When Conspiracy Theories Come To Church

BEFORE 2020, REV. JOSH GELATT did not know much about QAnon. Gelatt had been lead pastor at Cascades Baptist Church in Jackson, Mich., since 2016. On occasion, he had heard congregants allege that “Democrats, liberals, and socialists are evil,” and that “they’re out to close churches and take away guns in the United States.” He had heard Christian nationalistic claims, such as “we are God’s chosen country.”

Gelatt, who does not identify as a Democrat or a Republican, was reasonably concerned. Then in spring 2020, Gelatt noticed what he called an “alarming twist” in his congregation.

After the murder of George Floyd in May, Cascades Baptist Church erupted with QAnon’s apocalyptic conspiracy theories, which the FBI has warned may lead some adherents to domestic terrorism. In the church and on social media, Gelatt witnessed members share false allegations that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden had “an island with an underground submarine where he receives his pedophile orders” and that there were “underground railroads between various cities run by Hollywood elites.” Congregants claimed that then-President Donald Trump was going to “seize power, execute the liberals, and expose pedophile rings.”

Those lies festered “like a hand grenade in the middle of the faith community,” Gelatt told Sojourners.

Rev. Keith Mannes traces his concerns about Trumpism and conspiracy theories at East Saugatuck Christian Reformed Church in Michigan back to June 16, 2015, when he watched Trump announce his candidacy for president. Mannes was “spiritually troubled” as Trump descended the gold escalator through the atrium of Trump Tower in New York City.

Mannes told Sojourners, “Day by day, and week by week, when we saw what Donald Trump was doing and saying, and when we saw what the institution of the church was giving of itself to him, we just thought, ‘This is darkly spiritual, this thing that has a grip on the minds and hearts of the church.’”

A definition of “Trumpism” began to take shape—a political ideology and populist movement with a set of mechanisms for acquiring and keeping power that are associated with Trump, his political base, and neo-nationalist movements worldwide.

Like Gelatt, Mannes tried to be sensitive to his congregants’ beliefs. Then George Floyd was murdered, and “a beloved guy in the heart of the church said something really derogatory about Black Lives Matter” to Mannes, and Mannes confronted him.

A few days later, the congregant texted Mannes to say he would be leaving the church because he could not attend a church where the lead pastor supports a terrorist organization.

Mannes was shocked.

Gelatt and Mannes tried to address the misinformation swirling among their congregants. Both online and in church, Gelatt “lovingly” reminded his congregants that “this is a conspiracy theory, and it has no place in our minds and hearts as believers.”

Toeing the line between being respectful and preaching the truth grew increasingly more frustrating. When Gelatt read a passage from the Bible in church that contained the word “justice,” a handful of congregants left in protest. Rumors sprouted that Gelatt was a secret communist who wanted America to be run like communist Mongolia.

When Mannes tried to address the misinformation, he was misunderstood. “If I’m preaching about the most consequential issue of the day and nobody’s even noticing that it might have something to do with their allegiance and devotion to Donald Trump, then what am I doing? I’m doing nothing. This matters not at all.”

Battling the new heresy

GELATT AND MANNES are not alone in their struggle against QAnon, conspiracy theories, and Trumpism in church. Pastors across the country see them raging within congregations: beliefs that powerful, hidden, evil forces control human destinies.

A poll released this year from Lifeway Research indicated that 49 percent of U.S. Protestant pastors “frequently hear members of their congregation repeating conspiracy theories they have heard.”

A survey conducted by the conservative American Enterprise Institute in January echoed this claim: 27 percent of white evangelicals—the most of any religious group—believe as “completely” or “mostly” accurate the widely debunked QAnon conspiracy theory that Donald Trump was fighting a global ring of child traffickers linked to the political left. By comparison, only 15 percent of all Americans believe the same theory.

“Christian churches resolve to be places focused on the truth,” said Scott McConnell of Lifeway Research, yet nearly half of Protestant pastors are hearing their congregants spread lies.

“At this time, it appears more of the theories are traveling in politically conservative circles, which corresponds to the higher percentages in the churches led by white Protestant pastors,” said McConnell.

Gelatt told Sojourners that conspiracy theory conversations “were happening in the church foyer almost on a weekly basis, with people truly panicked and truly worried. It’s divisive. It’s broken apart small groups.

It was so disruptive to community that, even when there’s actual relationships of people getting together and discussing scripture, it became these rage-fueled, fear-fueled, ‘the government is going to come and get us’ sessions.”

