2026-06-03
I'm sure this has already been written about and in much greater detail, but having just encountered some Jehovah's Witnesses proselytizing in the subway, I felt like I had something potentially useful to say. Anyone who has interacted with American evangelicals has probably noticed that there is very little they can say to challenge their beliefs. It seems like they have an answer for everything. The answers can be picked apart rationally, of course, but even when you do, they don't seem to notice or care. The main reason for this, in my experience as a former Southern Baptist, is comfort with cognitive dissonance. Evangelicalism teaches its followers to accept and internalize contradictions.
The example that motivated me to write this is how evangelicals view their interactions with non-believers. Evangelicalism maintains, simultaneously, that:
Individual evangelicals might resolve this contradiction in different ways, of course. Maybe one thinks belief is the default, but still unpopular due to the dominance of secular indoctrination. Maybe another thinks belief is popular, but those hostile to it have outsized power and influence. But ultimately the ideology preaches the contradiction. Believers hear both in equal measure, and if they keep up church attendance, they get used to hearing it. Eventually they stop noticing it's a contradiction.
And then, when they go out to proselytize, there is no way to interact with them that challenges the ideology. Anything you say, do, or fail to say or do, reinforces one or the other contradictory tenet, and thus the ideology as a whole. If you are polite and cordial, if you engage with their ideas genuinely, you reinforce that their beliefs are normal and popular. ("We planted a seed today," they'll say afterwards.) If you're hostile, argumentative, or completely ignore them, it's proof that they are being persecuted. ("God really showed us today how much these people need him, how important our work is", they'll say afterward.) In the words of Dan Olsen, "they can use the whole bird."
This trick only works because of the contradictory nature of the belief system. If it held only that evangelical belief is popular and in the majority, then hostility would make it clear that wasn't true. If, conversely, it held only that evangelical belief is unpopular, then politeness and good-faith discussion would challenge the ideology. But it doesn't hold one or the other, it holds both simultaneously.
It's also definitely not a coincidence that contradiction is at the core of fascism; Umberto Eco famously writes that one of its characteristics is the belief that "the enemy is both strong and weak." Cognitive dissonance is a core component of every ideology founded on high-control social groups. Which makes sense; these ideologies are rarely coherent, and as mathematics tells us, if you accept a contradiction you can prove anything.