We hear a lot about the "purity culture" of American evangelicalism. This prudish, morbid obsession about sex is often taken to be the legacy of Puritanism upon American Protestantism. No one in our sexually liberated world wants to be a "Puritan" or "puritanical."

And yet, the moral legacy of the Puritans in America is a bit more complicated than you might think. Yes, the Puritans valued sexual chastity and continence. But the Puritans were also America's first social justice warriors. 

For example, John Brown, he of Harpers Ferry fame, was widely described as "a Puritan of the Puritans," even "the last of the Puritans." Why was John Brown considered the premier Puritan of his era? Because abolitionism, especially in its religious, revolutionary zeal, was understood to be the moral fruit of Puritanism. As the Democratic congressmen Samuel Cox declared in 1863, "Abolition is the offspring of Puritanism." 

Beyond their common source in New England, Puritanism trafficked in two things that fueled the abolitionist movement. 

First, a belief in the "higher law," God's law, that stood above the laws of the nation. Slavery was the law of the land, but abolitionists felt compelled to break the slave laws, and in Brown's case, even take up arms against the state, in obedience to God's higher law. 

Second, Puritanism was characterized by an unbending moral severity and rigidity that brooked no compromise with evil. Before and during the Civil War, political moderates tried to preserve the union by appeasing the South, allowing slavery to remain where it existed and limit only its westward expansion. The puritanical posture of the abolitionists found such compromises completely intolerable. Slavery was evil and it had to be eradicated. That was the "purity culture" of the abolitionist Christians. 

In summary, Puritanism was widely considered to be the force behind the American abolitionist movement before and during the Civil War. The Puritans were our first social justice warriors. 

And what's interesting here is how modern day social justice warriors carry on this same moral tradition. A chorus of commentators have observed how social justice activism, seemingly post-Christian in its religious attitude, is characterized by a moral rigidity, severity, and revolutionary zeal that is quintessentially Puritan. John Brown 2.0. 

Progressive, irreligious, woke social justice warriors might not like those prudish evangelicals, but they are more similar than they think.

Final post in this series.

What are supposed to do when a family member, or someone we love, becomes a QAnon believer or endorses the Big Lie?

Again, one of the reasons for this long series was to point out that conspiracy theories are difficult to dislodge. Argument and ultimatums don't work. There's more going on than "being logical." Conspiracy theories are stubborn and persistent. Which means that conspiratorial beliefs are going to be sticking around for a season, perhaps a long season.

Which brings me to my final bit of advice.

My suggestion is to treat conspiracy beliefs as if it were a chronic mental illness. For example, what would it mean to love a family member that suffers from paranoid delusions? Or chronic depression? Well, we'd try to care for that person despite their depression or paranoid delusions. That's not to say this love will be easy, but we'd still love them.

In a similar way, what does it mean to love a conspiracy theorist? 

Of course, the problem with this suggestion is that it could be taken to be stigmatizing of those who believe in conspiracy theories, describing them as "mentally ill." I see that problem, but let me be very clear, that's not what I'm saying. I'm using the frame of mental illness as an analogy. Treat the conspiratorial belief system as if it were an mental illness. The point of the analogy is to start thinking of conspiratorial beliefs as a chronic mental disposition that can't be argued or yelled out of a person, the same way you wouldn't try to yell or argue depression out of a person, but must be accompanied with a lot of patient relational work. 

Some different pushback here to the analogy is that things like depression and paranoid delusions, as mental illnesses, aren't under our control, aren't self-inflicted, aren't freely chosen. But QAnon and Big Lie beliefs are self-inflicted and freely chosen. That's true, but now that these beliefs have settled in, they really aren't anything that one could "quit" with an act of willpower or choice. Like an addiction, we can lament and lay blame for how the situation came to be, but now that it is here the journey out of the addiction or conspiratorial belief system is going to be a journey. And moralizing about what "should or should not have happened" isn't going to be helpful moving forward. So settle in and accompany the loved one on the journey. Just like you'd love a depressed, delusional, or addicted loved one, you can love a conspiracy theorist. 

Lastly, people might also object to this suggestion as it might seem that we're simply abandoning our loved one to the conspiracy theory. That's not at all what I'm suggesting. You wouldn't love an addict by handing them drugs. You wouldn't love a person suffering from paranoid delusions by egging them on. Nor would you confirm the negative thoughts of a depressed person. You'd always act and work to nudge them toward health. You wouldn't abandon them to the darkness and dysfunction. The same goes for loving a conspiracy theorist. You'd always be gently nudging, pushing back, playfully teasing, inserting alternative facts, distracting, or deescalating. You'd confront a little harder now and then to test things, like exploring the healing of an injured limb. You'd nurse them back to cognitive health, as best you could or opportunities allowed.

To be sure, as mentioned in the last post, there will still be grief. There is only sadness to see a loved one struggle with mental illness, come under the sway of QAnon, or endorse the Big Lie. But loving through the sadness is the path forward. Love is always our path forward.

So, what do you do when a family member goes down the rabbit hole and becomes a believer in QAnon, or endorses the Big Lie?

There have been so many stories about how QAnon and the Big Lie have fractured families and friendships. What are we supposed to do when someone close to us embraces a conspiracy theory?

In my Facebook Live chat with Mark Love, I shared advice using 4T's: Toxicity, Tolerances, Trade-Offs, and Tragedy.

First, toxicity. Just how toxic has the conspiracy theory become? An interesting thing about paranoid and conspiratorial belief systems is that they can stay in their sandbox. Stay out of that standbox and the person is perfectly normal. But get into the sandbox and you're down the rabbit hole. In such situations, time with the person can be managed if you keep away from certain topics, or are able to steer away from topics. Lots of families manage life like this. There's just some subjects best to avoid.

However, if the conspiracy theory becomes all consuming, infiltrating every conversation, then that's a whole different level and much harder to manage or avoid.

Second, tolerances. Given the impact of the conspiracy theory upon the person (toxicity), how much are you able to tolerate? We all vary in how much we can tolerate views we think are wrong or crazy. For example, I have friends who are highly triggered by politics, both conservative and progressive friends. That is, if you revealed to a progressive friend that you voted for Donald Trump that would end the friendship. Conversely, if you revealed to a conservative friend that you voted for Joe Biden that would end the friendship. But others of us aren't that triggered. We don't care how you voted. It's just not all that interesting.

The same goes for conspiracy theories. A parent shares some QAnon or Big Lie stuff with you. How triggered are you? How angry and dismayed? How's your heart rate sitting there? Has your day been ruined? Your week? Does it cause you later to yell or cry? Etc. In short, how much can you tolerate? People differ.