Experts say that while the politics of the Trump base has historical precedents, the psychological dynamics fueling Trump’s base is unlike other modern U.S. political movements in a specific and frightening way: It is cult-like.

Critical information and fake news

“CULT” IS A volatile term. It is associated with religious groups far outside the mainstream that have overly controlling leadership or dangerous practices. But most experts understand cults as a system of beliefs and behaviors that arise in response to a central authoritarian figure.

Educator and author Robert Jay Lifton was an early researcher on how authoritarian leaders exert their power. In studying prisoners of war, Lifton mapped out the conditions under which the human mind can be “systematically broken down and remade to believe the exact opposite of what it once did,” according to cult expert Steven Hassan.

Decades ago, joining a cult meant leaving your community to physically join a group, Janja Lalich, a specialist in cults and coercive influence and control, told Sojourners. Isolation was a key ingredient in “brainwashing.” Now, thanks to technology, anyone can join a cult from the comfort of their own home.

According to Hassan, author of The Cult of Trump, Trump’s personal leadership style fits the mold of many gang, cult, or authoritarian leaders.

Trump, Hassan told Sojourners, demonstrates “destructive authoritarian” qualities, including “narcissistic, psychopathic, elitist, grandiose, power hungry, deceptive [claims to] absolute authority.” Trump’s followers often exhibit responses based in “hate, doctrine, dependency, and obedience”—all recognizable as cult-like characteristics.

“Authoritarian leaders do ‘thought stopping,’” Hassan said, a cognitive behavioral technique to disrupt negative thinking and redirect thoughts to something that relieves distress. In the context of cult behaviors “thought stopping” is encouraged whenever a follower has questions or doubts. “They think all critical information is fake news. They tell their followers not to believe the mainstream media,” said Hassan.

Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist and author of Profile of a Nation: Trump’s Mind, America’s Soul, agreed that Trumpism, conspiracy theories, and QAnon are cult-like, and frightening.

“Not to consider them in these terms, or the equivalent psychological phenomenon, is to misjudge their serious effects on the people and the culture,” Lee told Sojourners.

In 2015, Lee was not interested in politics: She was focused on violence prevention programs in prisons. Yet, when she glimpsed an interaction between Trump and his followers at a rally, she “realized within seconds” that Trump’s dynamic with rally attendees matched “the dynamic [she] witnessed, in prison, of street gangs.”

“Of course, Trump supporters range anywhere from someone who is simply supporting him because of pocketbook or policy advantages to those who are, frankly, detached from reality,” Lee said.

She diagnoses this “detachment from reality” as a form of folie à plusieurs (a madness of many), a rare shared psychotic disorder wherein healthy people take on the delusion of another person who already has a psychotic disorder and to whom they have sustained exposure.

“I have seen it a lot in the public sector setting, in prisons, and with street gangs where many of the leaders are disordered and hold a lot of authority,” Lee said. “The fact that it’s happening at a national level should not turn us away from this interpretation.”

And, as noted earlier, another powerful element distinguishes many Trump followers from followers of other politicians or controlling leaders: religion.

“Many Christians believe that God is using Trump, that they are listening to somebody who claims to be a prophet or an apostle or an authoritarian who is directly telling them what God wants,” Hassan said.

This political trend and theological heresy—conflating the U.S. as the central actor for the purposes of the Christian God in history—has been of such concern that a group of more than 500 influential evangelicals published an open letter condemning “radicalized Christian nationalism” and the “rise of violent acts by radicalized extremists using the name of Christ.” Signers included Jerushah Duford, the granddaughter of the late Rev. Billy Graham, and Rev. Adam Russell Taylor, president of Sojourners.

Are white evangelicals susceptible to authoritarians?

HISTORIANS JOHN FEA and Kristin Kobes Du Mez believe that the culture of evangelicalism, not necessarily the doctrine, has made many U.S. evangelicals susceptible to a leader with authoritarian tendencies.

Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation, points out that core factors of evangelical culture—such as a willingness to embrace conspiratorial thinking, culture wars, distrust of mainstream media and the secular world, and fears of the new world order—all fertilized evangelical communities to be susceptible to a leader like Trump.

Fea, author of Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, agreed that evangelicals have historically been “anti-intellectual,” and that there’s precedent for evangelicals “to be swayed by charismatic leaders.”

“Evangelicals tend to draw toward people who speak to God: prophets who say, ‘God is telling me this,’ ‘God is leading me to tell you this is going to happen,’ or ‘God has revealed this to me,’” Fea told Sojourners. “There’s a wing of evangelicals who believe that Donald Trump was sent by God and Donald Trump is somehow serving God’s plan by restoring America to its Christian roots. They believe that he’s a new King Cyrus who’s delivering America from the grip of liberalism or the Left or socialism.”

When a persuasive portion of a Christian community—such as those pastored by Gelatt and Manne—abandon critical thinking, stop watching verified news sources, and leave their old communities to focus unreservedly on Trump, then the problem is graver than an electoral vote or political ideology.

Self-radicalizing through the alt-right pipeline

FOR JOSH SHIRLEY, who secretly followed what he called the “the alt-right pipeline” in college, it was his Baptist high school that primed him to believe conspiracy theories.

At weekly Wednesday morning gatherings, the pastor would occasionally visit and give what Shirley calls “conspiracy-laden, almost political sermons.” Topics included conspiracy theories that creationism is real but intentionally covered up by scientists and the concept that codes hidden within the Torah predicted events such as JFK’s assassination and Sept. 11.

At the time, Shirley thought the sermons were bogus. He grew up in a liberal religious household and was “ecstatic when Obama won two terms,” he told Sojourners. But by the time Shirley started at Calvin College (now University) in 2014, he found himself spending more and more time on Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube pages where a community of people espoused ideas that “pushed conservative politics and non-politically correct language” in videos and posts.

At first, Shirley considered the content to be entertaining and bizarre, much like his high school pastor. But he also recalls not being terribly happy at that time. The content on the alt-right pipeline placed the blame for “failure” on everyone else. Gradually, Shirley found himself thinking the same.

“A lot of the content starts tamer, but then progresses to outright bigotry,” said Shirley. “For example, I got started down the pipeline when I watched YouTube videos about ‘crazy feminist fails’ and other dumb stuff where the focus was on someone you could describe as ‘progressive’ being dumb on camera. From there it would progress from ‘See this silly person’ to ‘See? Their ideas on society are bad for everyone.’ This is the point where more outright bigoted or conspiratorial ideas show up.”

Shirley engaged with the content “on [his] own time” and never talked to anyone in person about it. Eventually, the racism became too disturbing for Shirley, who is white, to ignore. He recalls a meme on Reddit about Black people. As he scrolled through a slew of racist comments on the post, it finally clicked that “the occasionally racist stuff I saw wasn’t occasional,” he said.

By the 2016 election, Shirley had stopped reading alt-right content. Still, there are times when Shirley catches himself harboring beliefs that “wormed their way in” from following those alt-right forums.

As Lee emphasized, Shirley’s experience of unintentionally becoming indoctrinated “is common and can happen to persons of all backgrounds.”

“The usual cult experience is that one accidentally steps into a cult or is tricked into joining,” Lee said. “Many people in a cult will feel that way, none of them thinking how far it will take them.”

According to Hassan, “there’s a lot of hope” for those who are recovering from alt-right propaganda or conspiracy theories, or who subscribe to QAnon, if there is an open, receptive community waiting for them on the other side.

“Nobody wants to be in a cult,” Hassan said. “Nobody wants to be brainwashed. Nobody likes being lied to and exploited.”

Five ways to leave the Trump cult

ACCORDING TO HASSAN, there are five strategies that churches can employ to deprogram their congregants from the Trump cult:

1. Deprioritize fear. In Trumpism, QAnon, and the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, followers are “being deceived and manipulated psychologically and indoctrinated into a fear state” that is common for cults, said Hassan. Followers instead become obsessed with fear of the other, a paranoia around widespread child abuse, and even exorcising demons.

These are deviations from Christianity, Hassan noted, rather than the practice of Christianity, which focuses on the actual teachings of Jesus.

“Remind people that God is all powerful, not Satan. Love is the great commandment, not hate,” Hassan said. “We need to get back to a groundedness in our practices.”

2. Teach biblical and media literacy. Christian churches need to teach critical thinking, how to identify misinformation and propaganda, and how to counter deceptive biblical interpretations both in church and on social media. Educate congregants on the difference between exegesis and eisegesis when approaching scripture. Teach them to bring an inquiring, objective lens to speakers, authors, pastors, and news sources. Once congregants deem certain information false, they will stop following its sources. “If we change the people who they’re listening to, then there’s a chance they’ll listen to some other Christian authority figure who is more ethical,” Hassan said.

3. Practice informed dialogue. When Hassan dialogues with Trump followers, or members of any cult, he finds that respectfully and patiently talking about “another group that they would agree is a cult” is most successful.

