Journal of Religion and Violence

ONLINE FIRST

published on August 17, 2022

Julie Ingersoll

America’s Holy Trinity: How Conspiracism, Apocalypticism, and Persecution Narratives Set Us up for Crisis

Debates over whether QAnon is a “religion” or a “cult” lack theoretical grounding; they depend on unacknowledged definitions and classificatory schemes and ultimately don’t prove useful as an analytical framework for sociological/historical scholarship. Instead, this article suggests we explore the ways one contemporary religious movement helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and persecution narratives into the larger American culture.