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Decades ago, charismatic churches were implicated in the promotion of a prototypical form of QAnon, what is referred to as the "satanic panic".
The "satanic panic" claimed hundreds of thousands, or millions even, of kidnapped kids were being sacrificed to Satan.
QAnon ain't new
The "satanic panic" claimed hundreds of thousands, or millions even, of kidnapped kids were being sacrificed to Satan.
QAnon ain't new
2) Influential charismatic pastors such as Texas megachurch founder John Hagee, were pushing "satanic panic" ideas into the early 1990s or even later. The idea that there was a huge underground movement of satanism in the US was a way to try to explain rising crime as well as...
3)..increases in the divorce rate and the rise of the LGBTQ movement, and growing secularism generally. These ideas were based on another paradigm expounded in a 1973 John Hagee book, "Invasion of Demons: The Battle Between God and Satan in Our Time"
4) In Hagee's telling, America had rebelled against god, and thus god had grown disgusted and lifted his protective force field that kept swarms of demons from the Earth. So the demons swarmed in and infested people, who then misbehaved.
5) It's an old tale too, in fundamentalism & neo-fundamentalism. In earlier iterations it was demonic cultural forms such as blues and jazz, and later rock music - brought to American shores by the Beatles - that corrupted & demonized people. As did dancing and unchaste clothes.
6) As an aside, Hitler & his Nazis also hated Jazz & Blues, as well as modernist forms of art such as Abstract Expressionism, Cubism, and so on - all of which they regarded as corrupting forces that undermined morality & the traditional social order.
7) Back in '06, the highly respected evangelical scholar David P. Gushee gave a lecture on Dietrich Bonhoeffer that was co-sponsored by the Center for Christian-Jewish Learning at Boston College, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Hebrew College...
8) & Andover-Newton Theological School, in which Gushee compared the "narrative of cultural complaint" that motivated the Nazis (and the Holocaust) & a similar narrative on the American evangelical right. (See this piece i did back in 2011: http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/5/6/81959/04266
9) Gushee said, of the American narrative, "Conservative American evangelicals in recent decades have been deeply attracted to a parallel narrative of cultural despair. Normally the story begins with the rise of secularism in the 1960s, the abandonment of prayer in schools, and..
10)"...and the Roe decision, all leading to an apocalyptic decline of American culture that must be arrested soon, before it is too late and "God withdraws his blessing" from America. While very few conservative evangelicals come into the vicinity of Hitler in hatefulness..."
11)"...elements similar to that kind of conservative-reactionary-nationalist narrative can be found in some Christian right-rhetoric: anger at those who are causing American moral decline, fear about the future, hatred of the "secularists" now preeminent in American life..."
12)"...and the search for scapegoats. The solution on offer--a return to a strong Christian America through determined political action--also has its parallels with the era under consideration." It was a very bold statement for the time. Now, Gushee's voice would be 1 among many.
13) A number of scholars do great work on narratives (such the QAnon pedo narrative) directing targeted violence towards demonized & scapegoated elements in society. A great read is Chip Berlet's "Heroes Know Which Villains to Kill: How Coded Rhetoric Incites Scripted Violence"
14)...which you can read here: http://www.researchforprogress.us/topic/206/scripted-violence/. Another great source is journalist David Neiwert, who has put together this very long, incredibly good Twitter threat on "eliminationism" https://twitter.com/DavidNeiwert/status/1057678153252929536
15) Looping back to the Gushee quote - back in 2006 it would have been considered a bit beyond the pale to accuse American conservative evangelicals of being fascists. Now, some well regarded scholars are saying that out loud. For example...
16) Last February the sociologists Samuel L. Perry and Andrew L. Whitehead wrote the article, based on their scholarly research, titled "Christian Nationalism Talks Religion, But Walks Fascism" ( https://religioninpublic.blog/2020/02/05/christian-nationalism-talks-religion-but-walks-fascism/)
17) Now, QAnon isn't the same as Christian nationalism, but the ranks of Q believers are heavily populated by folks who believe - and grew up amid - the Christian nationalist narrative, which is about returning America to a mythic, imagined time of national greatness. When? Well
18)..opinions differ on when *that* might have been. "Christian nationalism—an ideology that idealizes and advocates a fusion of Christianity* with American civic belonging and participation—is a form of nascent or proto-fascism", they write...
