This weekend’s think piece is, the final piece of a kind of evangelical-QAnon trilogy, in the wake of the must-read — even if you disagree with parts of it — “Shadowlands” package at The Atlantic Monthly.

By the way, I wonder if anyone in management at the Atlantic realized the religious implications that the term “Shadowland” would have for millions of C.S. Lewis readers. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the title. Just saying.

Early this week, I wrote a post about the “The Prophecies of Q” piece of the package and followed up with this week’s “Crossroads” podcast and post. In both, I argued that the Atlantic piece was essential reading — especially in terms of politics and technology. The religion angle — with QAnon as an essentially “evangelical” subculture — wasn’t as solid, in part because of next to zero input from evangelical leaders, including mainstream evangelical leaders, academics and writers who view QAnon as a dangerous heresy that catching on with some grassroots evangelicals. Thus, I argued:

It needed material drawn from major evangelical leaders who are concerned about QAnon and who can critique this trend, drawing on deep wells of evangelical history and doctrine. Baylor University historian Thomas Kidd leaps to mind, author of the recent book “Who Is an Evangelical? A History of a Movement in Crisis.” Or how about former GetReligionista Joe Carter of The Gospel Coalition? Karen Swallow Prior, now of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, is a well-known voice online.

Then again, Ed Stetzer — leader of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College — has been writing about conspiracy thinking for several years now. Here is a chunk of a new piece, written with colleague Andrew MacDonald, at The Dallas Morning News. The headline: “Too many evangelical Christians fall for conspiracy theories online, and gullibility is not a virtue.”

The podcast post took a look at that Stetzer-MacDonald essay. Now, I would like to point readers toward a think piece at The Gospel Coalition by journalist Joe Carter (a former member of the GetReligion team). The headline: “The FAQs: What Christians Should Know About QAnon.”

Carter opens with one the key claims in the Atlantic piece: “To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.” Carter then adds: