The Plague of Neo-Gnosticism in the American Church

Gnosticism was a diverse slew of ancient heretical groups in early Christianity, but what united them was a belief in hidden, mystical knowledge that was not widely available or known. The Gnostics were suspicious of what might be called the “Mainstream Church” of the day. If you vaguely remember something about Gnosticism, it might be because you remember the Catholic and evangelical rebuttals to Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code nearly 20 years ago or because the History Channel habitually runs half-ass documentaries begging the question why the Gnostic gospels were rejected from the biblical canon without ever acknowledging that they were written at least 75 years later. The reason I share that historical background is that I feel like I grew up in a fundamentalist cult that was infected by a virulent strain of Neo-Gnosticism.

Below are a dozen examples of the Neo-Gnosticism I experienced firsthand. Whether it came from Sunday school teachers, Bible study leaders, youth pastors, traveling evangelists, missionaries, (self-proclaimed) prophets, or straight from the senior pastor in the pulpit, in the Pentecostal faith communities where I was raised believing in Jesus went hand in hand with believing:

1. Shadow world governments led by socialist, atheistic Illuminati are laying the groundwork for the global rule of the Anti-Christ,
2. Social Security numbers are spiritually linked to the mark of the beast in Revelation 13:1,
3. Nefarious forces in liberal academia are covering up the truth about a 10,000 year old earth,
4. The Smurfs and Harry Potter were “portals into the dark energies of the demonic realm,”
5. The mystical wisdom given by the gift of Tongues is a biblical prerequisite to the pastorate,
6. Rap music contains “Satanic rhythms” that “subconsciously cause depravity” by training our spirits to align with “unnatural bio-mystical frequencies” that resulted from the Fall,
7. Evolution is a sinister plot of big, bad Secular Humanism,
8. Rush Limbaugh was a fountain of Christian wisdom (instead of an ignorant blowhard) because he stood up to the Mainstream Media,
9. Gay and lesbian people are “spies sent from the occult” sent out to “undermine the Created Order of God’s universe” and “undermine the very fabric of Western civilization by destroying the divinely-sanctioned family unit,”
10. The whole Pentecostal theological belief system is “the biblical truth” despite it being less than a century old at the time (See: Parham, Charles),
11. The pinnacle of Christian worship is a euphoric state of pure, unconscious fellowship with God called “being slain in the Spirit” that outwardly resembling a seizure but inwardly “involves an encounter with God’s very presence through Shekinah Glory,” and
12. Spontaneous prayers are more authentic than written, liturgical prayers not only because they’re from the heart and therefore get us closer to God’s own heart but because they move us away from “dead intellectualism” to “open our spirits to the voice of the Living God.”

(One moment please. I need to recover from that traumatic stroll down memory lane.)

As bad as the Neo-Gnostic tendency obviously was back in the ’90s and early-2000s, I would suggest it now looks tame by comparison. Today the conspiracy theories have taken on a populist flair through the echo chambers of the internet and become widespread. Now it’s this bizarre QAnon crap: global currency resets, the incursion of Sharia Law into American local government, Tom Hanks eating babies, Donald Trump vs. The Deep State, and Bill Gates injecting us with microchips to usher in our passive acceptance of the New World Order.

It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

This lunacy has become so pervasive that otherwise sane people now believe in slightly toned down versions because they presume that, well, it’s not that far out there. They’ve heard much worse. Plus, if so many of their friends and family believe it, then surely at least part of it must be true? The indwelling Holy Spirit wouldn’t allow this many true believers to be deceived, right? What this approach to forming a worldview fails to understand is that just because a falsehood is repeated enough times by enough people doesn’t make it plausible or true. As a matter of fact, that was the go-to rhetorical strategy of none other than Adolf Hitler and it’s exactly what Donald Trump and his cronies are doing in the aftermath of the election and the insurrection.

You know what the worst part is?

For the life of me, I cannot figure out why people are drawn to this stuff like a moth to a flame, but this knack for pursuing hidden knowledge and believing in conspiracy theories seems to have become the glue that bonds together many families, friend groups, and faith communities. Oh, there’s different cultural, political, and spiritual beliefs for sure, but what seems to provide the cohesion is this default assumption about hidden knowledge that is, whether intentionally or unintentionally, being suppressed by the treacherous powers that be: the Roman Catholic Church, the American political establishment, the secular humanists in liberal academia, the Mainstream Media, etc. Well, having grown up listening to these wackadoodles, I completely reject that premise as absurd because it fails to take into account Occam’s Razor.

