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New podcast: The Atlantic needed to interview some evangelical leaders about QAnon heresy

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What do you think? Is this whole QAnon conspiracy thing important or not? And should mainstream evangelical leaders be concerned?

That was the messy topic that “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I discussed in this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in). Looming in the background were some Twitter debates in which several people criticized my recent GetReligion post that ran with this headline: “The Atlantic probes QAnon sect and finds (#shocking) another evangelical-ish conspiracy.”

Let’s review a few things that I said in that earlier post. For starters, I do plead guilty to saying that some folks on the cultural left are a bit too fond of conspiracy theories involving scary evangelicals. Here’s how I stated that, while taking a shot at fringe folks on the right, as well:

It’s almost as if evangelicals are playing, for some strategic minds on the left, the same sick, oversized role in American life that some evangelicals assign to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates and all those liberal Southern Baptist intellectuals who love Johnny Cash and Jane Austen.

I was reacting to that recent “The Prophecies of Q” at The Atlantic, part of a larger “Shadowland” package about the growing importance of conspiracy theories in American politics.

Now, I think this Atlantic material is must reading, in part because the QAnon phenomenon isn’t well known in the evangelical mainstream. There are run-of-the-mill evangelical leaders who need to know more about this dark-web stuff, just as they needed to know about the twisted religious elements in the larger alt-right. When it comes to technology and politics, this “Shadowlands” package breaks new ground.

Did I attack The Atlantic — a publication frequently praised at GetReligion — and tell people to ignore this topic? Did I say QAnon has nothing to do with the big, complex world of evangelicalism? Let’s see. Here is the end of my earlier piece.


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There's good news for COVID-era church leaders amid all that familiar bad news

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America’s pastors are continually fretting about the threats of death, disease and destroyed careers that face their parishioners. Also, alongside analysts of religious trends, they have good reason to worry that in the long term shrinking coronavirus-era donations may hinder or doom their ministries and charities.

Reporters also need to ponder the following. Most U.S. congregations are now restricted to providing worship services online. Will meeting God in your pajamas become a convenient habit that permanently undercuts in-person attendance after states soften their stay-at-home and “social distancing” rules? This NPR piece anticipates a permanent slide for in-person worship. (Online classwork could similarly imperil the future prospects of expensive on-campus college and seminary programs.)

The problem is that supportive, face-to-face fellowship is an important reason people are attracted to active participation in religious congregations. Of course, it’s also possible that the new online visibility will pay off by reaching new people. (The Guy’s own Protestant church currently has many more people joining live worship online than appear in person on normal Sundays.). And some brave optimists are talking up a religious revival once this is behind us.

The local and national media have, of course, been asking religious leaders how actual donations and online attendance are running, and what they think the future holds.

Now those who haven’t yet developed such a story, or those who want to take a second look, have a news hook — and a bit of sunlight — in a Roper poll conducted in late April for the Pew Research Center, reported here and then analyzed here by political scientist Ryan Burge (a GetReligion contributor) for Religion News Service.

Reporters will observe that the poll reinforces a scenario that Religion Guy tends to accept.


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The Atlantic probes QAnon sect and finds (#shocking) another evangelical-ish conspiracy

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There are times, when reading the sprawling “Shadowland” package at The Atlantic, when one is tempted to think that the goal was to weave a massive liberal conspiracy theory about the role that conservative conspiracy theories play in Donald Trump’s America.

At the center of this drama — of course — is evangelical Christianity. After all, evangelical Christians are to blame for Trump’s victory, even if they didn’t swing all those crucial states in the Catholic-labor Rust Belt.

It’s almost as if evangelicals are playing, for some strategic minds on the left, the same sick, oversized role in American life that some evangelicals assign to Hillary Clinton, George Soros, Bill Gates and all those liberal Southern Baptist intellectuals who love Johnny Cash and Jane Austen.

Let’s focus on this piece: “The Prophecies of Q.” Toward the end, a fervent supporter of Trump and the mysterious QAnon offers her credo. It’s clear that she speaks for, you know, millions of people hiding like terrorist sleeper cells in ordinary pews from coast to coast.

This had been something she was reluctant to speak about at first. Now, she said, “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.”

Well, “GOD WINS” and all that.

This leads us to an update on “The Late Great Planet Earth” and legions of similar end-of-the-world classics, only this time the man on great white horse (or whatever) is Trump:

Arthur Jones, the director of the documentary film Feels Good Man … told me that 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. If you are an evangelical and you look at Donald Trump on face value, he lies, he steals, he cheats, he’s been married multiple times, he’s clearly a sinner. But you are trying to find a way that he is somehow part of God’s plan.”

Author Adrienne LaFrance does note that conspiracy theories exist on the cultural and political left (maybe, kind of), as well as the theological and political right. But it’s clear evangelical Protestantism is the X factor in this growing threat to America and the world.


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Jess Fields meets Ryan Burge: As you would image, they're talking 'nones,' 'evangelicals,' etc.

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So here is the question: Is podcaster Jess Fields just going to work his way through the entire GetReligion team, sooner or later?

