You end up in unexpected places as a professor. Recently, a colleague asked me to participate in a discussion panel for students on the topic of Christianity and conspiracy theories.
Even though conspiracy theories aren’t really my “thing,” I figured I would survey some of the literature and offer some general thoughts to our students, most of whom fall under the broad banner of “evangelical.”
Of course, if you were paying attention between 2020 and 2021, you know that there was a flood of media coverage, historical articles, and sociological research trying to explore this exact subject. Without going into the deluge of findings, the consensus was straightforward: evangelicals are more likely to believe conspiracy theories.
Yet, as I perused the research, I was struck by how little attention was given to Pentecostal and Charismatic forms of Christianity. Of course, distinguishing between “evangelical” and “charismatic” is not always easy for researchers, as many evangelical churches have been charismaticized. Yet, what struck me in the research is the way most studies focused on more traditional facets of evangelicalism, things like biblical literalism and political activism. Little to no attention is given to Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity. Most of the little that does exist is on non-Western contexts, which makes sense for reasons I cannot go into right now.
So, foolhardily, let’s jump into the gap. For now, I’d like to suggest that there are at least two historical reasons that Pentecostal/Charismatic Christians are also more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Pentecostals and the Establishment-Outsider Paradox
The first reason leans into a classical historiographic debate about the nature of contemporary religious history in the United States. In Fundamentalism and American Culture, George Marsden argues that fundamentalist evangelicalism emerged in a moment when Reformed evangelicalism was the religious establishment, yet American culture was quickly transforming, and fundamentalists forcefully defined themselves against the denominational bodies that defined this landscape. Evangelical self-image, argues Marsden, was an irreconcilable paradox between the protecting traditional American culture and being rejected by it—evangelicals saw themselves as both the establishment and the outsiders.
Now, what about Pentecostals and Charismatics? Speaking in terms of early North American Pentecostalism, it could be easy to view Pentecostals as consummate outsiders, but I’m not so sure. Take, for instance, the Azusa Street Mission’s 1906 statement of beliefs,
“The Apostolic Faith Movement… Stands for the restoration of the faith once delivered unto the saints—the old time religion, camp meetings, revivals, missions, street and prison work and Christian unity everywhere.”
The “old time religion” is not just a reference to the day of Pentecost, but a claim of inheritance over the evangelical tradition up to that point. Early periodicals fondly mentioned and quoted from revivalists from earlier eras and saw in them the progenitors of their movement. Yes, early groups of Pentecostals were clearly outsiders on the religious landscape, but they saw themselves in continuity with much to the establishment that came before. When classical Pentecostal groups, the Assemblies of God, helped found the National Association of Evangelicals in 1942, it was proof of this long-held belief.
Importantly, the establishment-outsider paradox proposed by Marsden has essentially been affirmed by the recent spate of sociological research. Evangelicals view themselves as protectors of a traditional, Christian America. Yet, they also have high levels of distrust of common figures of authority, especially scientists and the media. High levels of distrust for typical sources of authority are typical indicators of openness to conspiratorial belief. For the same reasons, I suspect this same sort of dynamic is at play in Pentecostal and Charismatic churches, at least in the United States.
Importantly, I do not think historiographic debates about the nature of pre-war evangelicalism really impact this reading on conspiracy theories. Representing a different pole from Marsden, Donald Dayton accused Marsden of a “Presbyterian paradigm” that treated evangelicalism as a rationalistic, intellectual response to debates about modernity. In contrast, Dayton argued for a “Pentecostal paradigm” that places the roots of modern evangelicalism in pietistic and revivalist groups that were responding to the staid formalism of church life. Regardless of the approach, the dynamic of establishment-outsider remains intact.
Pentecostals and the Dispensationalist Trap
Secondly, early North American Pentecostals fully embraced the premillennial dispensationalist framework made popular by thinkers such as John Nelson Darby and, especially, C.I. Scofield’s Reference Bible. In this, they were very much like their conservative evangelical peers, who were also enamored with it. As Brendan Pietsch asserts, this success was largely the result of its consensus positions: “its basic theology reflected the beliefs and impulses of nonspecific American Protestantism, particularly among the laity.” It was also fully enmeshed in the revivalist network produced by Moody (point Dayton!). It is not a strange mistake that Pentecostal periodicals were littered with advertisements, endorsements, and references to Scofield and his text.
