interviewer whittles down all his BALONEY Trump lies. At the end Cauthorne concedes no mass voter fraud and BIDEN WON THE ELECTION FAIR AND SQUARE.

The above all being said what is really scary to me is a Bulk of the Evangelicals would have no problem with Trump overthrowing our Government and making himself President for life A lot of the Evangelicals involved in the assault hailed from that Charismatic Network led by men claiming to be Apostles and Prophets These Prophets claimed God directly spoke to them and said Donald Trump will be the President over Biden This group are also Domiomists and believe making Evangelical Christianity a state religion ie A Christian Saudi Arabia

I say a lot of Evangelicals would support Trump being President for life even though the above violates the first Amendment in spades ♠️ I say at what price to get abortion and gay marriage outlawed You think Trump’s White Supremacist Thugs are not going to want a free hand in putting the African Americans and other minorities in there place I say Id take 100 Bidens if freely elected over a Trump Dictatorship where Jim Crow would return but we got abortion outlawed and we are jailing those gays

Mark I’d have to question any Christian voting for Trump the second time after with his own words said the White Supremacists were his guys ie Proud Boys Stand Back and Stand By Mark Trump also supported the Michigan Militia led by Men my age I recognized them in the interview Mark They were prior associates with Timothy McVeigh and Company McVeigh was a follower of the Turner Diaries and killed 182 of my fellow employees and in that count were 10 Babies and 10 Toddlers There was three main groups back then The Identity Church the Sword and Something and the Posse Comitatis The Posse were the Tax Protestors and thats who I dealt with The others were blowing up abortion clinics and shooting Abortion Doctors By throwing in with Donald a second time the Evangelicals threw in with this crowd We should all think about that before we so quickly point the finger and say Demon Democrats I say the Christian Right’s sin is throwing in with this lot Why do you think Senator Portman quite Portman knows that the Senators who have no problem with White Supremacists and killers are not going to convict Donald Trump their Demigod

I’m supporting Chris Christie if he runs in 2024 Christie said if he was a Senator he would vote to convict Trump If they can’t convict Trump why bother with any impeachments any more Sorry state of affairs for the Republican Party Like I said I’d take a 100 Bidens freely elected before I’d take Trump or a Trump copy

Joeb, your responses here are a little on the kooky side, with all due respect.

I read several PA newspaper articles on what the PA legislature voted for in reforming election laws and you might want to reread what you think you know. You are wrong, sir.

When I lived in Colorado, there was even a little radio station out of Johnstown that friends of mine listened to—we affectionately dubbed it “conspiracy talk radio.”

There are two tacks that we ought to take with this. First of all, just because QAnon is associated with allegations of voter fraud does not mean that all of those who would suggest a degree of vote fraud are with QAnon. Many of us simply see the voting rule changes that many states enacted as not only impermissible loosening of voting laws, and we simply disagree with the court rulings that upheld them. Correlation is not causation, and there are sound reasons to be skeptical of the process many states followed this year.

However, I would agree that there is a certain tendency of fundagelicals to fall for conspiracy theories, and the big question is why. I would suggest that at least part of the problem is that certain pastors select their congregation by their willingness to accept breaches of basic logic. For example, those who use Frank Garlock’s arguments against modern music are being trained to accept arguments based on guilt by association fallacies. Those who preach KJVO theories are doing the same, and are also training listeners to accept a large amount of personal attacks.

If we’re going to be a people of the Word, we’re going to need to be a people who handles verbal statements correctly and with sound logic. If we want to prevent the embarrassment of being found following a lot of nonsense arguments spread by QAnon and others, we have to start policing ourselves in other areas.

[Mark_Smith]

The Election problems are obvious. In the six months before the elections Democrats went to court all over the country to get election rules changed “because of COVID.” These are factual events, not conspiracies. The idea was to loosen the restrictions on voting by mail and absentee “for public health.” The result was that many ballots were accepted this time that NEVER would have been counted before.