Third, trade-offs. Give the toxicity of the situation and your tolerances, what trade-offs are you willing or unwilling to make? Perhaps the situation is bad (toxicity) and/or very, very upsetting (tolerances). So for the sake of self-care you have to pull back from the family member. However, this risks damaging the relationship. Is that a trade-off you're willing to make? Or feel you have to make? Perhaps not. Perhaps you feel, for the sake of preserving the relationship, that you have to keep contact, even if that means you have to do a lot of processing, screaming, and emotional work after every phone call and visit. But to preserve the relationship you're willing to do this. 

Fourth, tragedy. It's just a sad situation, so grieve it. And given your tolerances and the trade-offs you have to make, you may have to grieve a more distant or even broken relationship. As I pointed out in the last post, there's no quick fix or solution that can get someone to stop believing in conspiracy theories. Arguing with family members is unlikely to work. Giving ultimatums is unlikely to work. Things can change, but only over time, so you're playing the long game. You can be hopeful, but this will be a hard, sad season. So let it be sad and process your grief. 

And I do think there is hope. I'm unaware of any longitudinal data on conspiratorial beliefs, but it does seem that these beliefs have a shelf life. They wax and wane. We've already seen some waning of QAnon. Fevers do break. So, one more post on that point to wrap us this series. 

806.

We are not satisfied with the life we have in ourselves and our own being. We want to lead an imaginary life in the eyes of others, and so we try to make an impression. We strive constantly to embellish and preserve our imaginary being, and neglect our real one. And if we are calm, or generous, or loyal, we are anxious to have it known so that we can attach these virtues to our other existence; we prefer to detach them from our real self so as to unite them with the other. We would cheerfully be cowards if that would acquire us a reputation for bravery.

///

Again, this is one of those pensées where Pascal is a prophet for the modern world, steeped as it is in social media. We embellish our imaginary being online while neglecting our real one. And when we display any virtue we become "anxious to have it known." Pascal didn't have the term "virtue signaling" in his day, but he was describing it.

In the final three posts in this series I want to turn to talk about what we might do with church or family members who endorse conspiracy theories like QAnon.

The first nine posts of this series haven't covered new ground. Many of the observations have been made before. What I did hope to offer, though, was some comprehensiveness. For two reasons.

First, by highlighting the epistemic, existential and social motivations behind conspiracy theories I hoped to make clear that we can't expect to argue or debate people out of their beliefs. Especially not on social media like Facebook. But even face to face. There's a lot going on socially and psychologically with conspiracy theories, making them impossible to dislodge with an argument. 

That said, my second reason for a comprehensive survey of the motivations behind conspiracy theories was to help us see how we might try to respond therapeutically, rather than argumentatively, to church or family members who endorse conspiracy theories. Each post of this series suggests a way we might undermine conspiratorial thinking. Using that insight, I want to suggest how churches can respond to conspiracy theories.

My first four years after getting my Masters degree I worked at an inpatient psychiatric hospital. The guiding philosophy of the hospital was what is called milieu therapy. Milieu therapy involves using the environment and social surroundings to promote healing. Therapy on our unit wasn't just a hour spent with a counselor or taking your meds. Everything on the unit was used to help promote better psychological and behavioral functioning. The milieu, the environment, is what healed you.

I want to suggest that when it comes to conspiratorial beliefs we should think of church as milieu therapy. A pastor can't preach or teach people out of believing in QAnon. Again, debate and argument are going to fail. But what church leaders can do is promote a culture and environment that makes it hard for conspiracy theories to grow and thrive.

What might that look like? Here is where this long series proves helpful. We've walked through a variety of things that promote conspiracy theories. Rather than attacking the conspiracy theory directly, which will only promote defensiveness and departure from the church, we can undermine many of the things that feed and grow conspiratorial belief.

For example, pastors can get prophetic about affective polarization, call the church to pull back from social media, decenter Washington DC, undermine nationalism, foster capacities for lament in the face of shared tragedy, and teach a responsible eschatology. Along with this the ongoing work of the church in meeting our social and existential needs. All this can be done without mentioning QAnon directly. Energetic and persistent work across all these fronts creates a milieu where it is hard for conspiracy theories to grow and flourish.

And let me underline the word persistent. One can't do a teaching series on any of these topics and think you've checked a box. This isn't a one off intervention. You're creating a milieu. You're not chopping down a diseased tree. You're pulling weeds in a garden. So don't expect that after your sermon series, pulling those weeds once, that your garden will now forever be weed-free. The weeds you need to pull--from social media to affective polarization to eschatology to nationalism--need to be pulled regularly. And if you have a lot of weeds already then start to nibble away. Start where your people are and then begin.

And as we know, weeding is slow, patient work. It's a marathon, not a spirit. A lifestyle, not a fireworks display. And even with our best efforts, weeds will appear. The key is to keep at the work, not to despair when the weed appears but to to prevent them from taking over.

Throughout this series I've been describing belief in conspiracy theories as "going down the rabbit hole." It's a common metaphor for conspiracy theories, taken from Alice in Wonderland. 

In the coming final three posts I want to turn to talk about how to handle or live with conspiracy theories in our churches and families. But before we turn toward the "What do we do?" posts I feel we need at least one post to talk directly about the rabbit hole itself.

By that I mean the Internet and social media. The conspiracy theory rabbit hole is YouTube, Facebook and message boards.   

I expect most of you have watched the documentary The Social Dilemma. If you haven't take some time to watch it. I found it alarming. 

A key part of the The Social Dilemma story is how a small change in the "recommend" algorithms of the Internet began to operate. In the early years the algorithms would track likes, clicks, and views. If you liked, viewed, or clicked on certain links the algorithms of social media would "recommend" more of that content to you. Social media chased "clicks."

But then YouTube made a fateful change. YouTube began tracking not clicks, but attention, how long you would watch certain content. Videos you watched longer would cause the algorithm to recommend other videos that would cause you to watch longer, to keep you on the screen. The goal was to keep you watching more and more content. Accidentally, or malevolently, this created perceptual funneling and tunneling. The algorithm, via "recommended" links, would push your attention toward certain content (funneling), and then deeper and deeper into that content (tunneling) as it was holding your attention longer and longer. This created digital rabbit holes. 

Most rabbit holes are benign. We've all gone down a YouTube rabbit hole, following recommended link after recommended link to figure out how to fix, build, or make something. To solve some problem, answer some question, or to learn about something. We've followed links to watch a lot of content from someone we like or find interesting, from podcasters, to speakers, to entertainers. 

But not all rabbit holes are so innocent. Most people who come to believe in a conspiracy theory do so by going down a digital rabbit hole, YouTube feeding you recommended link after recommended link taking your deeper and deeper. And before you know it, you're living in a completely different perceptual reality. What you think of as "real" or the "truth" slowly, imperceptibly, changes.