How does this contribute to conspiratorial thinking? Scofield’s classical dispensationalist premillennialist framework divides history into seven dispensations or periods in which God interacts with his chosen people in a specific way. For Scofield, the world was living within the sixth dispensation, the age of Grace (or the Age of the Church). This extends from the Day of Pentecost to the return of Christ.
Dispensationalism functions on a literal and specific eschatological reading of biblical texts. For example, Scofield’s commentary on God’s promise to make Abraham into a great nation (Gen. 12:2-3) does not link it to a Christological fulfillment, but toward a historical creation of a national polity: “The fulfillment of these promises awaits the future restoration of Israel, when the nation shall again be converted and restored to the land.” Likewise, 1 Timothy 4:1’s discussion of people abandoning the faith is interpreted as a sign of the “end of the present dispensation.”
This tendency to read biblical prophecies as specific, historical events establishes an intellectual framework for re-interpreting world events that divorce them from their specific contexts. This can produce a way of thinking that can take on a life of its own. In a 2004 article, Markku Ruotsila explored the work of Nesta Webster, a follower of Darby and progenitor of the modern Illuminati conspiracy theory. Ruotsila asserts that
“Doctrinally, the Illuminati theory that she constructed and successfully disseminated was in many ways a perversion of premillennialist Christian eschatology. Yet, on another level, it was deeply indebted both to the latter’s categories and to its historical sequencing.”
In other words, Webster divorced the dispensational historical framework from its biblical worldview and, instead, populated it with xenophobic and far-right politics. While Scofield posited that many people were blind to the workings of God in history, Webster asserted that most were blind to the cabal of Jewish elites working to undermine Christian civilization. The intellectual approach is the same, the conclusions are worlds apart.
This tendency to look out at the world and re-interpret it through dispensational—or simply spiritual—frameworks was a staple of early Pentecostalism. Many Pentecostal periodicals ran regular columns that described global world events as “Signs of the Times,” ensuring readers that current world events were evidence that Jesus was returning soon.
While reminders about the imminence of the Second Coming are not as common, the dispensational framework is alive and well. It can be seen in the continuing fascination and unwavering support for the modern nation of Israel by evangelicals, Pentecostals, and Charismatics. It is enshrined in the doctrinal statements of major Pentecostal denominations.
To Ruotsila’s point, however, that dispensationalist mode of thinking is also present in less-than-official ways among Pentecostals and Charismatics. These ways often depend upon the ability of a charismatic individual’s ability to discern spiritual realities. Every election cycle is punctuated by prophets prognosticating on God’s plan for the upcoming election. Teens are still handed Peretti’s This Present Darkness to educate them on the realities of spiritual warfare. When prayer warriors “bind, muzzle, and gag” the spiritual forces behind an opposing political movement, we are looking at the dispensationalist imagination let loose.
This reliance on a specific charismatic authority to confidently discern hidden truths, what Joseph Williams calls “Prophetic certitude,” is also part of the secret sauce of spreading conspiracy theories.
Conspiracy or Bust?
Of course, what I am not saying is that Pentecostals are, by nature of their theological traditions, destined to be conspiracy theorists. Rather, I believe I am suggesting two things. First, the same sort of intellectual, spiritual, and political dynamics that make evangelicals prone to conspiratorial thinking apply to Pentecostals. Second, the charismatic authority structure of some Pentecostal/Charismatic networks enables the dispensationalist imagination to steer dangerously close to conspiratorial thinking. I think more research is needed on both fronts.
Lest the reader forget, I am a card-carrying member of a denomination which officially endorses premillennialist dispensational eschatology. While we Christians of different ilks can quibble over the hermeneutical legitimacy of dispensationalist eschatology, we are ultimately quibbling about a hermeneutical system wed to the biblical text. Moreover, within the dominant materialist framework of the West, the scandal of Christ’s particularity, and beliefs about the ongoing work of God in history and the need for spiritual discernment can feel awfully conspiratorial.
What I suggest to those interested Christians is that conspiracy theories have seemed to gain traction in Christian circles when political and cultural movements supplant the rightful place of biblical narratives and Christ-like ethics.
At least, that is my inclination at the moment. Regardless, I think I’m ready for that student panel.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In