WHILE QANON, A convoluted conspiracy theory filling the internet with misinformation, is out of the headlines for now, we are still unpacking the damage it did to democratic principles during the 2020 presidential election. Social scientists such as ourselves have been unpacking the connection between religion and support for QAnon.
During the height of the 2020 presidential campaign, QAnon content increased by 71 percent on Twitter and 651 percent on Facebook, according to Marc-André Argentino, an associate fellow at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology. In a report released in May 2021 by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI), 15 percent of Americans agreed with the sweeping QAnon allegation that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.” The majority of Americans (82 percent) disagreed with the statement. Men and lower-income Americans were more supportive. To be clear, the vast majority of Americans (84 percent) have an unfavorable view of QAnon. Nearly three-quarters say that QAnon is bad for the nation.
However, 23 percent of white evangelical Protestants, a core Republican Party constituent group, are QAnon believers, according to PRRI. The dangerous symmetry of political ideals between Republican talking points and QAnon may explain why Republicans are more likely (25 percent) than Democrats (9 percent) to identify as QAnon believers.
In 2020, Mark Fugitt, senior pastor of Round Grove Baptist Church in Miller, Mo., counted the conspiracy theories that people in his church were sharing on Facebook, including that George Floyd’s murder was a fake; that masks can kill you and vaccines are part of a “deep state” conspiracy; that Democratic Party leaders are sexually trafficking and eating children. “You don’t just see it once,” Fugitt told Religion News Service. “If there’s ever anything posted, you’ll see it five to 10 times.”
When dealing with similar activity in his church, Jeb Barr, pastor of First Baptist Church of Elm Mott, Tex., dissuaded his congregants from engaging with conspiracy theories. “Christians are meant to be agents of hope, to be peacemakers; the Bible says we’re not to be quarrelsome,” said Barr in the same interview. “We’re not to be the ones spreading fear and division and anger.” Barr taught critical thinking skills to his congregation and provided credible news sources.
While media reports talk about white evangelical Christians as a recruiting ground for conspiracy theory groups, most Christian clergy do not emphasize such ideas. Moreover, our analyses of Pew Research Center data from 2020 and 2021 provide considerable evidence that most individuals are more likely to challenge the conspiracy theories and QAnon ideas when they attend places of worship where clergy emphasize racial justice, democracy, and scientific reasoning. Of worship attendees who heard sermons supporting Black Lives Matter, 83 percent said QAnon is bad for the nation, according to Pew. Of those who heard preaching that identified Donald Trump’s claims about election fraud as false, 64 percent held a “very unfavorable” view of QAnon.
QAnon continues to pose a threat to democratic processes and to public health. Ongoing economic uncertainty and political polarization in the U.S. makes fertile ground for movements such as QAnon to emerge. That said, clergy and their pulpits have a critical role in encouraging Americans to think critically about conspiracy theories that damage our democracy and cloud our understanding that we are all created in God’s image.
R. Khari Brown is associate professor of sociology at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and co-author of Race and the Power of Sermons on American Politics.
Ronald E. Brown is associate professor of political science at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mich., and co-author of Race and the Power of Sermons on American Politics.
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