And this is a second way the Internet affects conspiracy theories. Specifically, the Internet has fractured and siloed our once shared vision of reality. We all now live in different perceptual worlds. We often call these "echo chambers," where people online talk only to other people who share their perceptual world, reinforcing and strengthening their particular view of reality. People now get their news from a prefered ideological outlet, like Fox or MSMBC. On Facebook and Twitter we mainly follow the likeminded, blocking or canceling those who we disagree with. We follow podcasters, YouTubers, and writers who share and confirm our worldviews. 

As we all know, this has created a crisis for democracy. The voting public no longer agrees on basic reality. We don't agree about what is actual news versus fake news. We don't agree on what the facts are. 

And while this risks being objected to as a false equivalence, both the right and the left are affected by cognitive biases that affect their view of "the facts." Yes, far too many evangelicals believe, to some degree, the Big Lie about the 2020 election being stolen from Trump. But we also saw progressives too quickly dismiss the Wuhan lab leak theory and persistently overestimate the risks of COVID in relation to other health and safety risks. Yes, given where I stand, the Big Lie is pretty damn big, but we all have our biases and selectively pick and choose among "the facts" to fit our preferred political narrative. 

But let me return to the issue of conspiracy theories. 

What I've been describing here isn't new. We all know what the Internet is doing to us, how it's polarizing and dividing us by fracturing our shared sense of "the truth." And this is, perhaps, the source of the biggest shock and grief when we discover that a loved one endorses the Big Lie or has gone down the QAnon rabbit hole. It is the recognition and dismay that we no longer live "in the same world" as our loved one. It is the sadness of feeling that we no longer understand this person whom we love, that an epistemic crack has opened between us that cannot be bridged, making us unintelligible to each other. 

Suddenly, we find ourselves as strangers to our parents, children, loved ones and friends.

And in this, we experience a loss, a sort of death, and all the grief that entails. This is why the Big Lie and QAnon broke families and friendships. 

As mentioned in the last post, research suggests people endorse conspiracy theories for three reasons. Two of those we've discussed already, epistemic and existential motives. The last motivation is social.

Conspiracy theories create close, tight-knit communities. A place where you belong. More, as these communities become embattled in the face of censor, attack or ridicule, they, perhaps paradoxically, bond even more tightly together. Nothing creates group loyalty and solidarity quite like shared persecution. 

Basically, conspiracy theories create friendships, meeting social needs in a world where loneliness and social alienation are epidemic and where families bonds have eroded. 

As outsiders, we look at the content of conspiracy theories and all we can see is the crazy. What we tend to miss is the social aspect, the friendships, which often is the most powerful part. 

We have some friends whose parents, much to our friends' dismay, went down the path of the Big Lie and QAnon. It's made family life hard. And in the final three posts of this series I'll turn to say some things about how to respond to and live with family or church members who have become followers of QAnon. But for today I wanted to share what the parents of our friends said when they confronted them about endorsing a conspiracy theory. 

Their parents responded, "But we've met so many wonderful people. We've made so many friends." 

When psychologists look at what draws people to conspiracy theories they group those needs and motivations under three headings.

So far in this series, we've been mainly talking about epistemic motivations, the need to make life coherent and predictable. We've discussed how dispensational theology, ways of reading the Bible, and views regarding God's providence create and form a epistemic style that predisposes many evangelicals toward conspiratorial thinking in making sense of a confusing, rapidly changing, and scary world. 

Beyond these epistemic motivations, a second group of motivations are existential in nature.

Specifically, we all have a desire for a heroic life. And by that I mean we want our lives to count, to make a difference. And the difference here can be modest and small. Picking up a piece of trash leaves the world a little better than how we found it. And as we say in an oft-repeated sentiment, "If I can make a difference in only one person's life, that would be enough."

But meaning and significance is hard, and getting harder. Historians, sociologists, and psychologists have be describing the psychological toll of meritocracy upon the modern world, our success ethic as the route to self-esteem, meaning and significance.

I'll also add here the observation that many have made, that the burden of meritocracy has grown more acute in America with the collapse of US manufacturing. Once upon a time in America, when America as "great," a person with a High School diploma had a reliable path to a humble, but heroic life. A job at the factory, with decent pay, benefits, and pension. Careers in the manufacturing world provided huge swaths of Americans without college degrees stable and reliable ladders into the middle-class and a piece of the American Dream.

As we know, those days are gone. A High School diploma in America will likely doom you to multiple, low-paying, part-time jobs in the service sector. Fast food. Stocking shelves at Walmart or an Amazon warehouse. Retail. Gig work. And not just for those with High School degrees. People coming out of college are looking at the exact same future, plus being loaded down with tens of thousands of dollars of college debt. To be clear, all work is dignified and meaningful, if you have the proper metaphysical perspective. But fewer and fewer of us have that perspective. Instead, we evaluate our lives by the success metrics of the meritocracy.

Given this situation, economic and metaphysical, it can be hard for many to look at their lives and feel a sense of meaning and purpose. And it's into this existential void where a conspiracy theory like QAnon steps in. Once you take the "red pill" and go down the QAnon rabbit hole as a true believer your life will become, in an instant, meaningful, significant, and heroic. That is what you have to appreciate about conspiracy theories like QAnon, their existential power and allure, their ability to give us a heroic life.

Incidentally, the term "red pill" is a term of art in the QAnon world. It comes from the movie The Matrix where the protagonist of the story is offered a red or a blue pill. If he takes the red pill he will wake up to reality and finally be able to see the truth. Believers of QAnon are those who have taken "the red pill" and have woken up to the truth. They see, the rest of us are blind.

The critical point here is this: the red pill is an existential drug. Take it, and life suddenly becomes heroic. Consider the case of Edgar Welch and Pizzagate.

Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that later morphed into QAnon. According to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, Democratic leaders, Hillary Clinton among them, were running a pedophile sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington, DC.

Edgar Welch, a married family man from North Carolina, took the red pill and went down the Pizzagate rabbit hole. Convinced that someone had to stop this evil, Welch armed himself and drove to Washington DC. Arriving at Comet Ping Pong he fired shots but hit no one. Welch searched the restaurant to free the children held as sex slaves in the basement. Trouble was, there was no basement in Comet Ping Pong. Nor were there any sex slaves. None of it was real. Upon realizing his error, Welch surrendered to the authorities who had responded to the shooting.

We might be tempted to either ridicule or express sympathy for Edgar Welch. I bring up Pizzagate to make a different point. No matter how you think of Welsh, what should be absolutely clear is that Edgar Welch was acting heroically, at least in his own mind. Which is what we're trying to understand in this series. As Welch recounted, "I just wanted to do some good." He felt his "heart breaking over the thought of innocent people suffering." In court documents Welch said that he went to Comet Ping Pong to rescue the enslaved children. His motivation was entirely heroic. This is what we need to understand about conspiracy theories. The heroism.

