Evangelicals' fears of witchcraft made them perfect marks for Trump's lies: columnists

After weeks of infighting and multiple failed candidates, Republicans finally have a new House speaker in Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), a lawmaker who has proven sympathetic to young-earth creationism and who also played a key role in former President Donald Trump's plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

As if that weren't enough, he even tried to start a Satanic panic about an adult cartoon show starring Danny DeVito last year.

All these beliefs being held in parallel is not a coincidence, argued Amanda Marcotte for Salon — it represents a pathology that runs deep in the evangelical community.

"This is, after all, the same politician who once fought to secure taxpayer funding for a Noah's ark-based theme park," wrote Marcotte "Yes, he did so out of a conviction that a literal flood wiped out all life on earth except that of an old man, his family, and a boatful of animals around 2300 B.C. Never mind that there is a historical record of thriving, well-documented civilizations like Mesopotamia and Egypt at the time, and they did not disappear into a flood. The Noah exhibit even claimed dinosaurs were on the ark, which did not stop Johnson from arguing that 'what we read in the Bible are actual historical events.'"

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An ideology that teaches "ark-riding dinosaurs" were an actual thing that existed, wrote Marcotte, can easily be convinced with no evidence that an election they lost was stolen and must be thrown out.

And Marcotte isn't alone in this warning — writing for The Atlantic, Brian Klaas explained how "magic" and "sorcery" are powerful tools in politics.

"The rationalists among us may scoff at supernatural beliefs and little imagine that politics could be decisively swayed by superstition, mysticism, and theories of demonic forces. But we don’t need to imagine. Forty percent of the global population believes in witchcraft, defined as the 'ability of certain people to intentionally cause harm via supernatural means,'" wrote Klaas. This is true of countries all over the world, and the U.S. is no exception: "Millions believe in QAnon, and more and more people are attending formal exorcisms, which often have overt political messages in support of Trump. The popular ReAwaken America tour was founded by a man who claims that COVID-19 vaccines are associated with the 'mark of the beast.'"

To be fair, Marcotte continued, a lot of evangelicals like Johnson "don't really believe half the crap they say" because they only act on their own claims when it's convenient for them.

"When they get sick, most creationists go running to medical doctors, whose practice only works because the theory of evolution is true," she wrote. Likewise, "certainly no one literally believes Donald Trump is a Bible-believing Christian, but since it suits their purposes to claim he is, they will 'believe' he is saved by the cleansing powers of Jesus Christ."

Nonetheless, she concluded, all of this explains why it is a "breeze" for evangelicals to convince themselves of politically convenient falsehoods.