No, this moment in history is not normal. We live in a time of crisis that revolves around political and geographic fragmentation, a loss of faith in institutions, an enormous wealth gap between the rich and the poor, and under the constant influence of social media and its monitoring and algorithms. We've seen this before in history. It may have not been the internet in previous occurrences. Instead it was the radio, or the pamphlet. It occurs about every 80 years or so after a period of global hyper-connectivity experiences a backlash. The world counteracts against all of the global and ethnic integration, loses faith in the traditional forces that have kept society together, and moves toward an emotional, chaotic period of dangerous ideologies. People retreat into conspiracy theories; religious cults and bizarre sects flourish as institutional religion declines. What makes this period different is the speed and the scale at which this is happening. Nothing exemplifies this recklessness more than the QAnon movement that is growing globally and now has elected representatives in the U.S. congress. In a time when much of the Christian movement in the world is choosing to focus on political power and ideology, QAnon represents the next dangerous frontier for the church where service, theology, and compassion could be replaced by fear, conspiracy, and division.
Conspiracy theories are nothing new. They are especially prevalent during time of rapid transition and confusion. People who are attracted to conspiracy theories are often those who feel powerless against forces bigger than themselves, are inclined towards a victim mentality, or resent where they are in life. Conspiracy theories offer four big payoffs: 1) They make powerless people feel like they have valuable, insider information. 2) They quickly identify an enemy who can be blamed for all of their ills and concerns. 3) They have the potential to create communities of people that bond over being against the world together. 4) Finally, a conspiracy theory is a very convenient belief because it can never be proven wrong. After all, if you don't agree, it's just because you have been manipulated by the dark forces. Enter QAnon.
In many ways, groups formed around conspiracy theories can serve as a pseudo-church or cult - one that puts the person in a self-centered frame of mind and is constantly seeking to identify enemies and live in perpetual fear. That's what unhealthy religion does as well and we've seen plenty of that lately. In many places, global Christians are more interested in accruing political power and winning the argument than changing their community and serving those least like them. The message of Jesus and the New Testament is replaced by the dysfunctional Israelite mentality that wanted a king with political power (that didn't go so well). If theocratic politics is akin to dysfunctional Israel reborn, QAnon is like the gnostic movement, which deviated from Jesus' teachings in favor of a detachment and disdain for the world.
QAnon followers are your neighbors, they are in churches, they might be your dad or your grandma. They believe that QAnon is a person deep inside the U.S. Government in the Department of Energy (or some other department) who is exposing lots of secretive information about how their political enemies are conspiring against them and society. It often involves conspiracy theories revolving around child molestation, but can include warnings about vaccines, can be hostile to both education and science, or can go on about Satanism or how technology is being used to control people etc. QAnon conspiracies often go after liberal Hollywood celebrities like Tom Hanks (who is a Greek Orthodox Christian and not really that political). Then there are conspiracies about the illumnati, UFOs, Bill Gates and the idea that some politicians actually have lizard skin underneath their human skin (no joke). It's often the case that a QAnon follower is someone who is pretty naive about the internet. They access it in lesser known parts of the internet like 4chan, 8chan and Reddit and take it all at face value. It all sounds pretty goofy, but 22 Republicans in congress and 2 independents have supported QAnon beliefs. QAnon is alive and well in Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.
But who is Q? The primary sources are James and Ronald Watkins, a father and son team who gained control of the message board 8chan, which is filled with lots of questionable material including child pornography. They were based in the Philippines and started posting on October 28, 2017. Q believers don't seem to realize that the Philippines is a hub of dark web entrepreneurs who spread pornography, scams, and conspiracies from the safety of some nice home in Manila. The most wanted criminal in the world was a thirty-something, obese American who brilliantly realized how to sell illegal pharmaceutical drugs over the internet to Americans with remote doctors signing off on the prescriptions. He made billions of dollars off of the opiate addiction of Americans. The Philippines was a good base of operation because it's so easy to pay-off the authorities in that country. Cyber-libel cases are also extremely rare in the Philippines (The F.B.I. eventually arrested the cyber-drug dealer). Of course, the Q leaders have managed to monetize their conspiracy theory with books, t-shirts, and other memorabilia. Unfortunately, the F.B.I. has not always been able to stop actual acts of violence in the name of QAnon and those are expected to grow exponentially in the near future. Watkins had previously made money by starting porn sites designed to get around Japanese censorship rules. Fortunately, it looks like the Philippines finally had enough of this embarrassment and chased Watkins back to the United States.
[Side note: For those of us interested in actually fighting sex trafficking, QAnon is not helpful. Their stupid conspiracy theories interfere with the actual work of rescuing people from human slavery. It's deeply counter-productive and minimizes the issue so that false and ludicrous charges are constantly on the web and in the media; while the real criminals get ignored.]