QAnon provides its redpilled adherents with a heroic narrative. QAnon fills an existential void. Take the red pill and suddenly you're an embattled soldier and patriot fighting a holy war against the forces of darkness seeking to destroy America and the world. Life is rendered instantly meaningful and heroic. 

It's this same heroism that makes dispensational, end times theology so alluring. Because it's a distinctive and noteworthy aspect of proponents of end times belief that they, themselves, right now, are in the midst of the end times, or that it's right around the corner. No one ever goes down the rabbit hole of dispensational Bible study to return with the message, "I've worked the timeline out, and here's what I found: Nothing will happen in our lifetime." End times belief is always, if not ego-centric, then generation-centric. Dispensationalism trades on calendrical narcissism. Generation after generation of dispensationalists always come to the conclusion that the end times is happening in their very own generation, never in some later, future generation. And the reason for this is heroism. The gas that makes the end times engine run is the heroic notion that you, yes you, are living in the end times, the season of heroic action. Everyone is blind, but you see. 

Why do people believe in conspiracy theories? Why is the end times always now and never a hundred years in the future? 

Why do we take the red pill?

Because we all want to live a heroic life.

43.

A trifle consoles us because a trifle upsets us.

///

In Hunting Magic Eels I describe what I call "the Ache," the emotional consequences of a life without God or a sense of the transcendent. In A Secular Age Charles Taylor describes it as "the malaise of modernity."

A part of this ache and malaise is how, with the collapse of the transcendent, life is rendered hollow, shallow, and flat. The theologian Paul Tillich describes it as a loss of depth. Tillich wrote:

If we define religion as the state of being grasped by an infinite concern we must say: Man in our time has lost such infinite concern...

How did the dimension of depth become lost? Like any important event, it has many causes, but certainly not the one which one hears often mentioned from ministers' pulpits and evangelists' platforms, namely that a widespread impiety of modern man is responsible. Modern man is neither more pious nor more impious than man in any other period. The loss of the dimension of depth is caused by the relation of man to his world and to himself in our period, the period in which nature is being subjected scientifically and technically to the control of man. In this period, life in the dimension of depth is replaced by life in the horizontal dimension. The driving forces of the industrial society of which we are a part go ahead horizontally and not vertically...

One does not need to look far beyond everyone's daily experience in order to find examples to describe this predicament. Indeed our daily life in office and home, in cars and airplanes, at parties and conferences, while reading magazines and watching television, while looking at advertisements and hearing radio, are in themselves continuous examples of a life which has lost the dimension of depth...

Nothing, perhaps, is more symptomatic of the loss of the dimension of depth than the permanent discussions about the existence or nonexistence of God--a discussion in which both sides are equally wrong, because the discussion itself is wrong and possible only after the loss of the dimension of depth.

When in this way man has deprived himself of the dimension of depth and the symbols expressing it, he then becomes a part of the horizontal plane. He loses his self and becomes a thing among things. He becomes an element in the process of manipulated production and manipulated consumption....

But man has not ceased to be man. He resists this fate anxiously, desperately, courageously. He asks the question, for what?"

Following Tillich, Charles Taylor observes:

Almost every action of ours has a point; we're trying to get to work, or to find a place to buy a bottle of milk after hours. But we can stop and ask why we're doing these things, and that points us beyond to the significance of these significances. The issue may arise for us in a crisis, where we feel that what has been orienting our life up to now lacks real value, weight...A crucial feature of the malaise of immanence is the sense that all these answers are fragile, or uncertain; that a moment may come, where we no longer feel that our chosen path is compelling, or cannot justify it to ourselves or others. There is a fragility of meaning...[T]he quotidian is emptied of deeper resonance, is dry, flat; the things which surround us are dead, ugly, empty; and the way we organize them, shape them, in order to live has not meaning, beauty, depth, sense...[We now experience] a terrible flatness in the everyday.

One of the symptoms of this "flatness in the everyday" is existential superficiality. 

As Pascal observes, when our lives are not guided by higher or deeper things what upsets us and consoles us are, when viewed from more transcendent perspectives, found to be quite trivial. More often than not, our moods and emotions follow the ups and downs of social media, entertainment culture, or consumerism. The biggest events in our week become the next streaming film/series release, Facebook likes, sporting event, your birdie on the 7th hole, glass of wine, or Amazon delivery.

This is why, I tell my students, the modern world wants you godless and unhappy. Because you buy stuff.

A series on conspiracy theories and evangelical involvement with QAnon has to make mention of the QAnon belief that Democratic leaders are satanic, baby-eating pedofiles. 

The title isn't click bait. I'm not being over the top. This is something that evangelicals involved in QAnon actually believe. It is a core conviction among many evangelicals that Democrats are eating babies in satanic rituals and running pedofile sex-trafficing rings. 

On the face of it, I know, it seems crazy. How could anyone believe this insanity?

You can't go from A to Z so quickly, from thinking people are normal to believing they eat babies. That's too far a leap. But QAnon evangelicals didn't start at A, thinking Democrats were normal human beings, they were starting at W or X, just a short hop to Z. How did they get to W or X? The answer is the abortion cultural wars. 

I'm sure most people know that evangelicals are overwhelmingly pro-life. And a fair amount of evangelicals hold that conviction with some degree of nuance and complexity, even toleration. But there is a more radical fringe of the pro-life movement, where death threats originate, where pictures of fetal remains are shown online and on protest posters, where the words "baby killer" are regularly used. In this part of the anti-abortion world, Democrats have, for decades, been called satanic, described as gleefully, and for profit, sacrificing children to Molech.  

Now, my point here isn't to dismiss pro-life proponents. As I said, many evangelicals hold complex and nuanced pro-life views that show great empathy for the women facing such choices. Broadly speaking, I'd describe myself as pro-life. My point in this post is that, when you look at the most extreme belief among QAnon believers, that Democratic leaders are satanic, baby-eating pedofiles, and wonder how anyone can believe this, evangelicals aren't starting at A and jumping all the way to Z. Many evangelicals have been marinating in extreme "satanic baby-killing" rhetoric for many, many years. And for these people, QAnon wasn't an extreme jump. QAnon was a plausible and predictable next step.

In my Facebook Live chat with my friend Mark Love he discussed another feature of evangelical theology that affects belief in conspiracy theories.

Mark's observation was that when we view God's providence through the lens of power we are forced to discern "God's plan" in all things. Some have called this micromanaging view of the cosmos God's "omnicontrol." Nothing acts in the world, no drop of rain or falling leaf, without being the will of God and a player in God's overall plan. 

