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QAnon
Conspiracy Theories
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PRRI Research

“While these believers are racially, religiously, and politically diverse, the unifying beliefs are that their way of life is under attack and that they might be willing to resort to violence to defend their vision of the country.” - RNS

Discussion

Fri, 02/25/22

It’s past time for faithful churches and biblical ministries to directly confront these ideas to their staff and constituents. I would do a short series with these goals…

  • Theology of government, society, rebellion and anarchy (though governments can be corrupt and unjust and need fixing, ‘anti-government’ attitudes are not Christian attitudes)
  • Theology of stewardship vs. victimhood (the human tendency to want to blame everything on others rather than focusing on our own responsibilities to God and ‘neighbor.’ Generalized victimhood anxiety and outrage are not Christian attitudes)
  • Theology of truth and knowing (truth exists independently of groups, identities, movements, and clashes; there is no perfectly reliable path to truth outside of Scripture, but human passions are the least reliable path—“trust your heart” is not a Christian attitude)

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Fri, 02/25/22

Curious, Aaron.

Would you recommend actually mentioning QANON and specific conspiracy theories when addressing these goals?

Fri, 02/25/22

I think I would… but I’m not sure I’d do it right away. If you promote the series with a Qanon reference or name it right out of the gate in session one, the downside is maybe barriers go up before you’ve gotten anything across. The upside is people understand the impetus. And a percentage are probably curious, so … I think I’d frame it as a question: What is the Qanon movement and how should we view as Christians?

But I think the vulnerability to it in evangelicalism in general is due to worldview gaps—doctrine that has eroded or was never learned in the first place. Some epistemology, some anthropology, some hamartiology. Those would not be headings in my series outline! They’d be much on my mind, though, and I think along the way, I’d probably briefly name and define them. Christians in general ought to “know theology”!

(Edit to add: I don’t know if I’m going to have a chance to teach on the topic, but I might pitch the idea to the elders.)

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Fri, 02/25/22

I think I might also, right away, highlight what Q’anon has right. Points of agreement/what they’ve tapped into. It hasn’t happened in a void as far as weakness of thought among evangelicals, but it also hasn’t happened in a void on the “stuff actually happening in government, society and the world” side.

Things like…

  • Government leaders and corporation leaders are as fallen as the rest of us and there have been some pretty conspicuous, disturbing, and infamous cases of abuse of power, immorality, etc.
  • Breaches of trust by leaders can easily lead to unbridled suspicion and paranoia. It’s understandable, if not justified.
  • Watergate and Vietnam: distrust-driven anti-government attitudes got a huge launching pad in the 70s and we’re still seeing outcomes. Once you get bit by the “everyone in power is lying to us” bug, it’s hard to recover from that.
  • A lot of people feel alienated and disempowered by elites. It’s not all their imagination. Again, temptations go with that. Both the common man and the “elites” tend to abuse power, lie to get their way, etc., but elites have more responsibility because of the power they wield. It’s valid to say they have widely failed to use it well.

So, stuff like that. There are valid concerns underlying it, I think. But when the concerns are unchecked by principles and then meet up with a broadly-suspended sense of probability + fact-obliviousness, it gets weird in a hurry.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.