The Church’s Faithful Responses to Conspiracy Theories — The Modern Gnosticism — Journal of Lutheran Ethics

[1] Over 20 years ago I worked on Capitol Hill for a Member of Congress. We would receive letters, phone calls, and emails about an assortment of issues. And we were required to send a response to every correspondence we received. Most of the time, those responses contained information or a constituent’s opinions about up-coming legislation.

[2] But there were other letters that gave us pause. These were the ones that we read and said “What in the world? I haven’t heard that one before.” To this day, there are two favorite letters that I remember well. The first one was from someone who was concerned about the Russian troops who were apparently training in the Allegheny mountains. The second letter came from a constituent who was concerned about the forcefield that protects the nation; they worried it was turned off at night in order to save energy. This person was arguing that the nation was left defenseless from attack and that we should keep the forcefield on throughout the night in spite of the cost. Both of these letter contained false premises. Where these ideas even came from, I’ll never know. But these people firmly believed what they wrote was pertinent — there was no shred of doubt in their mind evidenced by the numerous pages they sent. They had special information that they were sharing in order to protect the country from an enemy — or so they thought.