God's power, sovereignty, and providence in the world is a snarly theological problem. And this post is not place to wade into those waters. All I want to do is draw attention to Mark's point that if you're spiritually formed to discern "God's plan" in seemingly random life events you're predisposing yourself to conspiratorial modes of thought. Because the heart of paranoid thinking is seeing meaningful connections between events where none exist. Some events are just random. That, or the explanations and causes illusive or forever outside of our ability to grasp.

More, there's an emotional aspect here as well. We're comforted by causal explanations. Randomness spooks the brain and makes us anxious. We hunger for a orderly, predictable world. So making connections between events soothes and puts us at ease. So, there is solace to be found in facing a trauma or failure knowing that somehow, someway, this is a part of God's plan. 

But here is the critical issue. There is a vast epistemological and emotional difference between knowing that a plan exists and knowing exactly what that plan is in a given circumstance. This is a fine line, but people do cross it. Something happens and people step up to explain exactly what God is doing in this circumstance. What is mysterious and hidden to us is clear and explicit to these people. 

All that to say, this isn't a broadside against Reformed theology, with its high view of God's providence and sovereignty. I am, though, expressing a worry about crude, simplistic versions of Reformed theology, especially when it's combined with overly confident prophets among charismatic believers, those who declare insight into God's plans. We saw a lot of failed prophecy on election day and during the inauguration when conspiracy-fueled Christians predicted a Donald Trump victory and mass arrests of Democrat leaders as all "God's plan." 

In the midst of our pain and confusion many of us take comfort in knowing God has a plan. Nothing is wrong with believing that God is a work. Mysteriously at work, but still, at work. God is sovereign and still in control. God has a plan for us, to do and be good to us. What tips us toward conspiratorial thinking is when we think we can see that plan clearly and make a habit of having too much confidence in that judgment. 

Phrased differently, lament is the opposite of conspiratorial thinking. 

In Part 2 mention was made of the Scofield Bible and the role it played in promoting dispensational beliefs. But beyond the end times beliefs themselves, the Scofield Bible illustrates a particular way of seeing, using, and coming to understand the Bible. This view of the Bible and method of biblical study also promotes belief in conspiracy theories by turning the Bible into a puzzle that needs to be solved or a code that needs to be cracked.

As Mark described in our Facebook Live chat, scholars describe the approach illustrated by the Scofield Bible as a "flat hermeneutic," a way of reading the Bible that is common among evangelicals. A flat hermeneutic ignores Biblical genres (like how poetry is different from history or law or gospel or apocalypse or epistle) and the textual context of Biblical passages, smoothing out the textures of Scripture to treat every Bible verse as equal in import and value. This leads to an "atomization" of Scripture, where individual Bible verses are isolated to stand on their own, each verse a bit of data to be accounted for, a puzzle piece or clue. Making sense of the Bible then becomes arranging these verses or making connects between them until a pattern or picture emerges. Bibles like the Scofield Bible aided in this as Andrew Gardner apty summarizes:

Resources like the Scofield Reference Bible allowed Christians to search out connections between Bible verses with similar themes through “cross-references.” Reading Scripture and unlocking its secrets became an intricate quest as passages from one book of the Bible were sought to provide clues for understanding other passages.

Bible study became sifting through and making connections between seemingly disparate Bible verses, a verse from the book of Daniel the clue used to unlock a puzzle in the book of Revelation. Approaching the Bible in this way became an exercise in code-breaking. Students of the Bible were to follow the clues, hopping from verse by verse, until the puzzle was solved. I'm reminded of the scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind, about the mathematician John Nash and his struggles with paranoid schizophrenia, when Nash's wife enters his office to find it full of magazine articles linked by threads illustrating the paranoid "connections" he'd made between news events. The cross-referencing of the Scofield Bible was just like those threads in John Nash's office. 

That analogy illustrates how a "flat hermeneutic" promotes conspiratorial patterns of thinking and modes of perception. If you're unfamiliar with QAnon, the anonymous Q's postings on the internet are enigmatic, open to a wide variety of interpretations. After a Q "drop" followers begin to crack the code, looking for connections and threads of association between Q's cryptic, gnomic statements and world events and news, especially the actions of Donald Trump. When connections with a Q drop are discovered they are shared by YouTube personalities, called QTubers, who have huge followings. Each QTuber is their own Scofield Bible, sharing cross-references between Q's statements and world events. 

Now, here's the point. To outsiders, it might seem that hunting down Q's clues to uncover "the truth" would seem, from an epistemological perspective, a wholly bizarre means of discovering truths about the world. And yet, for evangelicals raised on discovering the truth by solving the puzzles of the Bible and linking them to news headlines, this process of discovering the truth in QAnon wasn't bizarre at all, it was a strategy that was familiar, tested, and trustworthy. When you've spent your life cracking the Bible code cracking the codes of QAnon comes naturally. 

In addition to dispensationalism among evangelicals, there is also Christian nationalism. The two are related, but distinct. You can be dispensationalist and not a Christian nationalist. And you can be a Christian nationalist and not a dispensationalist. But the two often go hand in hand.

I think most readers know what Christian nationalism is, but if you don't, Christian nationalism is the belief that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and that, because of this, America has a divinely ordained role to play in world affairs. However, America's Christian identity is currently and constantly being attacked and undermined by godless and secular forces, threatening America's ability to fulfill God's purposes. Consequently, Christian nationalists feel called to "do battle" with these anti-Christian forces to restore America as a "Christian nation." "Making America Great Again," in this view returning us to our Christian foundations, will allow America to to fulfill God's providential plans for our nation and the world.

When combined with dispensational thinking Christian nationalism sees the rise or fall of a "Christian America" as a central player in end times scenarios. Consequently, political events in Washington have enormous eschatological significance. Each election, each political win or loss, each headline, is an end times sign or portent. For example, there were evangelicals who believed that Barack Obama was the Antichrist. And there are evangelicals who feel that Donald Trump is battling the forces of the Antichrist.

Along with Christian nationalism, the state of Israel also plays a key role in many dispensationalist systems. Thus, how American foreign policy affects the state of Israel has great eschatological significance for evangelicals. For example, when Donald Trump moved the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem his reason was, in his words: "And we moved the capital of Israel to Jerusalem. That’s for the evangelicals.” Why? Because recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has enormous end times significance for dispensationalist evangelicals. Consequently, by making policy decisions conform to dispensationalist expectations Trump solidified his position as "savior" in the minds of many evangelicals. For evangelicals, moving the embassy to Jerusalem might have been Trump's most momentous decision, getting us one step closer to the end times.

