Jack Jenkins, national reporter for Religion News Service, responded, “The overlap between QAnon and religion ([particularly] Christianity, and especially iterations of Christian nationalism) has been tracked for some time, but events like this suggest that, for many, the Venn diagram is increasingly just a circle.”
QAnon’s Prevalence Among Evangelicals
QAnon conspiracy theories have been increasingly commonplace among evangelicals since the movement began, with many evangelicals believing that the results of President Trump’s 2020 failed reelection bid were falsified.
According to a survey conducted earlier this year, “more than a quarter of white evangelical Protestants believe a QAnon conspiracy theory that purports former President Donald Trump is secretly battling a cabal of pedophile Democrats, and roughly half express support for the debunked claim that antifa was responsible for the recent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.”
Another survey reported that “about half of all Protestant pastors in the United States say they’re hearing conspiracy theories in their churches.”
Jim Caviezel, who famously portrayed Jesus in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, recently spoke at a QAnon-adjacent conference in Las Vegas.
RELATED: QAnon Believers Finding It Harder to ‘Trust The Plan’ After Inauguration Day
Over the summer, Michael Flynn was featured in a service at Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba City, CA, where he was presented with a rifle that he thought could serve useful in an altercation with “somebody in Washington D.C.” Flynn is a QAnon adherent and President Trump’s former National Security Advisor who pled guilty to felony perjury but was later pardoned by Trump.
This trend is deeply troubling for many evangelical leaders. Russell Moore, director of the Public Theology Project at Christianity Today, has said that QAnon is “taking on all of the characteristics of a cult, from authoritarian gurus…to predictions that don’t come true.”
The events of this week contribute to the concern that this “cult” is thriving within the walls of many evangelical churches.
RELATED: ‘The Bible Belt Is Unbuckling’: Evangelical Pastor Weighs in on Christian Nationalism