*slowly massaging temples*

For nearly two decades, I tried. I really did. I made a concerted effort to practice civility and strive for reasonable discourse with these undeniably well-intentioned yet extraordinarily gullible individuals. Even when they made unequivocally bogus claims that were easily disprovable with primary source documents, I still made a good faith effort to smile and be nuanced, measured, self-critical, and gracious. At this point, however, all hope is lost. The patients have taken over the asylum. In a state of defeated exasperation, I’ve given up on having constructive discourse anymore with those whose intellectual and spiritual immune system has been overtaken by the viral load of their Neo-Gnostic infection.

The field of epistemology asks, “How do you know what you know?”

It seems we’re completely at odds epistemologically. Our ways of acquiring knowledge and overturning our perspectives are mutually exclusive. Seriously, when I ask for reputable sources I get self-published pamphlets from End Times survivalists instead of qualified theologians, fringe doctors in YouTube videos instead of peer-reviewed medical journals, the KKK-friendly OANN instead of the Washington Post, and vague anecdotal stories about how a high school friend’s second-cousin’s son’s roommate had a near-fatal reaction to a Covid vaccine instead of any direct first-hand reports. The Neo-Gnostic infection has so overtaken the cognitive faculties that they’ve apparently lost a 6th grade-level understanding about what constitutes a reputable source. It’s foolish, half-baked, anti-science, conspiracy theory conjecture at every turn that masquerades as The Truth. I can’t work with that.

It’s like I’m living in a Dan Brown novel.

While being morbidly pessimistic, I might as well as acknowledge the part that’s been most disturbing of all. Under the big tent of American Christianity, if ever this Neo-Gnostic plague was confined to Pentecostalism or the various sub-traditions of conservative evangelicalism it no longer is. There it might be most virulent, but I’m also seeing Neo-Gnosticism crop up in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Mainline Protestantism, and even among the freaking Anabaptists. For reasons I don’t yet understand, followers of Jesus across the board are falling prey to this quest for hidden, mystical knowledge that is not widely available or known. It’s like the 2nd century all over again. This thing is a cancer.

Please note that I spent nearly two decades–17 years!–carefully trying not to throw baby Jesus out with the bathwater with this stuff. This is a big part of why I poured myself into the study of history, theology, philosophy, economics, cultural anthropology, psychology, etc. I desperately struggled to salvage any lingering elements of truth, beauty, and goodness worth saving from my family history and church background. That project is now over, though. The work is complete. I’ve kept what I perceived to contain value and have unapologetically discarded the rest.

I’m out.

Well, truth be told, I’ve actually been out since around 2004, but now I’m refusing to further engage any of it even from a distance. The whole epistemological framework and worldview of Neo-Gnosticism is being sealed off like the New Safe Confinement built on top of the concrete sarcophagus around Chernobyl reactor #4:

• No more evil Smurfs.
• No more Illuminati.
• No more Deep State.
• No more global currency resets.
• No more vaccine microchips.
• No more Jewish space lasers.
• No more New World Order.
• No more culturally and historically illiterate 10,000-year-old Earth.
• No more Christian spirituality that’s infused with even the slightest cross-contamination of 20th century Pentecostal and/or charismatic precepts.

After nearly 20 years of earnestly trying to build bridges and 6 months of concerted reflection on what to do next, I’ve made my decision. I simply cannot make it work with those who are infected with the virus of Neo-Gnosticism. Sadly, I’m perfectly willing to cut ties with anyone–anyone!–who can’t or won’t stop drinking the Kool-Aid of this utter nonsense. The decision is theirs, but that’s my boundary. After 36 years, I’ve had quite enough of this toxicity. And now, as a dad, I will not permit my daughter to face these same battles as she grows up.

Toward the end of Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln is speaking with the Vice President of the Confederacy, Alexander Stevens. Knowing the inevitable reality of the South’s military defeat, Stevens has come north in a desperate offer for cessation of the Civil War in order to be readmitted fast enough to block the 13th Amendment. At the conclusion of Lincoln’s reply he says, “Slavery, sir, it’s done.” That’s where I am.

Neo-Gnosticism, sir, it’s done.