Opinion When it comes to conspiracy theories, is Christianity part of the problem or part of the solution?
Why are so many Christians to be found in the ranks of today’s conspiracy theorists? Just consider the popularity of a movement like QAnon — which claims that Donald Trump is waging a secret war against “a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles” — among evangelicals. As is apparent from the testimony of Lorrie Shock, the very language of evangelical Christianity is amenable to adherence to QAnon:
I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction. I feel like if it was deceitful, in my spirit, God would be telling me, “Enough’s enough”. But I don’t feel that. I pray about it. I’ve said, “Father, should I be wasting my time on this?” … And I don’t feel that feeling of I should stop.
But this is not just an “evangelical right” thing. As Joseph Uscinski argues, the “propensity for conspiracy thinking is [not] predictable along ideological lines.” This is a problem for many Islamic communities too. And though QAnon has a distinctly evangelical flavour, other worldviews and traditions are susceptible to their own forms of intellectual erosion. The proliferation of conspiracy theories is a shared phenomenon, and everyone who inhabits our epistemically fragmented world is susceptible to their alure.
How, then, might Christianity help and hinder the spread of conspiracy theories? And by “Christianity”, I mean its ideas — its theology. The relationship between church attendance and conspiratorial thinking, for example, is not the being addressed here. Instead, I want to offer an honest self-examination of Christian belief. To this end, I want to explore a number of “epistemic skeletons” in the Christian’s closet — those beliefs that might predispose Christians to embracing conspiracies — and a number of “epistemic treasures” in our tradition — those beliefs that might help inoculate Christians against conspiracy theories.
Epistemic skeletons
Faith without sight
The Christian believes there is more to reality than meets the eye. The apostle Paul wrote to an early church community, “we live by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7). And Jesus taught his disciples, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 19:29). I cannot see or observe God as I might a cell under a microscope, and so I live by faith or trust in God’s previous revelation in history.
On account of such beliefs, David Robertson argues that conspiracy theories and Christianity are evidentially equivalent: “from a philosophical point of view, there is nothing inherently more irrational about any of these [conspiratorial] claims” when compared to Christian belief. The reason QAnon is deemed odd, but not Christianity, is purely contextual — the result of a developed acceptability over time.
Many Christians would concede to Robertson’s claim, taking their religious faith to be the suspension of reason — this is what “faith without sight” really means. They sense their faith isn’t all that different to conspiracy theories, at least in terms of having good reasons for believing it. This concession is bound to foster some cognitive dissonance, even if not entirely consciously: “How can I ridicule conspiracy theories when my own beliefs seem equally unjustified?” They might conclude that Christianity is just as absurd as the conspiracies they mock.
But such a concession is often the first domino to fall, the catalyst in an epistemic chain-reaction. The softening of criteria for an initial specific belief risks spilling over into other general beliefs: “there is little evidence for my faith, and I maintain it anyway, so I might as well believe other things that are equally unsubstantiated.” The Christian’s worldview becomes permeable. The initial suspension of reason — a certain conception of “faith without sight” — amounts to a porous breach in their belief structures, through which all sorts of conspiratorial ideas can flood the mind.
The folly of the wise
The Christian’s belief that even the “wise” are often foolish is another belief worth assessing. The “deep state” is a concept central to many conspiracy theories:
Our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places. Although we ostensibly live in a democracy, a small group of people run everything, but we don’t know who they are. When big events occur — pandemics, recessions, wars, terrorist attacks — it is because that secretive group is working against the rest of us.
The Conspiracy Theory Handbook similarly notes that a defining feature of conspiratorial thinking is an “overriding suspicion” of any “official account”, that all such accounts are based on “deception.” Those in power — the elites — cannot be trusted: there is more going on behind the scenes.
The Christian belief in the folly of the wise risks producing such thinking. For instance, Jesus prayed: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” (Luke 10:21). For Jesus, those in-the-know were often out-of-the-know: the realities of God are “hidden” from them, “the wise and learned”.
This theme is further developed by the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 1:18–20; 25):
For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? … For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom …
For Paul, the teacher or philosopher is not actually wise, after all. It is the humble disciple — the “fool” — that has access to the hidden things of God by the Spirit.