So how did your sweet, church-going Grandma become a die-hard QAnon follower? Well, it can be addictive. Q releases regular "Q-drops" of enticing information and follows it up with melodramatic writing along the lines of "I could get killed by sharing this information. I must go now." It's like being on a giant investigative team solving the world's most dramatic and consequential mystery: What evil forces are taking over the world? It can appeal to lonely people, people who are not good critical-thinkers, people who naively believe anything on the internet, and people who are angry. The primary in-road, however, is sharing Q's political beliefs. It then can become a vortex that sucks people in and no amount of intercession by friends and family members can break the spell. But how, specifically, does your evangelical grandma get caught up in a movement that originated with a pornographer based in the Philippines?
In some circles of Christianity (and Islam, and Hinduism, and Buddhism), there is a fascination with end-time prophecy. Looking for symbols and hidden messages in the Book of Revelation to identify current events has been going on since...well, since before that book was even written. QAnon taps into that same desire to uncover mysteries and find clues that lead to dramatic findings about what is going on in our turbulent world of 2020. A scientific reason for the pandemic is too boring, so a conspiracy comes to the rescue. Then there's the political angle. Since much of Christianity has chosen to become very aligned with particular politicians and political parties; any conspiracy theory that adds fuel for hatred of the opposing party is welcomed with open arms. Certain segments of Christianity (certainly not all) have a real hostility toward science, education, and intellectualism. Something like QAnon provides reasons why none of those things can be trusted. Then there's the fact that we are living through a time of increased natural disasters, political division, a global pandemic, and other apocalyptic-like events that make people feel like they are the generation witnessing the biggest catastrophe in human history. It is not true, of course, but QAnon is not for students of history. Good old Q has even dropped scripture in his hate-filled messages from time to time. That really confirms the truth of Q for Grandma because the reality is that QAnon is becoming an extra-Biblical source that guides her life. A key to Q's manipulation is making it seem that no other source of information can truly be trusted. Q makes predictions that never come to pass, but that doesn't matter to QAnon followers. That just means he is throwing people off track on purpose. QAnon becomes an emotional and spiritual belief for Grandma. It's not about reason and healthy skepticism in a world where, say...anyone, myself included, can post their opinions on something and have it instantaneously beamed around the world. QAnon people will often claim that they do research, but that research is usually limited to any website or source that aligns with Q's presuppositions.
QAnon evangelists are now all over Youtube and have their own websites and social media. It has far outgrown Q. Many of these Q evangelists come from the evangelical Christian world. They are your grandma, but with more social media savvy and who know how to monetize it. The next generation of scamming televangelists may primarily be online and linked to Q-like conspiracy movements. As QAnon grows, it will morph into whatever people want to believe, whenever they want to believe it, and the Bible will be used to justify all of it. This is the birth of a new age of heresy and cults--the kind that always flourish in times like these. There's nothing to stop a new QAnon from emerging and being part of a more outwardly fascist movement, or leftist movement, or any other ideology. Wherever people feel like powerless victims amidst all this global change and want to uncover the identity of the cabal oppressing them, there we will see a QAnon-like cult emerge.
So what can society do about this? The country of Finland is teaching kids how to identify fake-news and navigate the internet beginning in elementary school. These are the kinds of skills and skepticism that need to be developed in every country. Conspiracy theories are raging around the world and leading to deaths in places as closed as Myanmar and as open as the U.S. In the same way that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded movie theatre because of the potentially dangerous consequences, some forms of monitoring and censorship have to become more prevalent. Do we really want videos on how to traffic women or groom children to be on Youtube and Facebook? There are limits to how much poison our societies can withstand in this cyber-world.
For Christians, the chances of more people in their churches getting caught up in this kind of thinking is very real. Complicating things is that many of these Q believers will be citing scripture or will claim that they and Q are totally in line with the Bible. This is where the subjective nature of Bible reading combined with a church that has become hyper-politicized will come back to bite in a big way. Institutional Christianity has a habit of creating the monsters that then erode it. In previous eras, the church survives because of people who choose to seek service instead of power. People who find opportunity in global crisis instead of oppression. People who express and live out hope instead of fear. And people that transform their societies for the better, rather than condemn them. To paraphrase Martin Luther King, the church needs to spend less time being the thermometer and more time trying to be the thermostat. Grandma would do far better spending her time delivering freshly-made cookies to the newly homeless in the post-Covid economy than spending four hours on the internet trying to find out which Hollywood actor is a cannibal. And she will feel better for it. This shouldn't be rocket-science for true Christians. In fact, just about everything Jesus says in the Bible will lead someone away from the mentality that it takes to be a Q believer. One mentality is completely centered on self-sacrifice (hence the symbol of the cross), and the other is completely centered on self-protection. You can't serve two masters.
Until the world knows how to navigate social media better, and the countries of the world regain their social and economic equilibrium, our societies and the church will be forced into a box. We will constantly be presented with a choice: Do I want to spend my time living in fear or do I want to spend my time making a difference in my community? The level of destruction and the duration of this era of crisis will depend on how the majority of us answer that question. That's the real Q.