I think it would be logical to do that, since Fields is especially interested in topics linked to religion, current events and the impact of journalism on all of that. You can see that with a quick glance at his homepage at Apple Podcasts.

The other day, I spent an hour or so online with him and that podcast link was included in the GetReligion post that I wrote about Fields and his work: “Jess Fields got tired of short, shallow news interviews: So he started doing loooong podcasts.”

You may recall that Fields is a small businessman in Houston who also has worked quite a bit in nonpartisan think tanks linked to state and local governments. He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, and that has affected a few of his podcasts.

So now he has had a lengthy chat (very long, even by Fields standards) with social scientist, and progressive Baptist minister, Ryan Burge.

Why not? Burge is all over the place right now — writing and chatting about the tsunami of charts, survey samples and commentary that he keeps releasing, day after day, on Twitter. He also showed up the other day in an NBC special:


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'Plandemic' news, et al: Why do so many religious believers quickly embrace conspiracies?

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The other day, I was talking with a friend in another state over the phone about the coronavirus crisis.

Suddenly, our conversation veered in a whole other direction. The virus, she said, was the work of a cabal of billionaires and world leaders. She recommended the work of Dr. Rashid Buttar, an anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist. My friend said that she didn’t believe anything the media said anymore.

This friend is an educated woman who attends a nondenominational charismatic church. She has worked in the health care industry for many years. She was also touting “Plandemic,” the movie that alleges that the pandemic is a nefarious creation by hidden overlords in government, media and finance. Facebook, Vimeo, Twitter and YouTube have been working overtime to get it off their feeds.

Which seems very odd. Is “Plandemic” that dangerous? I can think of a lot of more objectionable stuff on those platforms, ie pornography, than a conspiracy film. I watched the movie and don’t buy the claim that it’s “harmful” to have it publicly posted.

I posted a connection to “Plandemic” atop this post, only to see it get zinged by YouTube. I’ve tried several times to post a replacement video and it’s been taken down within the hour. So here (at the top of this post) is a video about the video. Whether it will be working when this post goes public is anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile — this Atlanta-Journal Constitution story gives some helpful background on the movie. I started looking up “Plandemic,” wondering if my friend was the only conservative Christian to latch onto this. I found a piece by Marshall Allen, a ProPublica health writer (and Fuller Theological Seminary grad) who was also finding religion connections.

My brother is a pastor in Colorado and had someone he respects urge him to watch “Plandemic,” a 26-minute video that promises to reveal the “hidden agenda” behind the COVID-19 pandemic. I called him and he shared his concern: People seem to be taking the conspiracy theories presented in “Plandemic” seriously. He wondered if I could write something up that he could pass along to them, to help people distinguish between sound reporting and conspiracy thinking or propaganda.

Sensational videos, memes, rants and more about COVID-19 are likely to keep coming.


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YouTube thinker: Methodist conservative chats with RNS' Jack Jenkins about religious left

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Every few years, like clockwork, American newspapers roll out pre-election features about a revival of activity on what can accurately be called the “Religious Left” — even if few journalists have granted it the upper-case-letter status of the ominous Religious Right.

From Day 1 here at GetReligion, I have argued that activity on the theological and political left is one of the most overlooked stories of recent decades. I have at least three reasons for saying that:

(1) The demographic implosion of the denominations known as the Seven Sisters of liberal Protestantism — the decline escalated in the late ‘70s and the ‘80s — left room in the American public square for the emergence of modern evangelicalism. Religious progressives, however, maintained crucial high ground in elite institutions of the left and right coasts.

(2) Progressive Catholics have always played a crucial role in the Democratic Party, even as — at the ballot box — it was easy to see a growing divide between liberal “cultural Catholics” and more conservative Catholics who worship once a week or even more.

(3) Journalists tend to focus on religious liberals as a political force, while paying little or no attention to THEOLOGICAL trends on that side of the church aisle (other than changes that affect LGBTQ issues).

Theological questions will be even more important for the Religious Left in the future, as the political left grows more and more secular (think atheists, agnostics and “nones”). How will this affect, for example, crucial ties to African-American churches, which tend to be more conservative on moral issues? And while we are at it, check out this new chart from political scientist (and progressive Baptist pastor) Ryan Burge, a GetReligion contributor (whose Twitter feed has been on fire the past couple of days).

I bring all of this up because of a fascinating video chat that took place the other day between United Methodist conservative Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy and veteran progressive scribe Jack Jenkins — formerly of ThinkProgress and the Center for American Progress — who now covers national news for Religion News Service. The subject is a new book by Jenkins with the logical title, “American Prophets: The Religious Roots of Progressive Politics and the Ongoing Fight for the Soul of the Country.”


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Lots of edgy thinking about 'Weird Christianity' -- in The New York Times, no less

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I was going to let the “Weird Christianity” opus in The New York Times sail past, in part because I wondered if it was a bit too “inside baseball” for this audience.

Well, it is a major weekend piece in America’s most powerful newspaper and people keep asking me if I have seen it. I have also been asked — since it’s about people choosing ancient liturgies and non-binary politics — if this article is, in effect, about people like me.

