This week we continue our series on the online cult-like communities and groups that you will find making their way into churches. If you want to catch up on some of the previous you can find the whole series here. This week we’ll be looking at the flat-earth online community and its surprising growth and permeation into churches.
During my undergrad years, I spent most of that time studying aerospace engineering before eventually changing majors. Aside from having some of the craziest electives on my transcripts, it gave me an appreciation for the complexities of things like orbital mechanics. That means that even in seminary, while I knew that scripture tended to reference a flat-earth cosmology, I never took serious the notion that the earth is flat. I was a bit shocked to discover that friends and even fellow seminary students were, in fact, devoted flat-earthers!
Are there actually people who believe the earth is flat?
Yep, various studies have shown that at least 10% of the population believes that the earth is flat and that up to 30% are not certain that it is a sphere. Generationally, Millennials and Gen-Z are far more likely than Boomers and Gen-X to disagree or show uncertainty that the earth is a sphere, so it’s getting worse, not better. Usually, they follow a more or less ancient concept of cosmology: a flat disk, covered by a hard dome that is the sky, and celestial bodies move across the surface of the dome. Most believe that the center of the disk is the North Pole and that Antartica is actually a wall of ice that surrounds the dome.
Basically, flat-earth proponents believe the whole world is kind of like a massive version of The Truman Show.
How do they still believe the earth is flat despite modern science?
Flat-earth theories are at their roots conspiracy theories aimed at science and modernism. The modern variations began in England in the 1830’s and gained a small following throughout the 1900’s; however, with the advent of the internet, the flat-earth community exploded. There are a few reasons why flat-earthers will reject a spherical earth model:
- They believe a sacred text teaches the world is flat (the majority are religious). 📜
- They believe that NASA and other space agencies lie to keep the populace misinformed. 🚀🧑🚀
- They are unwilling to believe anything they themselves can’t observe. 🔎
- Like other conspiracy theories, they believe they have “truth” and are special. 🥳
Fun fact: one of the biggest tenants of flat-earth is that the horizon is flat ergo the earth is flat. As you can see though, a disk viewed with even just a bit of height will actually appear to curve… rather substantially in fact! 🤷
How flat-earth intersects with Christianity and why it’s dangerous
One area where flat-earthers are right, is that the Bible utilizes a flat-earth cosmology. This is totally consistent with ancient Near Eastern conception of the cosmos, which is a phenomenological way (describing the universe from the human observer’s point of view). From a theologians point of view, it speaks to God’s desire to establish relationship with humanity over as far outweighing the need for a scientific worldview.
So, in short, the Bible pretty much tends to utilize a flat earth cosmology that looks something like this:
Unfortunately, due to strict fundamentalist literalist approaches to scripture, many people discount the ability of God to communicate polemically, hyperbolically, or even to reference pop-culture in his communication with humanity. When those people are confronted with the fact that Bible references a flat-earth cosmology their reaction is binary: either 1.) the Bible is entirely false because the world is a sphere or 2.) the world is actually flat.
So there’s a lot of Christians out there that decided the world is flat and subscribe entirely to a flat-earth conspiracy theory. Doesn’t matter that the Patristics in their typical allegorical fashion dealt with the question of how to approach the creation narratives and how they considered them communicative of God’s character and uniqueness more than scientific, for the flat-earther “the Bible says flat means the world is flat!”
People are often shocked that the flat-earth conspiracy theories are dominated by religious adherents, mostly Christians, but here’s a quick taste of what you can expect from the typical flat-earth online community:
And here’s another:
… and another…
If the memes and YouTube videos weren’t enough already, Ally Hills did a hilarious dive into flat-earth music and her reaction was shock that it was a largely religious community. You can see her YouTube video and hear some examples of flat-earth music making reference to the Bible here: https://youtu.be/UE14zS8zsMU
So, as you can see, it’s pretty pervasive and problematic among Christians, is affecting how they read and interpret scripture, and it needs to be addressed.
How to counter flat-earth conspiracies in your church
Last week I got to participate in a fire-extinguisher demonstration. It was pretty cool, there were actual flames and the extinguisher they gave me was massive… anyhow, the thing that you are always told about putting out a fire is to “aim for the base of the fire!” Countering flat-earth is not about proving the earth is spherical… people will make all kinds of mental contortions to reject even the soundest evidence of a spherical earth… the goal of the church is to address the theology of divine communication.
We need to remove the perspective that God could only have communicated using 21st century scientific perspectives… particularly to his pre-scientific audience. I have a six-year-old, I don’t try to explain singularities to her because I understand she isn’t ready to comprehend that and I’m more interested in having a relationship with her. Moreover, I reference fictitious materials she’s familiar with to communicate things with her, be it something from an episode of Bluey or a song from Frozen. If I can do it in my communication, God can do it in his.
Now, the other root cause of this is the same as pretty much all conspiracies: contrarianism. Disagreeing because it makes one feel special or feel like they have the “true” knowledge is an increasingly big problem for churches today. It leads people to embrace fringe groups online with outlandish ideas. This is where a focus on community in the church can help, people need to identify with their church community so that they don’t feel the need for an external community to validate them. Too often, churches are not safe places where community flourishes and that’s something we need to constantly evaluate.
Finally, as with most of these fringe communities that have a cult-like hold over people, the church needs to be willing to welcome people in with open arms. If a flat-earther comes out and decides “maybe the earth really is a sphere and it’s not a satanic illuminati orchestrated NASA coverup” they will lose their online community and sense of connection. It’s always easier to step away when the consequences are not loneliness and isolation.
Closing thoughts
I’ve taken some flak in the past for saying Atheists and fundamentalist-literalists are basically operating from the same premise… they absolutely are. They both view scripture from a modernist scientific literalist worldview that we wouldn’t actually apply to other forms of communication. As such, they both perceive a dichotomy between scripture and science. Atheists decide to follow science and reject scripture, while fundamentalist-literalists choose scripture and reject science.
In order to move forward, we actually need to help people to see that the dichotomy doesn’t actually exist and that it’s okay to back down from these extreme positions and find acceptance within the church.