The “overriding suspicion” of conspiratorial thinking could be easily instigated or perpetuated by this theology, encouraging as it does the rejection of “official” accounts of things. And this is only compounded by what Paul says next: “None of the rulers of this age understood [God’s wisdom], for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8). This thought is in step with the rest of the New Testament: “Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus” (Acts 4:27).
Paul’s theology risks conjoining two features of conspiratorial thinking. The Conspiracy Theory Handbook puts it that, alongside “overriding suspicion”, “nefarious intent” is a second crucial component in conspiratorial thinking — those conspiring never have benign motivations. Paul combines these two ingredients into a dangerous concoction. The wise of the age were not merely misguided, but equally malicious — nefarious — in their conspiring to crucify Jesus of Nazareth.
No wonder the “resentment of elites” is a common feature of evangelicalism — a movement now in many respects entangled with QAnon. The belief that power and authority might be misguided and malicious is found at the very heart of Christian belief: the crucifixion. Of course, people do conspire and abhorrently misuse power, a point reinforced by the church’s own moral crimes. But at the heart of Christian belief are ideas about the folly of the wise, the malicious use of power, and the conspiring of elites. It is unsurprising to find Christians embracing “deep state” ideas, and other forms of conspiratorial thinking.
The apocalypse
Demonology and apocalyptic speculation can also incline believers to conspiracy theories. On 8 April 2020, the anonymous “Q” posted several typically cryptic posts for his followers. He accused the Democrats of deliberately fostering “mass hysteria” about the coronavirus for political gain:
What is the primary benefit to keep public in mass-hysteria re: COVID‑19? Think voting. Are you awake yet? Q.
And then, notably, the post concluded with these Bible verses from Ephesians 6:
Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armour of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
These are classic “spiritual warfare” passages concerning the Christian belief that our struggle in life “is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12).
The demonologies that often spring up from these biblical themes can be conspiratorial and violent. This is observable, David Frankfurter argues:
in the literary records of many early Christian monks [and] in the activities of many late medieval and early modern friars in western Europe, who actively wove local traditions of malevolent witchcraft with official Christian demonology and heresiography in an effort to ramify the popular notion of the witch.
The mixing of Christian theology and pop-demonology generated “violent purges”, fuelled by personal convictions about “the discernment and immediacy of Satanic conspiracy.”
The same thing happens today. Frankfurter notes its occurrence in modern, sub-Saharan Africa, with the “traditional demonological interests and exorcistic claims of Pentecostalism.” He adds that we need only to look at “the readiness with which Pentecostal Christian pastors in Nigeria and Angola have led the identification of child witches or [how] Catholic priests and nuns contributed to the extermination of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994” to see the reality and dangers of pop-demonology shaping Christian theology. Indeed, the QAnon movement as a peculiar manifestation of this same phenomenon — a kind of post-Christian, political pop-demonology, which has also led to violence.
Frankfurter’s observation of these reoccurring phenomena led him to ask: “To what degree might Christianity itself, as a transregional ideology, be particularly responsible for religious violence …?” He concludes:
Christianity brought unique attention and articulation to the definition of evil in societies … [its] explicit attention to the absolute evil of the Satanic host preoccupies its earliest scriptures and pervades its historical negotiations with non-Christian cultures … Social and terrestrial purity, utopia, apocalyptic cleansing, combat with Satan in multiple arenas — these fundamental ideals of Christian scripture, practice, and community provided a latent ideological predisposition to a myth of evil of varying scale.
Frankfurter is particularly interested in religious violence. But the idea that certain Christian beliefs produce a “latent ideological predisposition” to believing “myth” is relevant for my argument. And his analysis points to a trend: certain demonologies gone awry can make someone vulnerable to believing a “myth of evil” and its corresponding conspiracy theories.
These demonologies are often interwoven with beliefs about an apocalyptic “end times”. For a recent article in The Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance spoke to Arthur Jones, director of the documentary Feels Good Man:
QAnon reminds him of his childhood growing up in an evangelical-Christian family in the Ozarks. He said that many people he knew then, and many people he meets now in the most devout parts of the country, are deeply interested in the Book of Revelation, and in trying to unpack “all of its pretty-hard-to-decipher prophecies.” Jones went on: “I think the same kind of person would all of a sudden start pulling at the threads of Q and start feeling like everything is starting to fall into place and make sense.”
