QAnon as white supremacy plus evangelicals; how fading religious identities transfer allegiances to politics.
Salon, 10 March, Chauncey DeVega: The Capitol attack: White supremacist terrorism meets evangelical Christianity, subtitled, Religion expert Robert P. Jones on the toxic union of QAnon, white supremacy and the fading evangelical movement.
New religions form all the time, often in rebellion to established social orders.
QAnon is also much more than a mere conspiracy theory. It is a cult that has destroyed families and relationships. It is a con that lures in the weak-minded and the vulnerable. It is a political force with ambiguous but substantial influence within the neofascist Republican Party. It could also be described as a live-action roleplaying game for lonely and socially alienated adults who are desperate for a sense of agency, meaning and community in their lives.
Quoting Adrienne LaFrance at the Atlantic:
The Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another. …
The article goes on with an interview with Robert P. Jones.
In this conversation, Jones explains how Trump’s insurrection and the Capitol attack should also be understood as expressions of white supremacy and Christian nationalist violence. He also details how white evangelicals actually believe that they are being oppressed and have become victims in America — false beliefs which make them very susceptible to conspiracy theories such as QAnon, political extremism and, in the worst-case scenario terrorism and political violence such as we witnessed on Jan. 6. Jones also explores why white evangelicals are so loyal to Donald Trump and his political cult and what that reveals about American politics and society.
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[Jones] The power of Trump’s appeal is a backward nostalgia which involves going to back to a previous time when white Christians had more power in the United States. “Making America Great Again” signals to that desire to “restore” that state of affairs.
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Looking at the Jan, 6 attack, what did you see when you analyzed that crowd of insurrectionists?[Jones] It was remarkable to me. There were Bibles, there were crosses, there were Bible verses on signs. There were flags that said things such as, “Trump is my president, Jesus is my savior.” There were shofars being blown, not by Jews but by Christians, who were convinced they were fulfilling some prophecy by bringing Trump into office.
Perhaps the image that stuck with me the most is that there was a fair amount of attention being paid to the Confederate battle flag being marched through the Capitol building. But what did not get enough attention is that there was also the Christian flag. Many people may not be familiar with it. That flag was being marched right into the House chamber along with the Confederate flag. They were all there. There was also a big white cross being carried up the steps along with all those other banners.
I am not quite sure that the American people as a whole really understand what the coexistence of all those symbols really means. The insurrectionists are telling us who they are. They very deliberately chose those symbols. They wore them on their clothes. These were white supremacists. These were Christians. Those two groups were not fighting each other. They were marching side by side.
With more about anti-Semitism, why white evangelicals feel oppressed, how “both groups believe in invisible people who tell them things and share secrets only with them,” “religious freedom,” and how Christians think they’re in a literal battle between good vs. evil.
Of course, I think all these religions are equally loony. They are manifestations of human psychology, the perception of agency [conspiracy theories] in the natural random world, and the submission of individual intelligences to group think, rather than revealing anything newer or truer about the nature of the world than any past religions.
The Atlantic, 10 March, Shadi Hamid: America Without God, subtitled, As religious faith has declined, ideological intensity has risen. Will the quest for secular redemption through politics doom the American idea?
The United States had long been a holdout among Western democracies, uniquely and perhaps even suspiciously devout. From 1937 to 1998, church membership remained relatively constant, hovering at about 70 percent. Then something happened. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history. Meanwhile, the “nones”—atheists, agnostics, and those claiming no religion—have grown rapidly and today represent a quarter of the population.
The United States had long been a holdout among Western democracies, uniquely and perhaps even suspiciously devout. From 1937 to 1998, church membership remained relatively constant, hovering at about 70 percent. Then something happened. Over the past two decades, that number has dropped to less than 50 percent, the sharpest recorded decline in American history. Meanwhile, the “nones”—atheists, agnostics, and those claiming no religion—have grown rapidly and today represent a quarter of the population.
I’m guessing many believers, who look only at supportive news services, may not be aware of this.
But if secularists hoped that declining religiosity would make for more rational politics, drained of faith’s inflaming passions, they are likely disappointed. As Christianity’s hold, in particular, has weakened, ideological intensity and fragmentation have risen. American faith, it turns out, is as fervent as ever; it’s just that what was once religious belief has now been channeled into political belief. Political debates over what America is supposed to mean have taken on the character of theological disputations. This is what religion without religion looks like.
And this point is significant because of my observations that idealistic thinking among science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke, and TV dramas like Star Trek TOS, that as rationality, via science and technology, would win out, religion would fade… These speculations have not proven true, to a large degree. To a smaller degree, the rise of the nones is indeed progress. The cost, as this article explains, is that humans have a need to cluster into ideological tribes anyway. And so the polarized political landscape of 21st century America.
The political theorist Samuel Goldman calls this “the law of the conservation of religion”: In any given society, there is a relatively constant and finite supply of religious conviction. What varies is how and where it is expressed.
Going on about how both conservatives and liberals believe they are faithful to the American ideal, and the other side is betraying it; discussion of how countries like France and Germany handle ideological divides.
Can religiosity be effectively channeled into political belief without the structures of actual religion to temper and postpone judgment? There is little sign, so far, that it can. If matters of good and evil are not to be resolved by an omniscient God in the future, then Americans will judge and render punishment now. We are a nation of believers.
Well, except for the one or two percent of us — or maybe 20 or 30 percent of us — who realize that religions are to mostly fictional.
