(YAHOO) – The congregation was in the middle of an online service when a longtime churchgoer in her 60s texted her pastor to complain that his prayer lamenting the assault on the U.S. Capitol in January was “too political.”
The woman later unloaded a barrage of conspiracy theories. The election of Joe Biden was a fraud. The insurrection was instigated by Black Lives Matter and Antifa activists disguised as Donald Trump supporters. The FBI was in on it all. The day would soon come, she said, “when all the evil, the corruption would come to light and the truth would be revealed.”
Startled and moved to tears, Pastor David Rice told the woman she had been “tricked by lies.” “You need to know how crazy this is,” he said to his congregant at Markey Church in Roscommon County, Mich., a rural region of about 25,000 residents that voted 2 to 1 for Trump.
“You have been with my family and in my home and I care for you, but you are dabbling in darkness. You are telling me it’s giving you hope. I’m telling you as your pastor that it’s evil.” The two haven’t spoken since. Details emerging from investigations into hundreds of Capitol rioters have cast an unsettling light on the toxic roles that fringe religious beliefs and QAnon conspiracy theories are playing in shaking big and small churches across the nation. Trump’s false insistence that he won the 2020 election may have incited the mob, but it also pointed to a dangerous intersection of God and politics. READ MORE
