There was a big movement in the ’90s called Seeker-Friendly Churches. Willow Creek [one of the most prominent of these churches] did a self-assessment about 10 or 15 years ago, and one of the things that they found is while they had converted people to Christians, there was a lack of growth in their faith. They were not learning the scriptures. They were not engaged in community. They were not discipling anybody. And [Willow Creek’s] assessment was: We failed. We baptized some people, but they’re not actually maturing.
One of my questions is: Are we seeing in the last four years one of the consequences of that failure? They didn’t mature [in their faith], and they’re very easily led astray by what scripture calls “false teachers.” My thesis HERE is that if we had a more scripturally based set of believers in this country — if everybody who calls themselves a “Christian” had actually read through, I don’t know, 80 percent of the Bible — they would not have been so easily deceived.
For the nearly 20 years since 9/11, to counter violent extremism, the U.S. government has done outreach to imams and other faith leaders in Muslim communities. In light of the QAnon problem, should we be doing the same with leaders in evangelical Christian communities?
I think we need to learn from the mistakes of the last 20 years. And I am very mindful that there are places where things went very well [with Countering Violent Extremism outreach], and there are also places where things did not go well. It’s a mixed bag.
I personally feel a great burden, since I came from these communities, to try to figure out how to help the leaders in those communities. I don’t know that I’m a credible voice anymore because of my political outspokenness, but there certainly are pastors who are struggling with these questions: How do I help somebody that has gone down the QAnon rabbit hole? Or, to put it in biblical terms, how do I help somebody who has made trump an idol?
Pastors, church leaders, faith leaders — when you frame it that way for them, the answers start to come: “Oh, we know how to do this.” Usually, pastors have done a lot of counseling or shepherding in their lifetimes. They know that you don’t approach people head-on with dogmatic arguments; that tends to not work. You need to recognize that there’s often something else going on that has made somebody vulnerable to being deceived, and coming out of that deception can be painful and humbling. But faith leaders — the good ones, at least — are perfect for that kind of work. So even though the particular topic itself may be different than they’re used to, they have many of the skill sets you need.
