Conspiracy Theories and the Christian Faith

As the presidential election is over and President-Elect Donald Trump is putting together his leadership team, it has become apparent that the time of conspiracy theories is not over. After all President-Elect Trump recently selected as his chief strategist and senior counselor Stephen K. Bannon.

Bannon is the former head of the Breitbart News website, which often features viewpoints of white supremacy and racism. By having Bannon as part of the White House team, it continues the President-elect’s viewpoints of things being “rigged” and “someone working to undermine the United States of America. That someone working to undermine the U.S.A. is often identified as newer outside elements in this country of immigrants.

Now there have been many times in American history where the outsider was targeted and people understood that we needed to control those elements. One that comes to mind that is religious was in the 1820’s and 1830’s in America when churches such as the Roman Catholic Church charged the Freemasons with conspiring to take over the country. In fact, many leaders in government were members of the secret order, which led to an anti-Masonic movement which even ran a presidential candidate against incumbent Andrew Jackson in 1832.

It is the very nature of Freemasonry, which required a secret oath for membership, which led to this suspicion of wrongdoing. When we cut to 2016, why is there such an emphasis on behind the scenes politics and wrongdoing? It is hard to say completely, but by and large, it is the support of the Democratic party by minority groups which led to the coming together in communication of President-Elect Trump and Stephen Bannon of Breitbart News. In this all is the question of whether Donald Trump is a pragmatist using Stephen Bannon or buys into the deeper and darker conspiracy theories espoused by Bannon while at Breitbart News?

Now one could posit that the marketing of conspiracy theories could be merely for financial gain. But what if in 2017 either through his advisors or directly a United States President supports a conspiracy theory in American politics? This surely would be more serious than a former first-lady, Nancy Reagan, reading and acting on her daily horoscope?

The more important question for me is how conspiracy theories relate to the Christian faith and life? First, Christian faith is based on revelation of God through Jesus Christ. But in adopting such primary teachings as the incarnation, divinity, and resurrection of Jesus Christ the church supported these teachings with reason. The apologists for the Christian faith were able not just to say “you must take a leap of faith” to believe in Jesus as the Messiah. Rather, they were able to say faith and reason support Jesus as the Son of God, who was crucified, died, and was buried, but now is raised from the dead.

Second, in the book of Acts we have the record of Peter and Paul which put no limit on who would be a Christian. If Acts tells us anything, it is this expression of Peter: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” A Christian point of view would be open to all people as Christians and as fellow citizens in our country.

Third, a conspiracy view of history is untenable in terms of how we relate our faith to the Christian life. As Christians we are encouraged to trust not only in God, but in ordinary circumstances to trust in other human beings. To have a basic distrust in anyone because of the color of their skin or because they do not believe exactly what we do in terms of what is best for the country, is not only against our basic freedom of speech and religion in our constitution and bill of rights, but is directly opposed to the classic, orthodox Christian faith.