“What Job is a Conspiracy Theory Doing? Why American Christians are Particularly Vulnerable to the Narratives of the Trump Era”

Available October 1.

keepingthefaithbook.com

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About a month ago I got so angry about QAnon, I went on a bit of a tweet rant. A Fuller Alumn friend saw it and invited me to contribute.

In the words of the eds “If you are a Christian searching for a sense of political belonging within the church, this book is for you. If you are a Christian who is looking for brothers and sisters who will stand with you as allies in the fight for justice, this book is for you.”

I started reading the other contributors this morning and I already feel less alone. Thanks to Jesse Wheeler and especially to Suzie Lahoud who has created this space of dissent for us to push back.

“Covid 19 was fake. Oprah Ellen and others been arrested for being perverts so they make us stay home while they are on trial.”

I wasn’t aware of this particular conspiracy theory so I googled around until I learned that it’s a variant on another I had heard of. In this one, Bill Gates caused coronavirus as a cover to spread vaccination based tracking microchips. In this new version, Ellen and Oprah are secretly pedophiles who are under house arrest and they created the pandemic scare to make the rest of us have to stay home so no one will notice that they are on house arrest.

I know. It sounds crazy. How could anyone believe this?

I think that’s the wrong question if you want to understand what conspiracy theories like this mean.

A better question is: what work does this story do for the person who believes it and shares it?

If Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey are in control of the pandemic then that means human beings, powerful, rich and famous though they may be, are in control of what is happening and there’s still hope that humans could reverse it.

Meanwhile our best clinicians and scientists are telling us that there’s a lot we don’t know and advising as we learn more each day. And if you pay attention to what we are learning it can be terrifying. What’s more, the world most of us have inhabited since birth —a world where science has made humanity mostly untouchable by the natural world— seems to have gone away overnight. We are feeling exposed to a new threat that is not well understood and our best hope of developing a cure is months or years away. We are exposed to the chaos of a random mutation in a virus we can’t see, threatening to tear down all we have built for our families and our nations and our species. We are staring into an abyss and feeling how vulnerable we had really been all along.

In the old days we told stories about how we were suffering because of the agendas or displeasure of unseen gods and deities. Those stories did similar work then. They left the door open for us to have some control over forces that threaten to roll over us like tidal waves. Now we blame Bill Gates and Oprah because it is somehow less terrifying than staring directly at our weakness and vulnerability and facing what we must do to care for one another and rebuild our shelter against the chaos.

Despite stories like this, many many Americans are still engaging in social gatherings or refusing to wear masks.

We have recently seen the power of the viral videos in changing public opinion and raising awareness about about the experience of being Black in America. These videos haven’t haven’t solved racism but they have changed the conversation around it.

Lately I’ve been wondering how videos showing the very real suffering and death caused by the coronavirus might change our national conversation and motivate action.

Why video? Don’t we have evidence and data we can share? In the internet era many Americans have lost trust in news organizations to establish shared sets of facts through the bias-mitigating practices of journalism. And though we know video can be edited in ways that change it’s meaning, we still respond to live action footage more immediately and with our full minds and bodies.

Let me be clear: we still need empirical, objective data. We need a nationally led testing regime. We need to be led by epidemiologists and other experts who have studied past instances of these seemingly unprecedented events. We need that data to guide leadership and action.

However, these past six months have shown that data, science and arguments appealing to the intellect can not and will not motivate sufficient public action to stop the spread. We need to tell a story that resonates deep down in the body.

When I worked as a hospital chaplain, I was with people dying regularly; both people at end of life, and sudden, surprising deaths in the emergency room. Seatbelt safety was an abstract value that I was intellectually committed to. And then one night, I sat in a tiny room with a mother while she learned that her baby was dead after a car accident. Her soul-wrenching groans moved my commitment to making sure I got my baby’s car seat installed correctly, out of my head and into my body. Witnessing that motivated me to act.

Social distancing has meant that many of us are more cut off than ever from our broader communities. The pandemic has meant that even family members often don’t see their loved ones struggling for breath in their last moments. This burden falls to healthcare workers who have unequivocally been warning us of the danger of this new disease.

I’m afraid their testimony is not enough.
We need to see it for ourselves.
And hopefully, seeing will be believing.