Multnomah

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QAnon in pews: Two online conversations with evangelicals concerned about the surge

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Way too many churches have never been all that effective, when it comes to helping the faithful deal with the challenges of daily life in the modern world — especially those linked to technology and mass media.

Back when I was teaching at Denver Seminary, in the early 1990s, we were struggling to help future pastors and church leaders cope with cable television all of those TV screens in the typical family home.

Frankly, many people couldn’t grasp how this was linked to pastoral ministry and preaching. I kept asking: How do your people spend their time? Spend their money? Make their decisions? These questions are at the heart of discipleship and they point to the powerful role that mass media play in modern life.

Now there is the Internet. Those TVs still exist, but they are surrounded by dozens of other screens that serve as doors into cyberspace.

It appears that we may have a topic that has some — repeat “some” — church leaders concerned about all of those screens. They are beginning to hear from pastors who are concerned, scared even, about the rising presence of QAnon dogma in their pews. Many saw the important essay in The Atlantic that ran with this headline: “The Prophecies of Q — American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase.”

In an “On Religion” column about QAnon, I stressed that church leaders need to wake up and realize the role that mainstream and alternative news sources are playing in dividing their people — period.

The bottom line: Many newsrooms are producing slanted, advocacy journalism that millions of consumers consider a kind of “fake news.” This is pushing readers away from mainstream news and deep into online niches packed with folks pushing QAnon and other conspiracy theories. Thus, I wrote:

The question, as pandemic-weary Americans stagger into the 2020 elections, is how many believers in this voting bloc have allowed their anger about "fake news" to push them toward fringe conspiracy theories about the future of their nation.

Some of these theories involve billionaire Bill Gates and global coronavirus vaccine projects, the Antichrist's plans for 5G towers, Democrats in pedophile rings or all those mysterious "QAnon" messages. "Q" is an anonymous scribe whose disciples think is a retired U.S. intelligence leader or maybe even President Donald Trump.

The bitter online arguments sound like this: Are these conspiracies mere "fake news" or is an increasingly politicized American press — especially on politics and religion — hiding dangerous truths behind its own brand of "fake news"?

"A reflexive disregard of what are legitimate news sources can feed a penchant for conspiracy theories," said Ed Stetzer, executive director of the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College.

A few lines later, Stetzer added:


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NPR on evangelical culture wars: Open fights over sex and doctrine kick into high gear

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For a decade or more, your GetReligionistas have been urging journalists to (a) check and see if there are faith-based colleges (left or right) nearby and then (b) check and see if the leaders of these schools (think trustees or religious denominations) require students, faculty and staff to SIGN a doctrinal statement that frames all campus life.

In many cases, religious schools -- especially Baptist and nondenominational evangelical schools -- have long assumed that everyone can affirm "biblical authority" and/or "traditional Christian values" and that's that. There are lots of Protestants who, claiming a specific approach to the priesthood of every believer, simply do not like to write doctrines down. That would be a creed, you see. Think #Romeaphobia.

The problem is that we live in a legalistic age that demands precision and candor, especially about sex. And never forget that 1983 Bob Jones v. United States decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that, when conditions are right, it's fine for the government to get entangled in fights over what is good doctrine and what is bad doctrine.

The First Amendment ground started moving. This brings us to this solid National Public Radio report: "Christian Colleges Are Tangled In Their Own LGBT Policies."

The key to this piece is that it covers both the broad legal questions involved in these disputes and the growing doctrinal warfare inside the often vague world of evangelical culture. That second angle is one that GetReligionistas have long argued is worthy of mainstream-media attention, linked to the rise of a true evangelical left, defined in terms of doctrine, not politics. You can see these disputes breaking out all over the place, like Taylor University in Indiana and Abilene Christian University in West Texas.

Here's the NPR overture, which is long and solid:

Conservative Christian colleges, once relatively insulated from the culture war, are increasingly entangled in the same battles over LGBT rights and related social issues that have divided other institutions in America.


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A deeper religion hook inside the spiritual drama of the 'Rare Bird' memoir?

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If you know anything about the world of religious publishing these days, you know that publishers are very, very aware that "spiritual" content is good, and can lead to massive "crossover" sales, while explicit "religion" is bad and can shove good books into narrow niches.

Thus, we live in the age when religious publishers -- the kind of folks who publish doctrinal books -- are trying to start not-so-religious special branches with cool names that try to fly under the media radar, publishing books that reach out to the non-doctrinal masses with faith that would be too foggy for the publisher's normal readers.

Right now, one of the imprints that is making news is called Convergent Books, which is part of the evangelical WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group. However, as this report in the conservative World magazine notes, both are operating under the secular corporate umbrella that is Penguin Random House. 

This brings me to some questions that GetReligion readers have been asking about that Washington Post feature focusing on blogger Anna "Inch of Gray" Whiston-Donaldson, author of the memoir "Rare Bird" about the death of her young son, Jack. The headline on this Style piece says it all: "She let her son play in the rain. He never came back."


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