Not really. This Times essay — by Tara Isabella Burton of The American Interest — is about a recent trend among young Americans. I am, well, old and I converted to Eastern Orthodoxy 20-plus years ago. I did drop my registration in the Democratic Party in 2016. Here is the double-decker headline on this essay:

Christianity Gets Weird

Modern life is ugly, brutal and barren. Maybe you should try a Latin Mass.

I think it’s important to note that this “Weird Christianity” term is not new and there’s more to it than a taste for smells and bells (as Burton makes clear). There’s no question that issues of culture and aesthetics play a role in this trend, but the key is doctrine. And this trend is pre-modern, not postmodern.

To see that in practice, check out this 2015 Christianity Today piece by Sarah Pulliam Bailey, now of the Washington Post (and also a former GetReligion contributor). In this case, the term is being used in a Southern Baptist and evangelical context, as in, “Russell Moore Wants to Keep Christianity Weird: The public-policy leader for the largest US Protestant denomination isn’t worried over Christians’ loss of power. He says it might just be the best thing to happen to them.”

But back to Burton and the Times. Here is a crucial chunk (long, but essential) of her first-person piece:

… I’m not alone. One friend has been dialing into Latin Masses at churches across the United States: a Washington Mass at 11 a.m.; a Chicago one at noon.

The coronavirus has led many people to seek solace from and engage more seriously with religion. But these particular expressions of faith, with their anachronistic language and sense of historical pageantry, are part of a wider trend, one that predates the pandemic, and yet which this crisis makes all the clearer.

More and more young Christians, disillusioned by the political binaries, economic uncertainties and spiritual emptiness that have come to define modern America, are finding solace in a decidedly anti-modern vision of faith.


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Jess Fields got tired of short, shallow news interviews: So he started doing loooong podcasts

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Jess Fields is a small businessman (ask him about cigars), an Eastern Orthodox family man and a news consumer who is especially interested in stories about religion. He has also worked in nonpartisan think tanks linked to issues in state and local governments. He is enthusiastic about life in Houston (due to personal Texas Gulf Coast history I will have no further comment on that).

All in all, Fields is not a logical guy to start a podcast about religion, politics and other subjects that interest him. So why did he do exactly that?

Well, he told me that he “grew tired of the edited mudslinging that passes for ‘interviews’“ and decided that he “could do better.” His goal is to produce “long-form interviews with guests from multiple perspectives, providing a neutral platform for different views to be heard and considered in a respectful manner.” In other words, his interviews are really long.

Fields got off to a hot start with a newsworthy chat with the Rev. Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church just outside of Baton Rouge, La., the man behind a blitz of coronavirus headlines because of his rejection of “shelter in place” orders. Spell has been arrested and faced all kinds of questions when it appeared, on video, that he backed a church bus dangerously close to a protestor.

That led to this:

#1 — Pastor Tony Spell — On Refusing to Comply with Coronavirus Orders

We interview Pastor Tony Spell of Life Tabernacle Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Pastor Spell and his congregation are refusing to comply with Louisiana's stay-at-home orders due to the coronavirus pandemic. He has been arrested for violating the orders, but continues to hold packed church services. This is the most comprehensive interview Pastor Spell has granted.

Pastor Spell has his critics, as you would imagine, so Fields decided to do a lengthy interview with one of them — Rod Dreher (who lives in Baton Rouge).


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Thinking with Ryan Burge and Rod Dreher: Where did all those American Catholics go?

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Are you managing to keep up with political scientist Ryan Burge on Twitter?

Well, why the heck not?

Trust me, I know that it’s hard to keep up. I have a jam-packed online file on Burge items — he is a GetReligion partner — that I want to use and it keeps growing. You don’t have to agree with this progressive Baptist minister all the time (predictable people are of little use to journalists) to be able to see the trends and insights in his charts, graphics and bites of commentary that come with them.

The crucial skill here is the ability to spot the obvious, then jump to the trends that reporters really need to dig into.

Consider the item at the top of this weekend’s think piece. There are four lines of commentary and each one is worthy of coverage. Here’s the gist: Nones are still growing. The active members of evangelical and mainline churches are (independent of membership statistical trends) still going to church has much as ever. African-American Protestant churches are holding steady.

But it’s the bottom line that Rod “Benedict Option” Dreher focused on in a recent blog item:

What has happened to Catholics? I suppose it could be that Catholics still identify as Catholics, even if they have ceased to participate in the life of the Church. I’ve known plenty of Catholics who for all intents and purposes have ceased to be Catholic, but who still call themselves Catholic, despite being unfaithful to their baptism. Protestants who have ceased going to church tend not to continue to identify as Methodist, or Evangelical, or whatever. I would expect that natal Orthodox Christians who have ceased to practice the faith would nevertheless identify themselves as Orthodox to a pollster.

Still, that can’t explain the entire Catholic collapse, can it? I shared Burge’s tweet with a friend who is a churchgoing Millennial Catholic. It made him disconsolate and angry at the leadership class of the Church. “Well, what a friggin’ disaster,” he texted back. “And there will be only a shrug. Nothing to see here. Just another reminder of the Catholic dumpster fire.”

As always, Burge’s thoughts led to lots of interesting comments and questions.


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