This is a profound connection to make, between conspiratorial thinking and millennialist interpretations of the Book of Revelation. The term “millennialist” refers to a complex amalgam of ideas about a final salvation and day of judgement. These are central themes in Christian theology, but millennialism places particular emphasis on the belief that the coming “end times” are both terrestrial — “this is playing out on earth now, it’s time to act, can’t you see?” — and imminent — “trust me, it’s just around the corner!”
There is, I believe, a demonstrable link between millennialist theology and conspiratorial thinking: “Catastrophic thinking amongst millennialist groups is also often reinforced by their frequent embrace of various conspiracy theories.” It is thus unsurprising to find millennialist language among QAnon devotees like Shelly:
There are QAnon followers out there who suggest that what we’re through now, in this crazy political realm we’re in now, with all of the things that are happening worldwide, is very biblical, and that this is Armageddon.
Epistemic treasures
Is Christianity simply a problem, then? Is Christian belief unhelpful in an age of conspiracies and disinformation? To answer these questions in the affirmative is too hasty. For there are more than just skeletons to be found in the Christian tradition — there are some valuable “epistemic treasures”. Indeed, Christian belief can act as an effective buffer against the harmful spread of conspiracy theories. It thus plays the role of both vaccine and antidote: it can both preemptively “prebunk” believers, inoculating them against harmful conspiracy theories; and it can “debunk” conspiracies once they have gained traction among Christian believers.
Belief
The most dangerous lies are often those that are mostly true (See Genesis 3:1–4). A number of the epistemic skeletons I’ve identified, though widely adopted and closely associated with orthodox Christian belief, nevertheless amount to subtle distortions of their proper articulation. It is important, therefore, to carefully distinguish Christian belief proper from its mutated forms.
For instance, one must clarify that “faith without sight” is never construed as “faith without reasons” throughout the Scriptures. The Christian ought not disregard evidential based belief, for the apostles always called for a faith grounded, not in sight, but in the evidence of eyewitness testimony (see 1 Corinthians 15:3–8; 1 Peter 5:1; 1 John 1–3), and they were happy to embrace the falsifiability of the faith, declaring “if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith” (1 Corinthians 15:14).
Likewise, the Christian antidote to conspiracies will include teaching that “the folly of the wise” does not amount to “the folly of all the wise.” For Jesus knew that even wise and learned elites could still answer “wisely” and be near the kingdom (Mark 12:34, see also John 3:1–15; 7:50; 19:39). Paul knew that even the philosophers and poets of his age could discern theological truth (Acts 17:16–34, see 1 Corinthians 15:33; Titus 1:12).
Moreover, any antidote will address where Christian “demonology” diverges from “pop-demonology”. For the forces of evil in our world cannot be arrogantly presumed to be so obviously evil or clearly discerned: “Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). This will include emphasising that “the apocalypse” is neither terrestrial nor predictable. For as Jesus Christ taught, the day or hour that “heaven and earth pass away … no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36). It is with hopeful anticipation and epistemic humility that we await the dawning of his light on our darkness (Isaiah 9:2).
This is but an initial gesture towards the kind of Christian belief proper that might remedy the epistemic skeletons in the Christian closet. This is not to say that a dose of sound theology is all that is required, merely that it will be part of the solution. This form of balanced teaching — saturated with nuance and subtlety, delineating falsity from truth, distinguishing historical Christian beliefs from conspiratorial thinking — is a necessary antidote.
Trust
The thought-world of Christianity can inoculate the believer against the proliferation of conspiracies; it can “prebunk” believers like a vaccine, building a “resilience to conspiratorial messages.” There are a number of Christian beliefs that might have this effect; I will focus on a most central one: the Christian’s belief in a God who can be trusted.
In 2008, the then Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams observed concerning Europe’s emerging religion-less, postmodern culture that, “a growing number of European thinkers in recent years have acknowledged that the pure pluralism of some sorts of postmodernist theory does not provide a very robust or compelling alternative to the ‘monotheistic’ certainties of other philosophies.” He rightly anticipated the “great risks” these replacement or “alternative” post-modern philosophies would produce: a “completely fragmented cultural world, in which we no longer have any certainty about what is and isn’t valuable and serious”, aptly characterised as a “maze of uncertainties”, accompanied by a spirit that is “endlessly suspicious” and settles “with the notion that there is nothing to trust anywhere.”
