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. With society polarized and deep distrust of the media, the government and other institutions, such content is a way for bad actors to sow discord, mostly via social media. We saw it with Russia in the 2016 election and we should expect it to continue.
If there’s one group that tends not to trust the media, it’s folks on the conservative religious end of things. They sense they are aliens in our culture and what better represents the dominant culture than the news media?
But what surprised me is how easily “Plandemic” sank its hooks into some of my friends. My brother also felt alarmed that his own church members and leaders in other churches might be tempted to buy into it…
There’s never just one side to a story. I mentioned this point in 2018 when I wrote about my faith and the biblical basis for investigative reporting. One of my favorite Proverbs says, “The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.” So a fair presentation should at least acknowledge opposing points of view.
I don’t think that Allen’s mention of his pastor/brother and then his own faith is a coincidence. It’s a subtle signal to any folks –- of certain religious persuasions –- who might be reading it that says '“Hey folks: I’m in your tribe and I’m not out to mislead you.”
So far, secular reporting about COVID-19 conspiracy theories haven’t pointed toward the religious community. But every warning I see on my Facebook feed about a conspiracy tends to come from someone in the conservative Christian universe.
I’m not alone. A writer for Patheos posted a similar observation on Friday.
This last week, I’ve had so many fellow evangelicals sharing bogus videos and links promising to reveal the “truth about COVID-19.” As social media platforms removed false information (because it put people at risk), it only seemed to feed into the conspiratorial fire of the posters…
The sheer number of Christians sharing conspiracy theories desperately needs to be addressed. The gospel already requires people to suspend a certain amount of disbelief to embrace something that — at first hearing — sounds incredibly fanciful. It doesn’t do us any favors if the messengers are known for spreading half-truths and nonsense.
Churches need to teach their members about discernment, now more than ever. I believe that evangelical Christians are particularly susceptible to believing dangerous conspiracy theories, and they need to learn how to become more discerning.
Back on April 15, Christianity Today warned readers that Christians are disproportionately fooled by coronavirus theories. In an opinion piece directed toward evangelicals, Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College, wrote:
Unless you believe President Trump, Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the media, and the scientific community are all in league together (a real leap of faith), you are just embarrassing yourself when you spread Coronavirus conspiracies. These vast conspiracies would mean that President Trump, himself, knew this was a bioweapon, is part of the plan to end religious liberty, plans to use a potential vaccine as some mark of the beast, and somehow 5G is part of it all. (Yes, that’s all out there, one web search away— and in far too many Christian social media feeds.) …
If you still insist on spreading such misinformation, would you please consider taking Christian off your bio so the rest of us don’t have to share in the embarrassment?
This is not just the Christians, by the way.
The Guardian reported a month ago that Hindus are beating up Muslims in India because of “corona jihad;” a belief in a hidden Muslim conspiracy to spread the virus to Hindus. It didn’t help that an Islamic missionary meeting in south Delhi in mid-March is credited with spreading the virus around the country.
On April 24, theconversation.com posted a piece about how Covid-19 has greatly ramped up demonization of British Muslims on social media via conspiracy theories. And then there are the anti-Semitic theories. Haaretz reported on May 3 about far-right theories on a Jewish-Chinese cabal that spread COVID-19.
This is just a snippet of what’s out there.
I know that reporters have a lot on their plate these days reporting about the coronavirus crisis.
Nevertheless, please start tracking those who are spreading conspiracy theories, why they feel so moved to do so and why so many of them have religious connections of one sort of another. It’s part of this global story.