It's this combination of Christian nationalism with dispensational thinking that gets evangelical Christians involved with QAnon, the conspiracy theory focused upon the heroic actions of Donald Trump in fighting evil cabals seeking to destroy America. To be sure, QAnon isn't an "end times" conspiracy theory. But given how Trump's actions are interpreted by dispensational Christian nationalists, Trump's actions, as revealed by Q, are given eschatological significance. QAnon helps dispensational Christian nationalists read "the signs of the times." 

47.

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that to not belong to us, and do not think about the only one that does; so vain that we dream of times that are not and blindly flee the only one that is. The fact is that the present usually hurts. We thrust it out of sight  because it distresses us, and if we find it enjoyable, we are sorry to see it slip away...

We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present our our means, and the future alone our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so.

///

My goodness, I don't have really anything to add to Pascal here. He wrote this four-hundred years ago, and it may be truer now than it has ever been. In many ways, our neuroses are diseases of time. Depression, regret and guilt are diseases of the past. Worry, anxiety, and fear diseases of the future.

Emotionally, we wander about in times that do not belong to us. And because of this, we never actually live.

In their 2014 study of conspiracy theories--"Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion" in the American Journal of Political Science--Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood identified belief in "end times" theology as the most robust and significant predictor of belief in conspiracy theories. 

Oliver and Wood assessed end times belief with the item "We are currently living in the End Times as foretold by Biblical prophecy." Among all the variables they looked at--from ethnicity to education to political beliefs to beliefs in the paranormal to religiosity--Oliver and Wood concluded: "The strongest predictor of conspiracism is agreement with the End Times statement."

Perhaps the biggest driver of belief in conspiracy theories among evangelicals is dispensational theology. In the words of Andrew Gardner, dispensationalism "turned the return of Christ into a grand conspiracy."

Dispensationalism, which emerged among American evangelicals in the early 1800s, did this by weaving a predictive tapestry from apocalyptic material found in the book of Daniel, the Synoptic Gospels, and the book of Revelation--from the rapture to the thousand year (millennial) reign of Christ to the Antichrist to the Battle of Armageddon to the Second Coming. Study Bibles, with extensive cross-referencing, like the popular Scofield Bible, helped readers follow the predictive thread running through Scripture. With this prophetic system worked out, dispensationalists could read current events looking for signs of the Rapture, the rise of the Antichrist, and the Second Coming of Christ. In more recent memory, dispensationalist thinking broke into the mainstream with the best-selling Left Behind series. 

The are many different varieties of dispensationalist thought, but taken as a whole one can appreciate Gardner's point that dispensationalism turned the return of Christ into a grand conspiracy theory. To start, as pointed out in the last post, dispensationalism posits a Manichean battle between Good and Evil, the forces of Christ warring against the forces of the Antichrist. But dispensationalism goes further and asks its adherents to read into "the signs of the times" meaningful, and ominous, connections. This is the very stuff of conspiratorial thinking, making causal connections between disparate and unrelated events as evidence of unseen and malevolent forces at work on the world. In short, as training you in a habit of thinking and seeing the world, dispensationalism is what spiritual formation looks like if you want people to endorse conspiracy theories. 

This explains why Oliver and Wood found that end times belief was the #1 predictor of conspiracy  theories. Dispensationalism is a school of conspiratorial belief.

Yesterday, my friend Mark Love and I had a discussion on Facebook Live about conspiracy theories, psychological perspectives but with an eye on how Christianity can be implicated in believing in conspiracy theories. Obviously, with the rise of QAnon among evangelicals, this is a timely subject. So, a series sharing some of my thoughts and insights on Christianity and conspiracy theories. 

Let's start with affective polarization. 

Affective polarization has to do with the feelings and attitudes we have toward political opponents. The issue here is less our policy disagreements than how we regard about political opponents as human beings. Are people in the other political party good people? Are they honest? Are they trustworthy? 

Over the last twenty years political scientists have been tracking the rise of affective polarization. Increasingly, we are viewing political opponents as "bad people," even as evil. And this affects political paranoia and conspiratorial thinking.

In a 2014 study by Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood published in the American Journal of Political Science entitled "Conspiracy Theories and the Paranoid Style(s) of Mass Opinion," they found that a "Manichean" view of the world was a robust predictor of belief in conspiracy theories. A "Manichean" worldview involves seeing the world as a struggle between Good versus Evil, and was assessed in Oliver and Woods's study with the item, "Politics is ultimately a struggle between good and evil."

Given this finding, it should be obvious how a rise in affective polarization, seeing political opponents as "evil," would promote increased beliefs in conspiracy theories. 

And religion may fuel this trend. Christians are prone in viewing the world in moralistic, black and white, terms. 

Oliver and Wood noted that conspiratorial thinking was observed at roughly the same levels among both liberals and conservatives, observing that, "conspiratorial reasoning is not simply a style of one political group but is evident across the ideological spectrum." However, they did observe that religiosity was predictive of a "Manichean" view of the world. That is to say, insofar as your Christianity is causing you to see politics and the world as a struggle between Good and Evil your beliefs are predisposing you to conspiratorial thinking. 

However, a Manichean worldview wasn't the strongest predictor in Oliver and Wood's study in predicting endorsement of conspiracy theories. We'll turn to that, the strongest predictor, in the next post.

My apologies for some house business today.

Blogger notified users that its email subscription widget is no longer going to be supported, ending at the start of July, a few weeks away. This will obviously affect readers who follow the blog through their Inbox rather than coming here directly.

Pondering what to do for those readers, I've started copying the blog onto a space I made on Substack. To be clear, as long as Blogger keeps chugging along I'll still be right here. But Experimental Theology can now also be found on Substack.

The reason for this is that Substack has an easy email subscription system. Plus, Substack has two things I value in my blogging platform: 1) I can post there for free, and 2) you are not exposed to advertisements. 

Also, while many writers have subscribers pay for content on Substack I won't be doing that. If you subscribe to the blog on Substack all the content remains free just as it is here.

So, if you are a reader to follows the blog through your Inbox with an email subscription, or would like to start doing that, please head over to Substack and subscribe. Tomorrow Experimental Theology will start (or continue) to show up in your Inbox.

One caveat about the timing about when the posts will hit your Inbox. Since I'm running now two sites, what I do each morning is copy and paste the post from Blogger into Substack. When I get to that depends upon my morning. Most of the time I re-post on Substack before 10:00 am CST. All that to say, for Substack subscribers my posts will show up in your Inbox daily, in the morning, but with a little and variable time lag from when they appear here.

And for everyone who comes directly here to the site, nothing will change.

So, for those following or who would like to follow via email, head on over to Substack and subscribe. I'll see you in you Inbox tomorrow morning!