It is now clear how right Williams was. The present cultural climate — dominated by confusion, disinformation, and the proliferation of conspiracy theories — is simply life downstream from this emerging epistemic milieu. The exorcism of one intellectual demon from our culture — an overbearing monotheistic certainty — has simply left us hollowed-out, creating a void for a hoard of bad ideas to enter, leaving us even worse off than when we began (see Luke 11:24–26).
Christian belief can protect the believer from this intellectual erosion. Rowan Williams argues:
Christian faith tells us that, because God is to be trusted, we can be very bold indeed about the degree of scepticism we give to what is less than God. In the context of faith, this is the “unbearable lightness” that is given to us in relation to the systems and expectations of the world around, the irony that is still compatible with love and commitment in God’s name.
This general principle applies in the specific case of conspiracy theories: the ultimate, trustworthy source of truth — God — buffers the Christian from vulnerability to conspiratorial forces. This is because belief in in this trustworthy God does not cultivate naïve gullibility — quite the opposite. It fosters a healthy scepticism — not the postmodern impulse to “dismantle all certainties and leave us isolated choosing machines in a market-shaped wilderness” — but a kind of light detachment, a cautiousness about surrounding things and beliefs that amount to less than God.
Moreover, according to Williams, this is “compatible with love.” For light detachment does not amount to arrogant dismissal. It does not lead me to rudely dismiss or abandon my neighbour because of their quirky beliefs. Rather, this healthy scepticism carves out a via media — a sincere listening that is simultaneously reserved, an open-mindedness that nevertheless avoids naïvete and gullibility. Because God can be trusted, the Christian can sit loosely to the proliferation of ideas around them, remaining cautious of conspiracies, but also not closed off to discourse: “open [to] further horizons, further depths of understanding of both the comedy and the tragedy of human existence.” This kind of conduct, shaped by belief in a trustworthy God, is a much-needed vaccine against the spread of conspiracy theories in an epistemically fragmented age.
“Divine conspiracy”
But perhaps this is the wrong note on which to conclude these remarks. It’s worth taking note of the opening paragraph of The Conspiracy Theory Handbook:
Real conspiracies do exist. Volkswagen conspired to cheat emissions tests for their diesel engines. The U.S. National Security Agency secretly spied on civilian internet users. The tobacco industry deceived the public about the harmful health effects of smoking. We know about these conspiracies through internal industry documents, government investigations, or whistleblowers.
Similarly, psychologist Rob Brotherton argues: “If we could just prevent everybody from believing any conspiracy theory, we would be losing something important” — namely, critical thinking and the interrogation of power. Former conspiracy theorist Ellen Cushing says of her own experiences:
I genuinely regret the moments when I repeated things I knew not to be true, but I don’t regret becoming obsessed with something that unlocked a deeper sort of thinking about systemic inequity. Why would I? I was right! It would be naive to suggest that the power always acts in transparency, generosity, and good faith. Sometimes, even demonstrably false conspiracy theories contain a little bit of truth. Other times, what seems like an absurd fabrication turns out to be real.
Cushing concludes that conspiracy theorists are not driven by “fundamentally bad impulses”, but rather, “conspiracism and critical thinking are two points on the same spectrum.” There is something to be affirmed in the conspiracy theorist, even if reservedly.
I think the Christian should want to say something analogous. The message of the gospel both challenges and affirms the conspiracy theorist. It challenges them in all the ways I’ve already outlined. Nevertheless, Christian belief also gently affirms certain conspiratorial impulses — in much the same way that Cushing and Brotherton do. Christianity assumes there does exist a deeper reality behind what the eye can see. Christian belief posits that there is indeed a “divine conspiracy” behind our observable cosmos. There is a grand, divine story unfolding beyond our world, glimpsed in the life of Jesus Christ.
But this story — this mystery — is not entirely to be discerned now, somehow grasped by the insights of a movement like QAnon. It is, rather, an object of a future-oriented, advent-like hope — a mystery only to be unveiled in totality once the pages of history close, as our trustworthy God descends and wipes away every tear, making all things new.
Aden Cotterill is a postgraduate student at St. Mark’s National Theological Centre, and a Youth Worker in both church and school contexts.
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