Christians, politics, and the temptation of conspiracy theories
Why Christians must reject conspiracy theories, in politics and elsewhere
One of the more noteworthy data points from the 2016 presidential election is 81 percent — that’s the approximate percentage of white evangelical Christians who voted for Donald Trump. This figure is higher (though not by much) than this group’s support for past Republican nominees for president, and it is only slightly greater than the estimate of white evangelicals who voted for Trump’s reelection (approximately 76 percent).
While Trump’s victory in 2016 was surprising, his defeat in 2020 was also surprising to certain people. Leading up to the election polling showed almost 90 percent of Trump voters believed he would win reelection (Joe Biden’s voters had similarly high expectations). So when the president became the first incumbent to lose reelection since 1992, it’s understandable that many sought some sort of explanation as to why.
And for more than a few, the most satisfying explanation was a vast conspiracy.
This conspiracy took different forms in the days (and weeks) following the election. One version is that reporting in vote counts from certain states was indicative of a concerted effort of election officials to add fictitious votes to the tallies to swing the totals toward Biden. Another explanation is that policies governing poll watchers unfairly targeted Republicans, making it easier for Democrats to engage in nefarious behavior. Yet another explanation is that voting software was manipulated by foreign governments to change the vote totals altogether. Under this scenario, President Trump actually won the election in a landslide, but an algorithm planted by hostile operatives added votes to Biden’s total and took them away from Trump’s.
Conspiracy theories as explanations for electoral defeats are nothing new. Fifty percent of Hillary Clinton’s voters believed Russia manipulated vote totals to ensure a Trump victory in 2016 (though Russia did interfere in our election via social media and email hacking, there is no evidence of vote manipulation or related efforts to change votes). And some Democrats cited an insidious plot involving voter software to deliver Ohio to George W. Bush in 2004.
These kinds of conspiracy theories are generally relegated to the fringes of the Internet. But this is not the case in 2020: President Trump has advertised different versions conspiracy theories via his Twitter account, and his attorneys have followed his lead in press conferences (though, notably, not necessarily in court appearances).
Among Trump’s base of white evangelical Christians, perhaps nobody has been more outspoken in advertising these theories than Eric Metaxas. The talk radio host and author of many books—including a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and several Trump-themed children’s books—has gone all-in in believing that Joe Biden’s victory was fraudulent, and that forthcoming developments will highlight corruption in a way unseen in American history. Consider the following tweet:
Or this one:
Or this one:
Or this one:
What is the appeal of this kind of conspiracy thinking in the context of elections? For one thing, it helps rationalize defeats. After all, it’s much more comforting to accept that forces beyond our control have predetermined the outcome of an election than realizing our favored candidate was simply not performing well. This is accentuated when people’s identities are wrapped up in their political ideologies, which is becoming more and more common.
Conspiracy thinking is also self-fulfilling. Evidence that will shed light on the conspirators and justify our beliefs is always “just around the corner.” And if it doesn’t come, who is to blame for that? The conspirators, of course, and their allies in government, media, and culture. This takes us back to the point above: If these things are beyond our control, that’s easier (although no less painful) to accept than if our candidate lost fair and square. In this way of thinking, the absence of evidence does not mean the evidence is absent, only that it is being suppressed by a cabal of conspirators.
Another allure of conspiracy theories is their supposed simplicity. Instead of digging into the myriad reasons why a favored candidate lost an election, it is much more simple to rely on a conspiracy that explains away the outcome. If, after all, nobody you know voted for the winning candidate, or you saw far more signs from the losing candidate in your area, or you noticed a lot more people at the losing candidate’s events, how could the election have turned out the way it did? The answer, of course, is a vast conspiracy.
Smarter and more attuned people than me have already debunked many of the theories at the heart of the 2020 election conspiracy — this article by David French is especially succinct and satisfying. In seeking to explain phenomena, I tend to seek out the most parsimonious explanation, one that explains the outcome in the simplest way possible. In that spirit, what is more likely? That Donald Trump, an extremely polarizing incumbent who never had positive approval ratings across different polls in four years as president, and who had overseen the worst public health crisis in a century leading to millions of lost jobs, lost the election to Joe Biden, a relatively noncontroversial former Vice President known for his moderate, empathetic, and bland personality? Or that Trump is a victim of a massive conspiracy involving thousands of actors across several states (and possibly multiple countries) to defraud him and Republicans of an election he rightly won in a landslide, despite years of polling and months of political headwinds showing him heading for a defeat in 2020, and despite Democrats losing seats in the House and failing to take back the Senate, two things these actors most certainly would not have wanted?
I mean, it’s pretty clear to me which explanation is more likely.
Scripture is clear that Christians are to be wise and discerning. We are called to avoid “irreverent, silly myths” in our pursuit of truth and godliness. This is particularly relevant in an age where social media makes it easier than ever before for conspiracy theories to spread rapidly and beyond the reach of informed explanations and counterpoints. Given our belief in an objective standard of truth, Christians should be among the first people to critically examine conspiracy theories rather than adopt them simply because they confirm our biases. And while there are some conspiracies that are more amusing than alarming—aliens at Roswell, anybody?—others can be downright dangerous.
Most importantly, though, distancing ourselves from conspiracy theories is an important part of our public witness. If Christians are known for grasping onto crazy conspiracy theories without any foundation in reality, how can we possibly expect the world to believe in some of the things we actually know to be true? That a Jewish preacher in the first century was actually God, and literally walked across the sea and healed people from disease by his touch, and rose from the dead after being executed by Roman authorities, and that through his death and resurrection we are now saved from our sins?
If we don’t have credibility elsewhere, how in the world are going to convince people of that?
This is not a call for Christians to bury our heads in the sand when confronted with disturbing allegations of cheating or a vast conspiracy aimed at defrauding the American public of a free and fair election. We should be critical and careful not to take information we’re given at face value. But Christians should not be so quick to buy into conspiracy theories solely because they soothe our troubled souls. After all, there’s only one who can truly do that. Christians should be confident enough in God’s truth and sovereignty to abandon any irreverent and silly conspiracy theory. Our witness to a skeptical world depends on it.