What do the ‘elites’ not want you to know? Why do they want to control you, and make you forget God? Communism is the work of the devil, after all. Vaccines, engineered by those same elites, are designed to block your chakras, which is why essential oils are the key to all ailments.
If you have spent even a few moments on the internet, none of these statements will be absurd to you. You may have had such conversations pop up in your digital lives — whether it be someone preaching semen retention on your TikTok ‘For You Page,’ or people in the comments sections of news stories peddling vaccine disinformation, calling the origins of scientific study satanic.
Research published in the International Journal of Public Health indicates that there seems to be a significant overlap between those who are the hardest adherents of new-age conspiracy theories and those deeply invested in the spiritual. Most interestingly, this overlap supersedes the divides of the political spectrum. There seems to be an overlap of general Eastern-inspired, woman-dominated spirituality and evangelical Christianity: two beliefs usually associated with opposing ends of the political spectrum — on the left and the right respectively.
I first encountered the concept of Conspirituality via Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, and Julian Walker who coined the term on their podcast and book of the same name.
Faith-based opposition to the government or those in power is not unprecedented, as many religious movements began at the bottom of society under the leadership of social outcasts from larger communities, who then mobilized these communities upward. We can look at the origins of religions like Christianity or Baha’i, both of which began under the influence of charismatic outcasts such as Jesus and Bahā’Allāh, who sympathized with the downtrodden and appealed to the lower class with claims of divine revelation.
What is different about conspirituality is that it adopts extra-theological and sensationalist tendencies, and places pernicious ideas into pre-existing systems of faith to imbue those systems with objectively untrue political rhetoric. Making a messiah out of President Donald Trump on X and Truth Social, and rejecting sound election results on TikTok has nothing to do with the developed religious doctrine of Christianity.
The worship of figures like Trump in comparison to Jesus is a manifestation of conspirituality on the right. On the other side of the political spectrum, there is a portion of politically left-wing individuals who perform self-care acts in the form of often Eastern-inspired spirituality like yoga or practice alternative medicine like homeopathy. Here, conspiracies against COVID-19 vaccines — which were developed by expert biologists and are generally safe for use — are opposed to the vaccines in favour of what one study from the National Library of Medicine notes as “a spiritual or mystical approach to health.”
While it’s already hard to convince someone that their opinions are incorrect or uninformed, it seems to be near impossible to convince someone to abandon dangerous ideas when they are integrated into their religious beliefs.
Studies such as one from the American Psychological Association, suggest that religion functions as a psychological framework which provides people with a sense of certainty, community, and safety. The human search for meaning is often eased by religion and as such, it is very difficult to let go of religious ideas. So, when more pernicious and harmful ideas or conspiracies are integrated into bodies of belief, they become equally as difficult to let go of.
Much of the propagation of conspiratorial ideas happens on social media. Here, ideas — no matter how absurd or untrue — flourish as long as they receive enough engagement to boost their visibility in the various algorithms that control what we see. While attempts have been made to curb this — such as the misinformation warnings on Meta’s platforms, which the tech conglomerate recently announced it will be abandoning, or community notes on X — these information markers seem to be useless when part of the idea being shared is literally that such media apparatuses must not be trusted.
I grant that there are many people removed from spirituality who engage in conspiracy culture. But the existence of a subset of people that can support their delusive tendencies through otherwise unconnected faith systems concerns me. It is one thing to deny reality based on a set of misinformation or facts tailored to suit a narrative, but it is another, more dangerous thing to integrate such ideas into religious ideologies which are much, much harder to shake off.