Last post in this series. 

How do you know when Christianity is good or bad? 

And how do you know if the bad Christianity isn't the real Christianity?

In my own faith journey one of the most important books I've ever read, and one I keep going back over and over again, is Walter Brueggemann's The Prophetic Imagination. I was once visiting with Walter about the influence of this book on my life and he quipped, "I've only ever written one book, The Prophetic Imagination. Everything I've written since has been just repeating that book." Walter was joking, but the grain of truth in the joke is how "the prophetic imagination" has been a central, guiding, recurrent theme in his work. 

What is the prophetic imagination? In my book The Slavery of Death, I describe the prophetic imagination this way. The prophetic imagination is the capacity to imagine that God can speak--and is speaking!--a word of indictment against you. 

When we lack this capacity God is "captured" by the status quo. God comes to endorse, baptize, sacralize, legitimize, and spiritually underwrite your political party, church, tribe, social position, and nation. This is how, for example, Constantinianism leads to idolatry. An identity relationship is formed between God and Country. Speak against America and you're speaking against God. 

The prophetic imagination, by contrast, is the capacity to imagine that America stands under God's judgment. It's an imagination that has some moral daylight between God and your nation, the ability to weigh your country in the moral balance and find it wanting. And beyond your country, the ability to weigh yourself, your tribe, your church, and your politics and declare it all broken, wrong, and failing. 

Basically, the prophetic imagination is the ability, in the language of the Twelve Step program, to take a "searching and fearless moral inventory" of our lives, our politics, our churches, and our nation. 

This isn't the post to walk through all the evidence that the prophetic imagination is a central, defining aspect of both the Old and New Testaments. Moral self-criticism is Holy Writ. Suffice it to say, I think the prophetic imagination is, perhaps, the key feature that separates good versus bad Christianity. When "Christianity" is behaving badly the prophetic imagination has been lost. What you see is group of Christians who think they are speaking for God. That God is 100% on their side of an election. That God legitimizes a social hierarchy that keeps me on top. That God loves my nation above all others. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So, to wrap this series up, what is the real Christianity? And how to you separate the good from the bad? I think a central thing to attend to, along with everything else mentioned in this series, is the presence of the prophetic imagination among a group of Christians, the willingness or unwillingness to see ourselves as standing under the judgment of God. Is the prophetic voice speaking against you confessed as the Voice of God?

Or, stated concisely, are we capable of damning ourselves?

119.

Let each of us now judge our own worth, let us love ourselves, for there is within us a nature capable of good; but that is no reason for us to love the vileness within ourselves. Let us despise ourselves because this capacity remains unfilled; but that is no reason for us to despise this natural capacity. Let us both hate and love ourselves; we have within us the capacity for knowing truth and being happy, but we possess no truth which is either abiding or satisfactory. 

///

I can't remember when or where I had this conversation. I think it was face to face and not on the blog. I was sharing about the power of the practice of the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." Hearing this a person shared, "I like that prayer, but I don't like that last part--'a sinner.' So I leave that out."

Well, of course you do. Heaven forbid we own up to the harm we do in the world. How worrisome.

One of the reasons I've moved on from progressive Christianity into a post-progressive space is that, by and large, progressive Christianity has lost any ability to talk about sin. We can't see or describe ourselves as sinners. We leave that part out.

Of course we know why this is often the case. Many progressive Christians are ex-evangelicals and ex-fundamentalists and so have been on a journey toward grace and away from guilt, shame and "sinners in the hands of an angry God." And so, Pascal's call to "hate ourselves" is going to sound pretty toxic.

And yet, Pascal's balance here, to both love and hate ourselves, is the same sort of balance that keeps me separate from both evangelical and progressive Christians. I do hate myself, but I don't hate all of me. I confess I'm depraved, but I'm not totally depraved. I agree with Pascal's very humanistic belief that there exists within each of us a natural capacity for good. Because of this humanism I resist a lot of what I hear in evangelical spaces about a wholly corrupt human nature.

And yet, at the same time I find progressive Christians insufferable in their inability to own a word like "sinner." Because are two truths I know with absolute certainty. First, that God loves me unconditionally. Second, that I am, most definitely, a sinner. 

But do I hate myself? Yes, I do. And before you take to the comment section to worry, because we all love worried comments, let me put before us the dictionary definition of hate: "an intense dislike for something or someone." So, are there parts of myself and my behavior that I feel "intense dislike" for? Ummm, yeah. Most definitely. Don't you?

But again, following Pascal, this intense dislike is only for parts of me. I also love myself. I love myself great deal, in fact. I think I have a lot of wonderful qualities. I feel pride and satisfaction in being a good husband, father, co-worker, neighbor and friend. I think I've done a lot of good in this world. Any intense dislike I have for myself is precisely because I want to do good, and more of it, in this world. 

Yes, of course, intense dislike for our failures can become morbid and unhealthy. As psychologist, you don't need to remind me that depression exists. I'm aware. But any charitable reading of Pascal can see he's not talking about self-loathing or a morbid self-esteem. He's talking about honesty and balance in how we take a moral inventory of ourselves. 

Perhaps the word "hate" isn't the best word to use here, and I've wasted our time defending a poor word choice. Still, I enjoy provocations. They wake me up. Good morning everyone! But again, I think all Pascal is saying is that we're mixed bags and that we should admit it. The good and the bad. Full of kindnesses and grace, but prone to darkness as well. This seems to me to be obvious and banal. And I think that is why I'm showing all this prickly irritation. Christianity has lot its ability to say commonsensical things.

Summarizing the last two posts, I think there is a clear and strong case that "real" Christianity is separate from empire and war, separate from power and conquest. True, "Christianity" was used to sacralize all these things, but we stand on firm ground in condemning them as heresies, as perversions of the New Testament and the witness of the early church.

Still, a critic will retort, there are some pretty sketchy things within the Bible itself, in both the Old and New Testaments. The Bible is regularly scolded and criticized for its witness regarding slavery, gender roles, and sexuality. And it seems hard, our critics will point out, to avoid the conclusion that those morally dubious teachings are, well, actually in the Bible. So while it might be easy to separate empire and killing from the New Testament, it's harder to put daylight between the faith and the Bible's teachings about slavery, gender, and sexuality. Aren't seeds of intolerance found right there in the Bible?

Libraries of books have been written on all these subjects. And critics will vary to the degree to which they find any of these arguments persuasive. For this post, I just what to share three observations. 