That doesn’t prove massive voter fraud. Just because rules are changed and less restrictions exists on voting. It was confirmed by the courts, the secretary of state, the state certification and the senate certification. Trump was mad about Georgia, but every complaint was debunked, 3 recounts which confirmed that the Dominion machines were okay, and signature verification audit by law enforcement that showed not a single error, plus gave a greater than 99.99% statistical confidence rate on all of the signature verifications. Trump kept throwing out kooky ideas and QAnon ate it up. Practically no shred of evidence for any inconsistencies or fraud, which is actually pretty amazing, yet people ate up that Trump was espousing millions of votes were fraudulent across the country, all being fed by a few lawyers and Trumps inner circle. Regardless of how tight the voter fraud people were to QAnon, they wre all crazy.

A lot of the Evangelicals involved in the assault hailed from that Charismatic Network led by men claiming to be Apostles and Prophets These Prophets claimed God directly spoke to them and said Donald Trump will be the President over Biden This group are also Domiomists and believe making Evangelical Christianity a state religion ie A Christian Saudi Arabia

Dominion theology (not the voting machines) has been around long before Trump and Q. If Q morphs into another form of dominion theology, then it is definitely something to be concerned about. The problem is that now Q can morph into anything people want it to.

I am not convinced however, that the original Q is directly related to dominion theology.

In order to understand Q, we need to understand that there is someone with the code name Q who posts information from time to time and then there are those who call themselves Q followers and often post things unrelated to the original Q.

I do not follow Q, but spoke to a relative who does. She says that most of what we see that is attributed to Q is not even Q. (That almost sounds like a conspiracy inside a conspiracy). She went on to explain that what has happened is that there are a whole slew of bloggers etc that are cashing in on the Q craze and essentially saying that they have special (gnostic) information based on the insights they get from Q. IE they use the Q label to sell the ideas that they suck out of their thumb. What was really interesting is that when I asked her about Q a couple of weeks ago, she said that Q had been mostly silent for the last couple of months. It has been interesting to actually talk to someone who follows Q instead of someone who follows people who claim to follow Q. It sounds like Q has turned into a catch letter for every crazy idea out there and the crazies are using Q to cash in.

I also recently heard that Q and Anon are two different things and are being combined by some. I have not looked into that. I really am not all that interested in Q or Anon, but have had conversations with those who are (these are people who agree that a lot of this stuff is crazy). I just thought I would pass on the little info I have that I got from those in the know (that is kind of what this whole thing seems to be about- passing on special secret info)

Whenever conspiracy theories come up on SI, I wonder why we don’t do much to address Russian collusion. Other than finding that Russians spent money on promoting both Trump and Clinton in 2016, there was no evidence of Trump actually working with them. More people in the church were affected by the Russian conspiracy than by Q from what I have seen.

[dgszweda]

Mark_Smith wrote:

The Election problems are obvious. In the six months before the elections Democrats went to court all over the country to get election rules changed “because of COVID.” These are factual events, not conspiracies. The idea was to loosen the restrictions on voting by mail and absentee “for public health.” The result was that many ballots were accepted this time that NEVER would have been counted before.

That doesn’t prove massive voter fraud. Just because rules are changed and less restrictions exists on voting. It was confirmed by the courts, the secretary of state, the state certification and the senate certification. Trump was mad about Georgia, but every complaint was debunked, 3 recounts which confirmed that the Dominion machines were okay, and signature verification audit by law enforcement that showed not a single error, plus gave a greater than 99.99% statistical confidence rate on all of the signature verifications. Trump kept throwing out kooky ideas and QAnon ate it up. Practically no shred of evidence for any inconsistencies or fraud, which is actually pretty amazing, yet people ate up that Trump was espousing millions of votes were fraudulent across the country, all being fed by a few lawyers and Trumps inner circle. Regardless of how tight the voter fraud people were to QAnon, they wre all crazy.

I didn’t say “massive voter fraud.”

I didn’t talk about Dominion voting machines.

Once mail-in ballots were opened and accepted there is no way to go back and to confirm the mail-in ballot.

Are you telling me that accepting thousands (or maybe tens or hundreds of thousands) of improperly filled out absentee and mail-in ballots is not a concern?

Stop calling me crazy.

I’ve never once heard or read anything by anyone QAnon.