19) They go on, "Don’t miss the asterisk... "Christian" in this sense represents more of an ethno-cultural and political identity that denotes a specific constellation of religious affiliation (evangelical Protestant), cultural values (conservative), race (white)..."
20) "...and nationality (American-born citizen)." And these two are not alone. Though he grew up in the Christian nationalist narrative, Robert P. Jones escaped its clutches & has a new book out exploring the legacy of white supremacy in American Protestant Christianity...
21) Jones grew up a Southern Baptist and recalls, "I cannot remember a single sermon calling attention to racial inequality, racial injustice [or] the struggle for civil rights".
Here he is being interviewed at length by the inimitable Terry Gross https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/896712611/american-christianity-must-reckon-with-legacy-of-white-supremacy-author-says
Here he is being interviewed at length by the inimitable Terry Gross https://www.npr.org/2020/07/30/896712611/american-christianity-must-reckon-with-legacy-of-white-supremacy-author-says
22) Starting in the late 1980s there were some efforts, mainly on the part of conservative charismatic evangelicals, to bridge the racial divide in American Protestant Christianity, but the coming of Trump has blown up and swept away most of that. Hence, the white Protestants...
23) (most of them, anyway) firmly back Trump and the black Protestants, but for a handful, do not. And it's EZ to see why.
Now, Protestant Christianity has employed conspiracy narrative for political purposes not for decades but for *centuries*. Writes John Fea for The Atlantic
Now, Protestant Christianity has employed conspiracy narrative for political purposes not for decades but for *centuries*. Writes John Fea for The Atlantic
24) "Jedidiah Morse, a Massachusetts minister and the author of geography textbooks, worried that the Bavarian Illuminati, a German anti-Christian secret society, had infiltrated America to "abjure Christianity, justify suicide, advocate sensual pleasures...""
25)"" agreeable to Epicurean philosophy, decry marriage, and advocate a promiscuous intercourse among the sexes." (see: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/06/a-history-of-evangelical-fear/563558/) In the election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson was smeared as an Illuminati agent. And of course, when Catholics started arriving in America
26)...a whole subset of conspiracy theory was concocted, paint them as part of a papish plot (and the Pope was, of course, in league with the Antichrist or the Devil) to conquer the nation with a demographic wave of Catholics. Whole books were written about the Pope/Antichrist...
27)..thing. After the Civil War (writes Fea), "evangelicals waged intellectual and religious battles against Darwinism and the higher criticism of the Bible. Some of the worst aspects of American evangelicalism converged in the Fundamentalist movement of the early 20th century.."
28)"...It was stridently anti-Catholic, and on occasion worked closely with the Ku Klux Klan to guard the white Protestant character of the country." And it was not just anti-Catholic. Some fundamentalists (in the purist Protestant movement arrayed against modernity) spread...
29)...the infamous anti-Jewish hoax document "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Around the same time, a copy of "The Protocols" was given, by a mysterious stranger (probably an agent of the Tsar) to the young Alfred Rosenberg, who was studying architecture in St. Petersburg.
30) Rosenberg would, of course, join forces with Adolf Hitler & emerge as the chief ideologist of the Nazi Party.
Now, many people know The Protocols as a vicious anti-Jewish document. And it is. But Hitler & Rosenberg saw it *very differently*. You see, the document purports...
Now, many people know The Protocols as a vicious anti-Jewish document. And it is. But Hitler & Rosenberg saw it *very differently*. You see, the document purports...
31)...to outline the methods by which a tiny minority of Jews would achieve domination of the entire globe. So, the Nazis *copied and put into practice* the Machiavellian methods outlined in the document. And the rest is history.
They also publicly demonized Jews, by accusing...
They also publicly demonized Jews, by accusing...
