2025/07/01 by Billy Mann · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Misinformation and Its Impacts #Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics #Global Peace and Security Dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/rec3.70019
ABSTRACT Since the 1970s, the Christian right in America has developed from a movement deliberately detached from politics into a lobbying force wielding influence in the heart of the American political system. Along this journey, the Christian right fostered and developed a number of conspiracy theories which played numerous roles in their ideology and Christian worldview. One of these roles was a means of explanation and political understanding, allowing believers to understand their sense of dispossession which motivated their initial crusade into politics. Explaining political dispossession, such as the ruling of Roe versus Wade, as the result of a conspiracy, the Christian right was able to maintain the mutually exclusive opinions that America was a uniquely Christian country, but also a country in which Christians were dispossessed of political power and influence. This form of conspiratorial explanation also allowed them to superimpose biblical prophecy onto American politics, adding hidden narratives to political life which resembled doomsday predictions they believed were described in Revelations. Between the movements inception to present day, the recurrence of these conspiracy narratives formed an explanatory conspiracy tradition, whereby new generations of Christian right activists would inherit conspiracy beliefs from their predecessors, which they would update to suit their contemporary explanatory needs, such as incorporating new, political enemies of the Christian right who were not politically relevant in previous years.