First, let's play fair. It's stupid to blame Christianity for something like patriarchy, prejudices against gays, or slavery. Regarding gender roles, for example, rarely do you see ex-Christian podcasters and writers railing against the Jewish people or Muslims. Why? Because that's not politically correct. In addition, this isn't just about monotheism. Indigenous and pagan peoples throughout world history have been bastions of patriarchy, slavery and bias against sexual minorities. Indigenous people also built empires using slaves. Lastly, in the East, for example with Confucianism and Hinduism, we also see a history of patriarchy, slavery, and anti-homosexual sentiment. 

My point is that it's a regular move among ex-Christians to lay the blame for all these social ills at the feet of Christianity. But the truth of the matter is that these social ills are world-historical, they have a deep history and are found cross-culturally in pre-colonial pagan, Eastern, and Western religious traditions. 

Which brings me to a short second point. Why, then, do we see so many ex-Christians lay the sole blame for these social ills upon Christianity and Bible? The answer, by and large, is Oedipal, the child striking back at the parent. Ex-Christians see themselves as having undergone a journey from an intolerant, conservative, fundamentalist, judgmental Christian upbringing to a tolerant, inclusive, unjudgmental, progressive humanism. So they blame their formerly held views upon Christianity rather than upon world-historical forces. They mistake the personal and biographical for the global and historical, assuming that Christianity, since this was the case in their life, just has to be the source of patriarchy throughout all the world and history. Even though patriarchy pre-dated Christianity by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years.

Which brings me to my third point. 

If we face the deep and wide world-historical scope of things like slavery, patriarchy, and anti-gay prejudice, we can ask the question, "What has been responsible for our conversion here in the West to love, equality, and tolerance?" And the answer, in a case that has been repeatedly made by multiple historians, is clear: Christianity taught the West how to love. 

Read a book like Tom Holland's Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, and you can see the straight line that goes from the New Testament to John Lennon.  How did the West get the idea that "all you need is love"? We got that idea from Christianity, and we've been slowly working out the implications ever since. Modern liberal, woke, progressive, humanism is the child of Christianity. 

And here we find another interesting Oedipal dynamic, how the "woke child of humanism" seeks to kill the "Judeo-Christian father." Specifically, the moral vision bequeathed to us by Christianity (woke progressivism) is used to morally indict the foundation and source (Christianity) of that moral vision. The Oedipal child rises up and slays the parent. 

The point to be observed here should be obvious. The progressive who morally indicts Christianity is doing so with the moral code they inherited from Christianity. As Jesus taught John Lennon and the West, all we need is love. 

Related to the Constantinian heresy is the Christian relationship to killing and war. 

Specifically, if we're looking for the "real" Christianity, to see if the taproot of the faith is good or bad, then we have to examine the earliest centuries of the church, from the New Testament writers up to Constantine. And what did these, the earliest Christians, teach about killing and war?

The church historian Roland Sider has complied the evidence in his book The Early Church on Killing: A Comprehensive Sourcebook On War, Abortion, And Capital Punishment. In summarizing all the historical evidence, Sider concludes that "every extant Christian statement on killing and war up until the time of Constantine says Christians must not kill, even in war." In fact, the common practice for Roman soldiers who converted to Christianity was for them to leave the military.

Now, the point I want to raise here is historical, rather than political or moral. That is, we can debate the issues of self-defense, just war, or Christians serving in the military. But I want us in this post to focus on the question of this series: Are "bad Christianities" heretical aberrations? Or is Christianity itself intrinsically bad? What is the "real" Christianity?

Personally, I think the pacifism of the early church is helpful in answering such questions. Perhaps, as many argue, Christians can be involved in killing, especially after Constantine when Christians began to serve and rule within nation states. To be sure, that's a furiously contentious debate. Regardless, the history is clear that the origins of Christianity were not bound up with killing. The norm within early Christianity was non-violence.

It's undoubtedly the case that Christians have been involved in killing, war, crusades, and inquisitions throughout history. But that violence can't be traced back to ethic of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and the witness of the early church. The blood started flowing with Constantine, not Christ. 

Now, does that mean that Christians can't be involved in things like self-defense or a just war? Again, those are debated questions. My point for this series is that it seems pretty clear to me that Christianity starts going off the rails whenever it is working hard to accommodate killing, and that bad Christianities are produced by just that sort of labor. 

Before I start, take a minute to read through the comments to Part 1. Some very reflective and thoughtful observations. Thank you those who shared. You may or may not know this, but I blog about three months out in front of myself. So any feedback I receive happens three months too late. All that to say, if it looks like I took a tack in this series that you warned against, don't take it personally. These posts were written three months ago. 

Now, back to what I was thinking three months ago...

Back in the early days of blogging George W. Bush was president and we were fighting a war in Iraq. The "golden era of blogging" began in 2003, at the start of the Iraq War, and went through 2009, just after the election of Barack Obama. 

During the years of the Iraq War and during the 2008 election, Christian blogs spent a lot of time writing about Constantinianism in voicing their opposition to the war in Iraq. Christian blogs were very Anabaptist during the golden era of blogging. Not so much anymore.

Why the change? 

My argument, made in 2016, is that the post-evangelical Christians who inveighed again Constantinianism during the Bush years weren't really Anabaptists. They were, rather, Christian realists in the tradition of Reinhold Niebuhr. That is to say, progressive Christians, as witnessed in the 2008 election of Barack Obama, actually wanted and desired to win and weld the power of the nation state. You saw this hypocrisy in how post-evangelical bloggers hammered Bush with Constantine but said nary a word about Obama's drone war. Turns out, it's okay to pull the trigger when it's your guy holding the gun. And we saw again the thirst to win back and weld power among progressive Christians in the election of 2020. 

All that to say, it's hard to decry Constantinianism when you're trying your damnedest to win every election.   

The other reason we don't hear much about the Constantinian heresy today is that the theologian most associated with exposing this wrong turn in Christian history was John Howard Yoder. During the Bush years, Yoder was a ubiquitous name on Christians blogs condemning the Iraq war. But after the exposure of Yoder's sexual abuse of women his name has vanished, and along with that a decline in conversation about the perils of Constantinianism.

So this post is a bit of a throwback, harkening back to the Bush years where talk of Constantinianism was common on Christian blogs. 

If you don't remember those years, the Constantinian heresy refers to when the Roman emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The heresy was in fusing Jesus with empire. 

Again, this was a point that was frequently raised during the Bush years, and while it is less common to find a conversation about Constantinianism on Christian blogs and Twitter today, I think it's still the place to begin when looking for the "real" Christianity. Specifically, what poisoned the well of Christianity, then and now, was the marriage of the gospel with empire, the cross conflated with the nation state, the church sacralizing national ambitions. The great heresy of the faith was when Christians became patriots. 

I know Yoder is a problematic figure, but he was exactly right in pointing out that the great heresy of Christian history, the demonic taproot of "bad Christianity," is the Constantinian heresy, the mixing of "God and country."