A friend of mine recently asked if we could get together to talk. I invited him to come over to my house, and from there we set out for a hike through snowy Minnesota woods. As we walked, he told me that he had recently been having unnerving conversations with family members centering on the aftermath of the 2020 election. In these conversations, family members were espousing their belief that the election was stolen, that God has promised to give President Trump a second term, and that the Deep State was at work to thwart God’s will. My friend expressed his concern for his family, even as he tried to understand their thinking and how best to engage them.
My friend is not alone; many of us have found ourselves in conversations with believing friends or family who have come to believe these conspiracies. In addition, many in our churches have become devotees of them, posting their views on Facebook, Twitter, or Parler. We are living in a time of wild conspiracy theories, from Pizzagate, to QAnon, to the notion that Covid is a hoax and the vaccine an instrument of corporate control. In the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election, these theories have broken out into the open, as President Trump, along with his advisors and lawyers, claimed, without presenting actionable evidence in court, that the vote was rigged. According to the Presidential narrative, this vast conspiracy involved Hugo Chavez, Dominion voting machines, Republican governors and Secretaries of State, Democratic poll workers in largely African American cities, Antifa, and countless others. These theories thrived in an environment of conspiracy, eventually leading to an attack on the United States Capitol, in which five people lost their lives and the safety of legislators were threatened.
As pastors, we must ask: How have we arrived at the place where millions of Christians have placed their faith in these theories, which have no grounding in reality? At the outset, let me say that I am not implying that all evangelicals will become conspiracy theorists. But in the last few months we have witnessed a disturbing number doing just that, and so it is important for us to understand this reality. In this essay, I offer thoughts on how this has happened. Inevitably, I can’t dig through all the layers, and there are many layers; other observers have additional insight to bring to the complex dynamics at work. But I want to draw a sketch of patterns that I propose have contributed to the vulnerability by tracing three interconnected themes, faith, apocalypse, and nationalism, that have made evangelicals vulnerable to conspiracy theories. My hope in writing this is that pastors and lay people will be equipped to better grasp what has taken root in too much of the evangelical world, and so be better prepared to engage these complex dynamics at work in the Church today.
1. Faith
I begin my analysis by proposing that faith, when directed toward the immanent, can mutate into vulnerability to conspiracy theories.
As followers of Jesus, we are people of faith, which is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Additionally, we are called to walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7), which means that we are trained to recognize that what we can see with our eyes is not all there is, that there is a world beyond what is seen, and that there are forces at work behind the appearances. To state the manifestly obvious: Faith is essential to Christianity. Without it, we cannot please God.
But conspiracy theories also operate by faith. The theories that have become so prominent in American life, that the election was rigged or that masses of Democratic politicians and other cultural figures are involved in a pedophile ring involving child sacrifice, are expressions of belief. The danger comes when faith, whose proper object is the Transcendent Lord, is directed from the transcendent to the immanent. People of faith, having been trained to look behind the appearances for a larger narrative, turn their gaze from the One who stands beyond all history to history itself, searching behind the appearances of everyday reality to find conspiracies lurking in the immanent processes of politics and culture. When this happen, faith is immanentized, and the latent vulnerability to conspiracy can be activated. Many evangelicals in the Trump years looked for patterns and actors lurking behind the appearances, and so were captured by theories with no basis in reality because their training in faith taught them not to believe that reality is all there is.
A common observation regarding conspiracy theories is that they thrive in times of disruption. The QAnon conspiracy exploded in popularity when the Covid pandemic hit, incorporating theories about Covid as a bioweapon unleashed on the world in order to assert a new world order. Belief in Trump’s claims about the election are fueled by fears of the end of Christian America or the triumph of the secular and the destruction of our way of life. Experts tell us that these theories grow in times of disruption because the human psyche has difficulty dealing with the uncertainty and fragility of life. It’s not possible that something like a virus could shut down the whole world and kill millions of people; there must be something more to it than that. It must be the work of the Chinese Communist Party or Bill Gates. The world we inhabit can’t be like this, so unpredictable, so fragile; there must be something more going on. We need a narrative to make sense of the disruption.
