QAnon and Evangelicals: What’s the Appeal?
QAnon — the rapidly-spreading online conspiracy theory — is now making increasing inroads into American evangelicalism. If you are unfamiliar with what QAnon actually is, then before you go any further, read my article about it here.
As just one example of the encroachment of QAnon into evangelicalism, there is now an “online church” called Omega Kingdom Ministries (OKM) out of Wolf Lake, Indiana. They hold regular Sunday Zoom calls billed as “ekklesia training.” (By the way, ekklesia is the Greek word for “church,” as most evangelicals understand it anyway).
According to their linked site homecongregations.org, OKM’s goal is to have all Christians unite in prayer — thus combining spiritual warfare together with conspiracy theories.
As I mentioned in my previous article about QAnon, in particular this movement has exploded since the Covid-19 lockdowns earlier in 2020; tied in with the “deep state” conspiracy theories are also a wide variety of beliefs that the virus is some sort of “plandemic.” This is also closely allied to anti-science, anti-masking and anti-vaccination conspiracies. For evangelicals distrustful of “secular scientists,” who believe and promote both evolution and a belief in a multi-billion-year-old universe, this stance is actually quite consistent with their theological worldview.
