CURRENT RESEARCH

The authors (who draw on theories from the anti-cult movement) write that in some ways QAnon shares characteristics with new religious movements, having a charismatic leadership (the mysterious “Q” and Donald Trump by proxy), strong membership devotion to an ideology, and suggestibility (even “brainwashing”). But QAnon also has similarities to terrorist groups, with a decentralized structure and a tendency to violence. Arguing that similarities or uniformities in the trajectories of the comparison groups suggest the probability that QAnon will follow the same trajectory, the researchers show that all four comparison groups have survived, show stability, and have growing memberships and geographical expansion. With the exception of the LaRouchites, the groups also all continue to engage in violence. Hodwitz, King, and Thompson predict that QAnon, still “in its fledgling years…is not likely to fade out at any point in the near future. QAnon may have years, if not decades, of active life ahead of it, championing political, social, and religious change…likely increasing in membership and regional expansion. In addition, continued violence is expected, one of many tactics employed by Anons, although the centrality of violence as a tool is open to debate.”

The researchers write that, collectively, newer songs consist of “comparably steeper rises, diminished peaks, and more rapid falls than older songs. While some individual songs in each five-year timespan defy the start-rise-peak-fall pattern of its aggregated curve, many songs in the same span reinforce it.” Songs are declining three times faster than they did 25 years ago. Those emerging between 2000 and 2004 fell 23 percent more rapidly than those that emerged between 1995 and 1999. The authors ask whether “songs are falling and disappearing from the lists faster to make room for new songs (a ‘displacement’ theory) or because they oversaturate the culture (a ‘dissatisfaction’ theory).” In either case, their findings indicate that more churches are singing the same songs while they are doing so for shorter and shorter seasons.

Meanwhile, a new Pew study has found that most black Catholics worship in predominantly white churches and that they are increasingly immigrants. Only about 25 percent of black Catholics attend churches where the majority of congregants are black. Seeming to go against the above survey’s findings on religious flourishing, the Pew study reports that the main reason why black Catholics are such a small population is that they are the least likely of all Catholics to remain in the fold. While Catholics generally are prone to religious switching, black Catholics show the highest rates. The Catholic Church has 798 predominantly African American congregations across the country, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, most of which are on the East Coast and in the South. The study also found that 68 percent of black Catholics are U.S.-born, with a growing number coming from Africa (about 12 percent), the Caribbean (11 percent), or other parts of the Americas (5 percent).

But the authors add that the trend is more than just a byproduct of secularization. “It means that the other such Catholics they meet––perhaps at a university Catholic Society, or by gravitating to a particular church or movement, and/or by falling in with a certain crowd on social media––are also, necessarily, among the more committed themselves. This in turn produces a subcultural dynamic…of mutual validation and reinforcement, encouraging members to go increasingly all in with their Catholicism, not merely by the standards of the wider culture, but by those of other (predominantly older) practicing Catholics too.”