Opinion: The Evangelicals Who Are Taking on QAnon | The New York Times

Last month, Seth Brown, the executive editor of the Biblical Recorder, a Southern Baptist newspaper in Cary, N.C., delivered a stark warning to Christians. He had become increasingly concerned about the posts some of his fellow Southern Baptists were sharing on Facebook. “If you start clicking through, it doesn’t take long to find out some of this is coming from accounts that are QAnon,” Mr. Brown told me, referring to the viral conspiracy theory that claims a cabal of left-wing, satanic pedophiles is secretly plotting a coup against President Trump.

 

Mr. Brown, an evangelical who has served as a volunteer pastor himself, knows all too well that pastors have little time to tumble into an online labyrinth of convoluted Q theories. So he wrote an explainer on QAnon’s ever-evolving machinations, cautioning readers that as Christians, they must “reject the movement’s fanatical and dangerous messages.”

 

Some of QAnon’s dizzying pileup of false claims — that the Covid-19 pandemic is overstated or even nonexistent, for example — have been embraced by Trump fans, Republican congressional candidates and the president himself. Mr. Brown and others say they are proliferating in white evangelical circles, even as many of the people sharing the content may have never even heard of QAnon.

 

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