Trained to believe that appearances deceive, and formed to believe in a larger narrative, faith, when directed toward the immanent, looks at the events of history with the predisposition to find, especially in times of disruption, conspiracies that aren’t grounded in fact, because faith is not dependent on sight. Our proper formation in faith can become a conspiratorial faith. Our training to look beyond the appearances can mutate into a belief in QAnon and rigged elections.
2. Apocalypse
These observations on faith lead us to the second theme I want to explore regarding evangelical vulnerability to conspiracy theories: apocalypse.
As people of faith, we long for the renewal of all things in the future promised in Christ. Large segments of evangelical Christians have been trained to look for a roadmap to this future in apocalyptic literature, especially the Book of Revelation. The text, we have been told, can help us to identify God’s sovereign hand as he moves through history, nations, and political leaders, providing the larger narrative we seek that will help us make sense of the seeming chaos of history.
This reading of Revelation runs the danger of creating an apocalyptic fervor that is susceptible to conspiracy theory. Millions of evangelicals been trained to read Revelation as something of a secret decoder ring that allows the Church to identify politicians, nations, and events that are being used by God to accomplish his purposes and bringing history to a conclusion. This approach to history can easily mutate into a vulnerability to conspiracy theories as it provides people of faith with a confidence that the vicissitudes of history can be easily understood, and that we have access to the knowledge necessary to make sense of the seeming chaos and contingency of historical movement. Behind the appearances, we can discern the secret hand of God, which gives the Church a secret knowledge of the true nature of political events and actors, and a sense that something more is lurking behind the scenes of politics.
This apocalyptic fervor creates a ready market for prophets who make claims to have heard from God what exactly it is that he is doing in a particular historical event. We have seen this vulnerability running rampant in the lead up to and aftermath of the 2020 election. In this time, untold numbers of “prophets” have made claims about the election, declaring that God has raised up President Trump as his instrument for saving Christian America, and that God has declared that Trump would have a second term. These “prophets” claimed to receive a word from the Lord regarding the political meaning of our time, and have called millions of their followers to trust their word. Therefore, anything that would stymie President Trump’s second election must be nefarious indeed and involve Satanic forces manipulating the Deep State or election software algorithms, forces which can’t be seen and must be revealed by “prophets” in order to understand the true nature of what is happening in history. Having declared that a political figure is God’s elect instrument, the “prophet” is able to reveal the dark forces working to destroy God’s chosen leader.
This prophetic, apocalyptic fervor can too easily descend into violence, just as apocalyptic zeal has done throughout history. People of faith, armed with apocalyptic insight, are compelled to engage in rhetorical and physical violence against those deemed to be enemies of the State, and so by proxy enemies of God. This violence, either verbal or physical, is not seen as a transgression against Christ’s commands, but instead as necessary to defend the providential work of God in history. Believing that the Bible gives insight into the machinations of the Deep State, and that this Deep State is set against God and the instruments of his rule in history, it is not a long journey to violence.
3. Nationalism
These reflections on apocalyptic fervor lead to the third theme I want to sketch: Christian Nationalism.
At the heart of Christian Nationalism is the notion that America is a unique instrument of God in the world, having been raised up in God’s providence to accomplish his purposes of establishing Christianity around the world. Many evangelical interpreters of the Book of Revelation have stated that America is the good guy in the story of God and the nations, and so the means by which God is working to spread his rule. This is connected in the founding narrative of America that she is the shining city on a hill, an elect nation God has chosen to utilize for his purposes. With this myth comes the idea that, so long as America remains moored to her Christian heritage and values, she will be blessed by God with economic and military power, and so be able to carry out his mission of spreading freedom across the world. This creates a triumphalist expectation for America, and an associated triumphalism for the Church.
American triumphalism declares that the USA will triumph over her enemies through Divine blessing, of which American power and prosperity are signs, ensuring that America will have a preeminent position in the affairs of the world. Faithfulness to God will ensure that America will continue in her elect role as “leader of the free world.” The ecclesial triumphalism that is a corollary to American triumphalism has shaped the Church to expect an earthly home in which the Church will be safe to practice her faith, which will be secured by God raising up political leaders to ensure her safety and protect the American heritage. American Christianity has long subscribed to the theological notion that America was founded as a Christian nation, and that the civic mission of the Church is to fight for the Christian nation against all enemies, be they foreign or domestic.
