The QAnon conspiracy is overtaking America’s churches — and a few understandably nervous pastors are doing everything within their power to stop it!
Christianity
A false prophet has been spouting lies and conspiracies while gaining a foothold in churches across the country: the QAnon conspiracy. That group is convinced that (mostly) Democrats are out to get them, that Joe Biden didn’t legitimately win the presidency, and that Donald Trump was sent by God to save the nation from a secret group of pedophiles and child sex traffickers who also eat babies.
For years, the QAnon conspiracy group only thrived in the depths of the internet. Then, after combining forces with white supremacists and militia groups, it boasted a large presence during the January 6th attack on the US Capitol. Now, the conspiracy theory is spreading like wildfire throughout the White Christian evangelical community and is causing a few genuinely spiritual pastors to step in and attempt to put the fire out before it’s too late.
“They thought they were doing the work of God because pastors and leaders have LIED to them,” Pastor Ben Marsh of the First Alliance Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina said of the January 6th Capitol Hill attack. “Nothing in scripture leads us to claim a political system in the name of Christ through force.”
“I don’t like to get off track and off the Bible,” said Pastor James Kendall of Grace Community Church in Madera, CA during his March 7th sermon. “But as a pastor, I do have to guard the flock.”
Pastor Kendall was spot on as he launched into a carefully crafted set of words to dismantle “Q,” the mysterious and invisible figurehead of the conspiracy group that feeds its followers clues over the internet about what’s allegedly going on inside the government and how the QAnon flock can help stop it.
“Q” is supposedly some government employee who claimed to be a higher-up in the Trump administration. To this day, he delivers “Q-drops” to the flock in a worldwide internet sleuth game designed to eventually take down the purported gang of high-profile pedophiles (which, the group insists includes Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton).
Too bad for Q, he’s never right.
Q predicted Donald Trump would win the 2020 election. He didn’t. Q predicted Donald Trump would declare martial law on the day of the Biden inauguration — and that the US military would rush the inaugural dais and arrest former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, and involved members of the ‘Hollywood elite.’ It never happened. Q predicted Donald Trump would never leave The White House and the presidency behind on January 20th. He did. Q predicted Trump would retake the presidency on March 4th and oust President Biden from the Oval Office. He didn’t.
Nearly every prediction created by the QAnon conspiracy has NOT come true — yet followers still continue to believe and “trust the process” that somehow it will all work out and make sense someday.
With such wild hallucinations making the rounds through America’s churches and with God and Christianity continually connected to these conspiracies, pastors are naturally concerned.
“The Biblical worldview is that there’s a God who’s in control of the whole world. And one day Jesus is going to come back, he’s going to judge the wicked,” Kendall said. With QAnon, “there is a Q that knows everything, and Donald Trump is going to come back and judge the wicked, set up his rule, and his followers are going to live in their little Utopia… It’s easier for Christians who already have that belief system to make that jump over into believing [QAnon].”
With so many evangelicals proving they’re easily fooled, Pastor Kendall is facing an uphill battle to erase the lies and indoctrinate his church members with truth.
Fox News and other conservative media outlets regularly broadcast outright lies to those who are gullible enough to buy into their “alternative facts.” Donald Trump exclusively tells only his version of the truth and actually gets millions of people to believe him. However, Kendall is discovering that other pastors are proving to be just as much of a nemesis.
- Pastor Joe Pedick of Huntington Beach, California has been spreading popular conspiracy theories surrounding the inauguration of Joe Biden. “I’m being told that there is something big is going to happen before the 20th. Supposedly they’re trying to arrest a lot of the people that are involved with a lot of the corruption that’s been going on for a long time,” he said during a sermon in January.
- Pastor Greg Locke of Mount Juliet, Tennessee stood in the pulpit and called Joe Biden a “fake president” who stole the election. He also told his flock that Covid-19 is not a “real” pandemic.
- Pastor Mario Murillo of Reno, Nevada told church members “There is a demonic hedge of protection around Joe Biden,” which is a popular theme among conspiracy theorists.
- During church services last summer, Rock Urban Church in Grandville, Michigan played a QAnon conspiracy theory video for its members. “The country is being torn apart by the biggest political hoax and coordinated mass media disinformation campaign in living history — you may know it as Covid-19,” the video said.
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“According to the religious view of QAnon, Q is a postmodern prophet, “Q drops” (aka his messages) are sacred texts and Trump is a messianic figure who will conjure “The Storm,” an apocalyptic revelation exposing evildoers.” – Daniel Burke, CNN
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The deception is powerful and running through the evangelical community like a freight train, especially among those who are conditioned to believe false information. Thankfully, there are those like Pastors Kendall and Marsh who are taking an active role to squash the lies and stamp out the QAnon conspiracy for good.
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Fivethirtyeight:
In its January 2021 American Perspectives Survey, the American Enterprise Institute’s Survey Center on American Life asked a random sample of more than 2,000 Americans to rate the accuracy of a series of statements. One of those statements was about the core tenet of QAnon: “Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.” Of the respondents who rated that statement as “mostly” or “completely” accurate, 27 percent were white evangelical Christians. Depending on how you define it, evangelical Christians make up about a quarter or less of the U.S. population, so they’re at least slightly overrepresented in the QAnon contingent. Looking at the data another way, 31 percent of white evangelical Republicans rated the statement as “mostly” or “completely” accurate. Either way you slice it, there’s significant overlap between Q followers and evangelicals.