For instance, Hassan discusses Chinese communist brainwashing, or “pimps and traffickers and how they recruit and indoctrinate victims.” Then, using the BITE (behavior, information, thought, and emotion) model developed in Hassan’s book Combating Cult Mind Control, he explains how a person is made over in the image of the cult with binary beliefs—all or nothing, good or evil. Usually, participants can agree that a cult is based on dependence and obedience rather than thinking for yourself.

“From there, you back your way into the thesis,” Hassan said. The key is to not try to persuade or attack anyone, but to illustrate benchmarks of cults and allow them to draw comparisons between what they agree is a cult and their unquestioning affiliation with Trump or QAnon.

“I take a frame of ‘I’m an intelligent person. You’re an intelligent person. We need to find out what’s the truth. Maybe I am brainwashed; maybe you’re brainwashed. Let’s learn what it is and evaluate it together,’” Hassan said.

4. Center the stories of the deprogrammed. Though counterintuitive, Hassan said, the church is exactly the place for education about exploitative control or undue influence. In fact, churches should invite testimonies from people who are survivors of sex and labor traffickers and people who have been in cults or abusive relationships, so that congregants can learn how these power dynamics operate—how influence can shift from constructive to destructive.

“If people understand the problem and understand what works to help people wake up, then we can develop training programs ... we can activate and empower former members,” Hassan said. “Aside from doing basic education about the [influence] continuum and BITE model, [ministers] can ask their congregants who have been affected by any cultic psychology—not just the cult of Trump—to share their testimonials and stories with the congregation.”

5. Use the pulpit to repudiate Christian dominionism, nationalism, and a “prosperity gospel.” These ideologies, which Hassan calls “the opposite of Jesus’ words,” provide a foundation for authoritarian ideology. “‘Morality vs. criminality’ and ‘Do onto others as you want them to do onto you’ need to be on everybody’s mind,” Hassan said. “We need to adopt a loving, cooperative, collaborative model rather than the polarization, hatred, and fear model that the authoritarians are pushing.”

Liberation through the ‘grand arc of scripture’

SOME PASTORS ALREADY employ Hassan’s suggestions.

For Rev. Kaitlyn Wood, lead pastor at United Church of Cohoes in New York, rampant conspiracy theories spurred her to “to move people out of an American mindset and into a kingdom mindset.” For her part, Wood models and teaches “a different way forward that doesn’t ostracize people.”

Using what Wood calls “the grand arc of scripture,” she has identified a narrative that contradicts dominionist, nationalistic theology and focuses instead on a justice-based approach. Her goal is to teach her congregation that neither Democrats nor Republicans “have a hold on Christianity,” without using those terms at all.

Wood told Sojourners, “Many people who would have been very staunchly conservative, very staunchly Republican, have stopped identifying with the party almost altogether, not moving to the Democrat party, but instead moving more into this tension of the in-between.”

In Minneapolis, Rev. Stephanie Williams O’Brien is creating her own “kingdom mindset” within her church. O’Brien has spent her tenure as lead pastor of Mill City Church creating “a place that’s psychologically safe” for her congregation “to ask hard questions and to be able to say, ‘I don’t understand.’” She urges congregants to message her with questions and concerns around what they see happening in the world.

And people do message her. Whether they hold beliefs about the tea party, Trump, or QAnon, or they are concerned about family members or loved ones espousing those beliefs, O’Brien wants them to know that she’s supporting them and that she doesn’t plan to stop.

Gelatt and Mannes both left their churches within a year of the experiences they described. Gelatt moved to Hays, Kan., where he became lead pastor at North Oak Community Church and began a doctoral program in biblical justice—a necessary step, he said, in countering the misinformation rampant in the Christian sphere.

Mannes not only left his congregation but left the evangelical church at large. He found the Trumpism within the “church family” irreconcilable with his faith. “When you look at the violence that’s being done to people of other races, the church has turned a hard heart and a willfully blind eye to dangerous realities,” said Mannes, who is white. “If you can look at the violence and shrug your shoulders, you have fundamentally left the Kingdom of God.”

Josh Shirley, the Calvin student who found himself in the alt-right pipeline, says much in the alt-right community led him to believe he was lonely and single because “society was giving women too high a standard for men.”

“Obviously, that’s a load of crap,” said Shirley, “but it was an easy way to dodge blame for my personal failings. And so, on it goes until I have my little, secret worldview that leaves me scot-free of blame for anything bad happening in my life.”

O’Brien recognizes Shirley’s experience. “When they’ve done research on extremism, the only thing that has really been proven to help people is to be loved out of it,” O’Brien said. “This is the most Christian thing to say: The only thing that can deprogram somebody from misinformation, disinformation, and hate is love.”