We have seen this trend over the past decades as the Christian right has approached political engagement as a means of securing and protecting “Christian values” and of pushing back against “godless” secularists. This creates the conviction that political engagement is the means of securing for ourselves a culture in which Christian morality is dominant in society, and also to ensure that Christians have the right and power to guarantee such a culture. The sense that America is being taken over by godless secularists, thereby threatening America’s status as the Blessed Nation, is an important factor for understanding why so many evangelicals voted for Trump, and why so many were willing to believe him as he promoted conspiracy theories. He is seen as a person who can manfully defend Christian America from her enemies and who was raised up by God to do the hard work of total culture war, even if it means he is a bit uncouth and perhaps not exactly a paragon of the moral virtue that American Christianity ostensibly is committed to ensuring. Character matters when the President is a liberal, but when he is a conservative, fighting conservative battles to save America’s status as blessed, character is less important than effectiveness.
Conclusion: Protection Against Vulnerability
In this essay, I have sketched the connections between three themes, faith, apocalypse, and nationalism, that help us understand the potential vulnerability to conspiracy theories within evangelicalism. So how do we combat conspiracy theories? How do we work against the misshaping of faith that has occurred within the evangelical Church? For the purpose of concluding this essay, I would like to offer one strategy for countering the dangers of immanentizing faith and the false promises of Christian nationalism: We can counter the vulnerability to conspiracy theories through the right preaching of and discipleship in apocalypse.
Properly read and faithfully preached, apocalyptic literature, and especially the Book of Revelation, ought to be a powerful antidote to our vulnerability to conspiracy theories. I believe that this text will be critical for shaping Christian discipleship in the years to come, both to lead people out of a conspiratorial mindset and also to disciple the whole Church to be witnesses in post-Christian America.
Revelation was not written to whip the Church into an apocalyptic fervor, but to do the opposite. John the Revelator was given a vision of the throne room of heaven, of the One who who reigns from the heavenly throne, surrounded by the angelic beings who cry out "Holy, Holy, Holy", in order to anchor the Church in the enduring reality of God’s eternity. Having been given this vision, the Church is called not to live out an immanentized faith, but to fix our hope in the eternal, and therefore to be present on earth as those formed by this revelation. With this anchor, the Church is called to engage the world, not with a faith directed toward the temporal, but toward the eternal.
As such, Revelation calls the Church, not to a frenzy of conspiracy, but to rest in God's rule and sovereignty. Revelation calls us to rest because it pulls the curtain back on human politics, revealing that the machinations of human rulers and states are not ultimate, even though they project the appearance that they will endure. Therefore, apocalyptic functions to call the Church to faithfully witness to God's enduring rule in the midst of the fleeting rule of politicians and nations, not to locate God’s rule in those nations through a secret gnosis. When so shaped by Revelation, followers of Christ are freed from the temptations of Christian Nationalism, from finding in the text an apology for the Divine preference for one nation over others, or the Divine adoption of one nation as primary to his plan. Rather, Revelation proclaims that the Church is to be a transnational people of faith who witness to the reign of Christ, who know that all nations are fleeting, and that God’s sovereignty doesn’t promise triumph in this world, for either our country or the Church.
For the first readers of Revelation, the promise of the vision wasn’t that God would raise them up to triumphal victory through the nations, but that the nations will not endure. Because of this vision, they were called to resist conformity to the nations and to persevere in their witness to Jesus, as those who have placed their hope in eternity, even as they suffered persecution. And suffer persecution they did, because they knew that God was on his throne, with the angels and elders worshipping him, and that this is true.
Revelation calls the Church to a faith that is rooted in the transcendent, and so frees us from nationalism and immanentized faith. By faithfully preaching this freedom, the Church can be inoculated against the dangers of conspiracy theories, and so freed for our mission to be witnesses to God’s Kingdom rule.
Joel Lawrence is the Executive Director of the Center for Pastor Theologians. He previously served as the Senior Pastor of Central Baptist Church in St. Paul, MN and as a Professor of Theology at Bethel Seminary. He holds a PhD in Systematic Theology from the University of Cambridge. He is a member of the St. Anselm Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
