Q-Anon, Gnosticism, and NPR.

So I am listening to one of my favorite NPR shows, called “On The Media.”  The host is interviewing Jeff Sharlet.

Anyway, he is about to explain his theory about how the virulent Q-Anon conspiracy pathology is an echo of an early Christian heresy.  Now, I love NPR, but they are not known for dispensing accurate information about Christian history.  I mean NPR will gladly fawn over anyone selling a book seeking to discredit the early Church.   

Then Sharlet reveals the ancient Christian heresy he says Q-Anon is echoing, and it’s (wait for it)… Gnosticism!  (Here’s a link to the extended version: https://www.wbez.org/stories/extended-version-the-ancient-heresy-that-helps-us-understand-qanon/83696be6-6cb3-44d2-888c-ce1102988205.)

Gnosticism.  The 2nd century pseudo-faith that many modernist critics proclaim to be the original, nicer, real, but tragically lost and “suppressed” version of Christianity.  And here is Sharlet on NPR, of all places, explaining in some detail Gnosticism’s toxic, ego-centric, bizarre delusions and their parallels with the idiotic Q-Anon nonsense… which is apparently supported by many fundamentalist Christians.  Basically, Sharlet calls out such people as heretics by associating them with the Ur-heretics of the whole Christian tradition!  Thus he disses Q-Anon, fundamentalists, Gnostics, and Trump in one OTM episode! by pointing out their contradiction of orthodox Christianity.

From my perspective I was gratified to find someone, anyone, on the more-or-less mainstream media speaking truth about the execrable Gnostics, a bunch of 2nd century holy rollers whose incoherent doctrines had in common a hatred of the creation and the Creator, yet who managed to become the darlings of some recent writers seeking a version of “Christianity” more suited to escapism, consumerism, and ego gratification. 

The shadow of Gnosticism has always pestered real Christianity, and it has been a particular temptation for us Protestants, whose commitment to “faith alone” makes us vulnerable to imagining that something is true because we "feel it."  It is well-suited to an age when people want self-centered “spirituality” that will allow them to continue to profit with impunity from the crimes of Empire.  Positing, like Q-Anon, a ridiculous and secret cabal of evil ruling the world, the Gnostics claimed to be the only ones who knew the truth, based on private “research” into the maze of their own fears and desires.

If there is anything positive about Q-Anon perhaps it is that it is waking up Christians to the rancid foolishness of the Gnostics, and how it gets exhumed in every generation. 

I am also confident that Q-Anon, like Gnosticism, will spin out of its own accord, not by some imagined persecution by the big, bad Church, but simply because it is based on lies and therefore does not withstand any encounter with reality.  I also realize that they may do a lot of damage on their way down.

Real Christian faith is not that obscure and complicated: Just follow the Jesus Christ of Scripture, in the Church.  Everything that does not do that is a distraction.    

Here’s two more articles on this. 

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/markshea/2020/04/gnostics-qanon-covid-liberty-protests-and-the-myth-of-the-untutored-genius.html

https://religionnews.com/2020/08/17/qanon-the-alternative-religion-thats-coming-to-your-church/

Paul+