Fake News Theology: American Christianity's Unsettling Relationship with the Truth
Apple ignited a firestorm of right-wing criticism with its recent decision to block conspiracy theorist Alex Jones from iTunes and other services. YouTube, Facebook, and Spotify soon followed. In less than 24 hours, the patently false and explicitly paranoid ramblings of Info Wars were swept off of the web's major media platforms. Though there were varied reasons for the take down of the talk show host who perpetuated the nefarious lie that the Sandy Hook shooting is a hoax, Apple insisted that Info Wars had violated their anti-hate speech policies.
While the removal of Alex Jones' lie-mongering is sure to perpetuate an ongoing (and timely) debate on free speech and the role of media censorship in America, it is unlikely that traffic to the Info Wars website will experience a precipitous drop. With 10 million visitors each month, Info Wars will undoubtedly continue to attract its base - an audience that is considerably larger than that of reputable and fact-based mainstream publications like The Economist and Newsweek.
Though Info Wars does not provide a religious demographic profile of its readership, it is likely that many of its readers can be found in church pews on Sunday mornings. Many of Jones' ramblings posit the existence of an ongoing assault on America's Christian heritage - surely welcome news to Christian conservatives who see their cultural influence waning. Yet Christian affinities for Info Wars are not just consistent with the Christian right. They are in many ways consistent with all of American Christianity.
In today's America, perhaps no group has such an ambivalent and contradictory relationship with that which is fact-based as American Christians, two-thirds of whom voted for the spokesman of the Obama birth certificate hoax. American Christians have a remarkable capacity for rejecting the verifiable and scientific while boasting a monopoly over objectivity. Only 28% of American Evangelicals believe that "human activity is causing climate change. Only 49% of Mainline Protestants consider evolution to be a plausible explanation of human origins. And just as Christians reject that which is verifiable, they espouse that the rest of America is rapidly lapsing into moral relativism, becoming untethered from the truth. Anecdotally, there are nearly as many Google searches for "relativism" as there are for "journalism" - the former grows in search volume each year, the latter declines.
American Christianity's troubling relationship with the truth is well-documented - perhaps a factor in the irreversible Millennial exodus from the institutional church. It would appear that the more Christianity resists that which is fact-based, the more they slip into cultural obscurity - at least among the younger generations.
As someone who would rather not see the Christian tradition relegated to fringe Twitter rantings in response to selectively permeable cultural ear plugs, I might suggest that the authentic Christian church is inextricably anchored to that which is true.
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels attest to the perils of bearing false witness (see Exodus 20), while Jesus refers to himself as the way and the "truth" and the life" (see John 14:6). After the death of Jesus, his followers launch themselves into a massive letter-writing campaign (now preserved in the second half of the New Testament, the "epistles"). Crack open any one of these books and you will first see that many are written to provide encouragement to Christian communities. What is at the top of the suggestion lis for Christian communities? It isn't too ignore any claim that isn't backed by the literal words of the Bible - but the simple command to seek and to speak the truth!
Authentic, relational Christian community is predicated upon truth. To the writers of the scriptures, the most sincere expressions of faith depend not on blind adherence or naive acceptance. Authentic Jesus-following did not and does not necessitate a separate understanding of truth from the scientific or journalistic mainstream. On the contrary - the Christian tradition, its scriptures and its theology, show us that communities of faith are strengthened, shaped, and edified by the constant discernment and exploration of the truth.
The hurricane of hatred and vitriol that is Alex Jones will continue to rage, and probably amplify, in response to the latest controversy. Americans, especially Christian Americans, should all take a moment to reflect on their relationship to the truth. Fake news exists on both ends of the political spectrum. So perhaps the task of the church in Trump's America is to guide us back towards the now counter-cultural pursuit of truth. As mundane as that task might seem, to pursue the truth in these polarized times is to preserve the fabric of our national character. To pursue the truth in the era of fake news is to engage in the most important act of community building. To that task we in the church are surely called.
@RyanPanzer, a Lutheran blogger, is a subscriber to the Wisconsin State Journal (yes, a daily print subscriber!), a reader of the failing New York Times, and a frequent visitor to Politifact.com.
While the removal of Alex Jones' lie-mongering is sure to perpetuate an ongoing (and timely) debate on free speech and the role of media censorship in America, it is unlikely that traffic to the Info Wars website will experience a precipitous drop. With 10 million visitors each month, Info Wars will undoubtedly continue to attract its base - an audience that is considerably larger than that of reputable and fact-based mainstream publications like The Economist and Newsweek.
Though Info Wars does not provide a religious demographic profile of its readership, it is likely that many of its readers can be found in church pews on Sunday mornings. Many of Jones' ramblings posit the existence of an ongoing assault on America's Christian heritage - surely welcome news to Christian conservatives who see their cultural influence waning. Yet Christian affinities for Info Wars are not just consistent with the Christian right. They are in many ways consistent with all of American Christianity.
In today's America, perhaps no group has such an ambivalent and contradictory relationship with that which is fact-based as American Christians, two-thirds of whom voted for the spokesman of the Obama birth certificate hoax. American Christians have a remarkable capacity for rejecting the verifiable and scientific while boasting a monopoly over objectivity. Only 28% of American Evangelicals believe that "human activity is causing climate change. Only 49% of Mainline Protestants consider evolution to be a plausible explanation of human origins. And just as Christians reject that which is verifiable, they espouse that the rest of America is rapidly lapsing into moral relativism, becoming untethered from the truth. Anecdotally, there are nearly as many Google searches for "relativism" as there are for "journalism" - the former grows in search volume each year, the latter declines.
American Christianity's troubling relationship with the truth is well-documented - perhaps a factor in the irreversible Millennial exodus from the institutional church. It would appear that the more Christianity resists that which is fact-based, the more they slip into cultural obscurity - at least among the younger generations.
As someone who would rather not see the Christian tradition relegated to fringe Twitter rantings in response to selectively permeable cultural ear plugs, I might suggest that the authentic Christian church is inextricably anchored to that which is true.
Both the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels attest to the perils of bearing false witness (see Exodus 20), while Jesus refers to himself as the way and the "truth" and the life" (see John 14:6). After the death of Jesus, his followers launch themselves into a massive letter-writing campaign (now preserved in the second half of the New Testament, the "epistles"). Crack open any one of these books and you will first see that many are written to provide encouragement to Christian communities. What is at the top of the suggestion lis for Christian communities? It isn't too ignore any claim that isn't backed by the literal words of the Bible - but the simple command to seek and to speak the truth!
Authentic, relational Christian community is predicated upon truth. To the writers of the scriptures, the most sincere expressions of faith depend not on blind adherence or naive acceptance. Authentic Jesus-following did not and does not necessitate a separate understanding of truth from the scientific or journalistic mainstream. On the contrary - the Christian tradition, its scriptures and its theology, show us that communities of faith are strengthened, shaped, and edified by the constant discernment and exploration of the truth.
The hurricane of hatred and vitriol that is Alex Jones will continue to rage, and probably amplify, in response to the latest controversy. Americans, especially Christian Americans, should all take a moment to reflect on their relationship to the truth. Fake news exists on both ends of the political spectrum. So perhaps the task of the church in Trump's America is to guide us back towards the now counter-cultural pursuit of truth. As mundane as that task might seem, to pursue the truth in these polarized times is to preserve the fabric of our national character. To pursue the truth in the era of fake news is to engage in the most important act of community building. To that task we in the church are surely called.
@RyanPanzer, a Lutheran blogger, is a subscriber to the Wisconsin State Journal (yes, a daily print subscriber!), a reader of the failing New York Times, and a frequent visitor to Politifact.com.
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