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Timothy Grieve-Carlson

Guest Post: Can Ancient ‘Heresies’ Really Help Us Understand American Politics?

In a recent episode of the WNYC radio program and podcast On the Media, the American journalist Jeff Sharlet attributed the emergence of Trumpism, QAnon and its attendant conservative, conspiratorial ecosystem of thought to two major religious sources: the first is the Prosperity Gospel, a well-known Evangelical spin on American metaphysics and New Thought in particular, in which prayer in the form positive thought is believed to actively shape the world of the devotee.[1] The second major source of Trumpist religious thought, according to Sharlet, is Gnosticism, which he describes as a second-century Christian “heresy” with a few major features: Read more